Philosophy Now Forum

Hello everyone,

Here are 2 political philosophical questions worth pondering


(1.) What rationale is there to justify someone being able to claim citizenship in a certain country owing to a "quirk of birth" causing them to be born there?


(2.) Do you think human rights - advocacy organizations, bodies and institutions should advocate for human rights more on the basis of "personhood and human status" rather than on the basis of nationality and citizenship?

Just 2 interesting questions I was pondering and thought I would put out tonight.

You ask these questions in the abstract, but I have a hunch that they came to you out of specific real-life situations, and I think it would help you to get the answers you want if you explained the background,

As it stands, neither question makes much sense to me.

1) What rationale is required to justify a claim for citizenship? None that I can see. Turn the question around—Is there a rationale for a country to deny citizenship to people who were born there, in cases where that circumstance was some kind of "quirk"?

2) I think most human rights groups do advocate on the basis of "human status" rather than citizenship.

1) People are coerced by default. They don't consent to exist where they're created. Furthermore, some people consent to create them, and some society consents to tolerate that consent. To not give newborns rights by default is to be hypocritically ageist.

2) You're a cosmopolitan, so you should understand how those concepts go hand in hand. There is a universal fraternity of individuals where the diversity of human nature is recognized through gracefully civic responsibility. That is human rights come from how people think regardless of what people feel.

Proud Cosmopolitan wrote:Hello everyone,

Here are 2 political philosophical questions worth pondering


(1.) What rationale is there to justify someone being able to claim citizenship in a certain country owing to a "quirk of birth" causing them to be born there?

A society takes care of its own, it's part of creating a safe and secure society to grow up in and live in. The reason why citizenship is restricted is because people do not have the trust or the reason to trust people sufficiently that they should be allowed to participate in the same society as them... that's why there are problems with immigration for instance when some person does not integrate basic essential values held by the society they are part of. Also, people are different so they would not want to share citizenships usually, either for symbolic, traditional or practical reasons.

Proud Cosmopolitan wrote:(2.) Do you think human rights - advocacy organizations, bodies and institutions should advocate for human rights more on the basis of "personhood and human status" rather than on the basis of nationality and citizenship?

Just 2 interesting questions I was pondering and thought I would put out tonight.

Those are certainly things to take into account, but I'm not sure there is any notable lack of it already, and "human status" sounds very ambiguous, although I interpret it to mean the condition of a person's health, well-being, social status, and the status of the person's properties, which pretty much means anything that's part of an individual.