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One of the oldest Western philosophies on human rights is that they are a product of a natural law, stemming from different philosophical or religious grounds. Other theories hold that human rights codify moral behavior which is a human social product developed by a process of biological and social evolution (associated with Hume).
Critics of the view that human rights are universal argue that human rights are a Western concept that "emanate from a European, Judeo-Christian, and/or Enlightenment heritage (typically labeled Western) and cannot be enjoyed by other cultures that don't emulate the conditions and values of 'Western' societies."
Some central topics of Western philosophy in its early modern (also classical modern) [66] [67] period include the nature of the mind and its relation to the body, the implications of the new natural sciences for traditional theological topics such as free will and God, and the emergence of a secular basis for moral and political philosophy. [68]
Some notions of righteousness present in ancient law and religion are sometimes retrospectively included under the term "human rights". While Enlightenment philosophers suggest a secular social contract between the rulers and the ruled, ancient traditions derived similar conclusions from notions of divine law, and, in Hellenistic philosophy, natural law.
For example, Rose Rosengard Subotnik's Deconstructive Variations (subtitled Music and Reason in Western Society) compares Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (1791) using the Enlightenment and Romantic perspectives and concludes that the work is "an ideal musical representation of the Enlightenment." [186]
Elena Vyacheslavovna Oznobkina (Russian: Елена Вячеславовна Ознобкина; 25 April 1959 – 10 March 2010) was a philosopher, theorist, historian of philosophy, lecturer, translator, editor, journalist, researcher of penitentiary systems, and Russian human rights activist.
Faisal Kutty, a Muslim Canadian human rights activist, opines that a "strong argument can be made that the current formulation of international human rights constitutes a cultural structure in which western society finds itself easily at home [...]. It is important to acknowledge and appreciate that other societies may have equally valid ...
Natural rights were traditionally viewed as exclusively negative rights, [6] whereas human rights also comprise positive rights. [7] Even on a natural rights conception of human rights, the two terms may not be synonymous. The concept of natural rights is not universally accepted, partly due to its religious associations and perceived incoherence.