The Philosophical Construction of Citizenship & Human Rights
Item 11: The Philosophical Construction of Citizenship
Modern Citizenship
Throughout the Middle Ages, the concept of natural rights for all human beings was forged. To protect these rights, a new type of state political community was gradually instituted.
The term “state” was first used by Machiavelli, referring to a stable organization.
John Bodin, with the concept of sovereignty, gave the absolutist state autonomy and power. In the state, it is the citizens who hold the nationality of that country. Each country prioritizes one of these features for determining nationality:
- The right of soil (born in that country)
- The right to nationality based on the father’s bloodline
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas published a book entitled The Inclusion of the Other, which posits the existence of various models to understand the relationship between citizens and the state:
Liberal Conception
Attributed to Carl Schmitt, this view maintains a gap between civil liberties (guaranteed to all citizens) and political rights (exercised by citizens who are part of the ethno-cultural group that forms the basis for the rule of the state).
Republican Conception
In this view, there is no room for exclusion from political rights for any social group. Citizenship is essentially participatory in public life and action. The essential dimension of people is the public and political space. The city is committed to republican general interests and the values of the political community. The public response is everyone’s business.
In republican citizenship, the freedom of the individual is linked to the freedom of others. In an association of free and equal individuals, everyone should be understood collectively as authors of the laws to which they feel connected individually. We are all equal, but my freedom depends on others.
It is an active citizenship through public deliberation in the exercise of political responsibility by all. Citizens cannot be passive.
Communitarian Conception
This is a national citizenship. The citizen needs to be virtuous: to achieve, grow, and develop appropriate virtues for citizenship status.
This is expressed as a capacity and habit that perfects the condition of good ways of being. Aristotle said: “Virtue makes it run its operation.” Virtue makes a good citizen and allows them to properly fulfill their public role.
Virtue is a habit of choosing which is determined and defined by reason. It involves an intellectual aspect (thinking and choosing) and a volitional aspect (choosing what you want). Civic virtues are primarily for citizenship. They consist of tolerance, solidarity, responsibility, etc.
Citizenship and Human Rights
Civil Rights
The characteristic of the modern notion of citizenship is the development of a set of individual rights that seek to curb possible abuses of the state and maintain a level of freedom for each citizen. In a first step that goes back to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the rights afforded to citizens are civil rights, especially the right not to be detained without legal safeguards, but also the rights of freedom of conscience, including religious freedom and freedom of expression. Over these three centuries, the influence of natural law ideas spread through several Western countries and led to several policy changes:
- The statement that Native Americans should be treated as free beings, prohibiting slavery and the deprivation of their property.
- The Edict of Nantes (France, 1598) established a set of rules to end the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants.
- The Body of Liberties of Massachusetts Bay (1641) was the first catalog of human rights, drafted with the involvement of settlers to limit some of the powers of English judges.
- The Habeas Corpus Act (Great Britain, 1679) established new safeguards for detainees against abuse by public officials. The prisoner must be brought before a judge within a short period to confirm the legality of the indictment.
- The Bill of Rights (Great Britain, 1689) established various measures to prevent government abuses and ensure religious freedom within the limits of the law.
- Declarations of Rights in British North America at the time of independence, which were converted into new states, and the Declaration of Independence of the United States (1776) collected a set of fundamental rights.
- The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution (1789) significantly influenced the statements that were subsequently collected in many constitutions of various countries.
Political Rights
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, statements of rights became generalized as part of Western constitutions, opening the way for the inclusion of certain rights that had not been considered before, such as political participation, including the right to political association, universal suffrage for men, and women’s right to vote and hold public office.
Social, Cultural, and Economic Rights
Some important documents of this new phase of citizenship rights are:
- The French Constitution of 1848, protecting workers and establishing the State’s obligation to provide free primary education to all citizens.
- In the 1880s, Bismarck promoted measures such as health insurance, insurance against work accidents, and old-age pensions.
- The Mexican Constitution of 1917 recognized labor rights and social security benefits, without discrimination based on sex.
- The German Constitution of 1919 regulated social, economic, and cultural rights, designing what has been called the social state of law.
Social Citizenship
In the publication of the book by Thomas H. Marshall (1893-1981), Citizenship and Social Class (1950), the author defines citizenship as a set of rights and obligations that bind the individual to full membership in society.
Social citizenship includes social rights such as work, education, housing, health, and social benefits in cases of vulnerability. The protection of these rights would be guaranteed by the national government.