Hannah Arendt · Politics

The Right to Have Rights

Watching millions of refugees stripped of citizenship and rendered rightless, Arendt exposed a flaw at the heart of human rights: a person who belongs to no political community has no one to guarantee his ‘inalienable’ rights - revealing a deeper right beneath them all.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned Arendt’s claim that ‘the rights of man’ collapse for the person who belongs to no political community, and that there is a prior ‘right to have rights.’ Explain in your own words what this deeper right is and why she thought it more fundamental.

Leads to Edmund Burke.

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