Alternative Philosophical Perspectives on the Origin and Nature of Human Rights

Abstract

We begin this inquiry by exploring the right to vote as an essential aspect of a citizen’s right to full integration into a particular State. In that regard, the right to vote is held to be fundamentally grounded on the natural inherent right each person possesses as a human being to belong to a particular society. The right thus exists whether recognized in law or not, and regardless whether, in practice, the individual is prevented for some reason or another from exercising that right as a citizen of the State in question (due, for instance, to legal incapacity to vote related to statutory bars based on chronological age requirements for eligibility to vote; actual mental incapacity compromising the very specific skill set involved in the behaviour of voting etc.). Voting then is a prime manifestation of the basic human rights of free association and free expression. The denial of the vote consequently is the denial of a basic human right. That denial is, furthermore, a vehicle for marginalizing an identifiable group and potentially rendering it relatively powerless. Such marginalization, in turn, is likely to contribute to the group’s psychological disengagement from the society.