ARTICLES ARE HUMAN RIGHTS UNIVERSAL? ABSTRACT Politeja No. 2(71), 2021, pp. 3-17 https://doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.18.2021.71.01 License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Bogdan SZLACHTA Jagiellonian Univeristy in Kraków bogdan.szlachta@uj.edu.pl UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS? HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY COMMENTS The concept of human rights, supposedly of universal importance, is usually de- rived from the tradition referred to as “Western”. Although the “classic approach- es” – Greek, Roman and Christian, refer to the norms of natural law, making them the basis or limits of the rights of individuals, in modern approaches the re- lation is reserved, in the manner that rights become primary to norms. Although liberals of the 17 th and 18 th centuries consider the law of nature as a tool for their protection, starting from the 19 th century, the rights (already called human rights) have been increasingly perceived as positive abilities to articulate own, subjective preferences of individuals. This evolution needs to be accounted for in the studies carried out by representatives of various cultures, since the compre- hension of an individual (and even a “human person”) as an essentially culturally unconditioned one, is its ineradicable element. Keywords: natural law, law of nature, natural rights, human rights