Individuals as authors of human rights: not only addressees

I propose human rights as self-authored through a personality structure of “assertive selfhood.” To that end I identify three features of self-authorship: emergent through collective political action; as a critical stance; and borne by non-idiosyncratic norms. So conceived, human rights require a field of recognition as a social structure supportive of claims to assertive selfhood. I show that the capacity to self-grant depends critically on the participant’s personality structure as well as on the structure of some of the social institutions he or she inhabits. But like any political vision, the project for self-granted human rights has distinct limits, above all with respect to the many inequalities among potential self-authors.