The Efectiveness of Human Rights in democracies: a dialogue between the thoughts of Hannah Arendt and Alexis de Tocqueville

Abstract

This paper aims at pointing out the parallel between the contradictions within the foundations of the Theory of Human Rights, according to Hannah Arendt’s approach, and the paradoxes in the democratic societies, in Alexis de Tocqueville’s and Claude Lefort’s points of view. Moreover, I would like to state the importance of the concrete efetiveness of human rights in contemporary democratic societies.