Human rights on trial : a genealogy of the critique of human rights / Justine Lacroix, Jean-Yves Pranchere ; translated by Gabrielle Maas.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : from the rights of man to human rights? -- Critiques of human rights in contemporary thought -- Human rights against inheritance : a conservative critique : Edmund Burke -- Human rights versus social utility : a progressivist critique : Jeremy Bentham and Auguste Comte -- Human rights against the rights of God : a theologico-political critique : Louise de Bonald and Joseph de Maistre -- The rights of man against human emancipation : a revolutionary critique : Karl Marx -- Human rights against politics : a nationalist critique : Carl Schmitt -- The'right to have rights' : revisiting Hannah Arendt.

'Fragmented social relations, the twin demise of authority and tradition, the breakdown of behavioural norms and constraints: all these are the outcome, according to their critics, of the uses and abuses of human rights in contemporary democratic societies. We are, they say, seeing the perverse effects of a'religion of human rights' to which Europe has rashly devoted its heart and mind; and the supposed burgeoning of rights, which goes hand in hand with an unchecked rise of expectations, is catapulting Western democracies into an age of never-ending demands. This emerged clearly in France in Spring 2013 during the demonstrations against equal marriage ('mariage pour tous') whose opponents deplored the excesses of a movement-driven left striving for an unbounded extension of rights - from the right to same-sex marriage to the enfranchisement of non-nationals or the right of same-sex couples to adopt'-- Provided by publisher.

Translated to English from French