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This chapter covers the philosophical foundations of human rights. It highlights the importance of human rights history to the understanding of debates and problems when theorizing about human rights. The human rights language has been globally recognized as a response to injustice. However, philosophers from the spectrum of conservatism, liberalism, utilitarianism, and socialism attacked the idea of natural rights, while the radicals criticized the rights of man for being the rights of bourgeois man. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the defining text of the human rights movement, which is correlated to history and philosophy. The chapter also looks into the philosophical justification and universalism of modern human rights. It explores the concepts of cultural relativism and human rights imperialism. Additionally, the types of human rights revolve around liberty and welfare rights.

This chapter explores the material bases of struggles for human rights that helped shape human rights norms. It highlights the importance of context to illustrate how human rights have been violated. Arguments on human rights politics typically revolve around the notion of cultural relativism and universalism. Cultural relativism refers to the ethics developed within a particular social context; thus, there could be no moral or ethical framework that could apply in all contexts. The chapter lists some human rights struggles, such as the activism of a labour rights organization, rights as entitlements, and making a rights claim. It suggests how public discussion can bring change if there is a transformation in power inequalities, which is often necessary to have aforementioned public discussions.

This chapter expounds on the political thought of feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, with a focus on her influential analysis of gender inequality. It highlights her most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by focusing on its radical arguments on gender, reason, and education. The chapter contextualizes Wollstonecraft’s work within the republican tradition, which underpinned her opposition to slavery and her recognition of global inequalities. The chapter suggests that her arguments for emancipation were justified by problematic assumptions of universalism that were made more complicated by the tensions of class, motherhood, and Orientalism. It also tackles the backlash against her memoir, published by her husband, as it unveiled her suicide attempts, a dysfunctional childhood, and a child being born out of wedlock.