Hapla Martin, The Problem of Recognition of Human Rights: Does Explicative‑Existential Justification Really Work?

Since human rights became one of the central topics of the philosophy of law, the ques-tion of their justification has been addressed. It is repeatedly concluded in various ways that there is not, and perhaps there cannot be, a satisfactory solution. Although these rights are successful in practice, strong intellectual skepticism persists against them. One of the authors who refused to accept it and offered his answer to the question of their justification is Robert Alexy. Adopting the discursive theory as his starting point, Alexy named his justification explicative-existential. The aim of this article is to analyse it more thoroughly and point out its limitations. In the first part, this justification will be briefly introduced and compared with a similar approach by Rainer Forst. In the second, it will be confronted with three different scenarios, which point to the problematic nature of its explicative component. The aim of these confrontations will be to prove that Alexy’s...