Please write an essay of 500-1200 words addressing Arendt on ‘human rights’ addressing this questions:

In contemporary political and cultural discussions, there are few concepts with the cache of the notion of ‘human rights’, as something all of us as individuals, organizations, businesses, governments, should be working in terms of and towards. But, are ‘human rights’ all that they are made up to be? Writing after WWII, Hannah Arendt, in her text, THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM, moves from a discussion of the plight of national ‘minorities’ and the altogether ‘stateless’ in the inter-war years of European history to a fundamental critique of the notion of ‘human rights’. Who are these ‘minorities’ and ‘stateless’ and why does their situation imply, for Arendt, a ‘decline of the nation-state’ of the nineteenth century? Why does this entail the ‘end of the rights of man’? What is the danger, as far as Arendt is concerned, in presuming that there is such a thing as ‘universal human rights’? Why does she see the emphasis on such rights as more a sign and symptom of dehumanization rather than a solution to prevent dehumanization? Do you find Arendt’s critique of the idea of ‘human rights’ convincing? Does it have any implications for leadership today?

Category: Essays