Relationality as a ‘Foundation’ for Human Rights: Exploring the Paradox with Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas

Abstract

Arendt and Levinas intentionally distanced themselves from Heidegger’s ontological project, and the tradition of Western metaphysics in general, by rethinking ontology in terms of intersubjectivity. With regard to rights, this led both to appreciate the fact that human rights are always rooted in relationality, in plurality for Arendt and in alterity for Levinas. While plurality’s foundational potential has great promise, its concrete conceptualization in Arendt’s opus is insufficient – sadly, plurality rests too much on the ontic. My claim is that this omission can be attended to by turning to Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of alterity and his significant theorization on rights (which has not been fully appreciated). By bringing together Levinas’ ontological notion of alterity and Arendt’s ontic notion of plurality, in terms of what I refer to as relationality, I provide a post-foundational ground for human rights and in so doing bridge the ontic-ontological gap that human rights span. While there is no actual resolution to the paradox of rights, what is clear is that rights must somehow embrace this paradox by both pointing towards an ontological ground while all the while having an ontic presence in terms of the law and political discourse