Critical Theory, Marxism and Human Rights – Understanding Human Emancipation

Human rights; Praxis; Emancipation; Critical Theory; Marxist Criticism

This study aims to contribute in the thinking of the concept of human emancipation in its connection with human rights and its perspective for a life of freedom. It is an investigation of a speculative reflective nature, with which I intend to investigate the potential of these concepts for the understanding and analysis of the dynamics of this theoretical relationship, especially in studies that emphasize a critical conception based on how the theory initially defended by the Spanish philosopher and jurist Joaquin Herrera Flores and other authors who have joined his reflections and to conduct an interlocution with the Marxist critique on the historical and social determinations that favor the changes that lead to human emancipation, or limits it. To this end, this research focuses on analyzing the debate that problematizes the horizon of human emancipation in connection with the struggle for human rights and its contradictions, when we realize that throughout the world rights are stated and denied according to economic, social, and cultural interests. According to Marxian thought, human emancipation means the absence of any form of domination. It is from this perspective that this study proposes to reflect on whether the human rights reverberated by social movements have an emancipating potential or whether they can get lost in legal and state formalisms. This research has the challenge of advancing in the understanding of this theme and of the concepts that are pertinent to them in order to, under the analysis of the historical-dialectical method, contribute to the achievement of the actuality and relevance of human rights and their possibility for the effective promotion of an emancipating project.