Marek Piechowiak, born in Poznan, Poland, in 1962. Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Lublin. Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Law at the Poznan Human Rights Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw.
Mellon Fellow (1 September 1994 – 30 June 1995)
My research at NIAS was devoted to the philosophical problems of the foundations of human rights. I am working on a long-term project: “Understanding Human Rights: Philosophical Enquiry” which aims at an elaboration of a comprehensive philosophical theory of human rights. As planned I completed a draft of the chapters devoted to the fundamental methodological questions, dealing with the conception of philosophy and basic distinctions which provide a general perspective for further philosophical explanation of human rights. This metatheoretical basis in the case of philosophy of human rights is of primary importance and probably also the most difficult part of my project. There is a challenging discrepancy between practical discourse, in which human rights are widely recognized, and the contemporary philosophical discourse in which the existence of at least some categories of human rights is dismissed. This discrepancy prompts the rethinking of the fundamental assumptions of modern practical philosophy.