On the Right to have Rights. Human Rights; Marx and Arendt

Abstract

This essay focuses on Marx and Arendt’s contributions to the concept of the right to have rights. Firstly, it places Marx’s analysis of this concept within the horizon of his interpretation of democracy as the political correlate of Christianity. From this perspective, for Marx, the right to have rights designates the subject of rights to the extent that it is a function of the legality guaranteed by civil society. Secondly, this essay discusses Arendt’s formulation of the right to have rights as the demand for politics that precedes all rights. Hamacher frees this demand from its teleological relation to rights and understands it as what allows speakers to determine themselves as subjects. He traces this demand to Aristotle’s concept of euchè and, more generally, to the non-predicative language of that existence which is politically and juridically unqualified.