From Natural Law to Human Rights: the course starts from the history of western natural law and natural rights traditions and ends with the recent human rights covenants, passing through the UDHR which celebrated its 70th anniversary last year. Although human rights issues continue to be debated and discussed, the longer history of human rights is often unexamined and even forgotten. HR rather than being a twentieth-century phenomenon, they mark both a culmination of and a transition from the western natural law and natural rights traditions. The course is structured in classical lectures, discussion papers, PPT presentations and simulations that will help students to better understand changes and continuities of the debates and claims about rights throughout the early modern and contemporary age.
This first part of the course examines the affirmation of political doctrines concerning natural law and natural rights through the study of articles and essays by important modern and contemporary philosophers. Students will be able to better understand the origins of what we now call "human rights" in a perspective that is based on the tradition of predominantly Western thinking. At the end of the module. The course focuses on the historical path that marked the transition from natural law and natural rights to human rights, identifying continuity and changes related to debates and claims on rights during this long period , in order to explore how rights have been historically affirmed, justified and defended. The course aims to provide students with an understanding and a critical perspective on the history of foundamental claims that have certainly influenced the human rights documents drawn up in the contemporary age.