Reflections on Hannah Arendt’s “The perplexities of the rights of man”, the problem of a refugee and the problem of a state of exception

Abstract

This short analysis ainis at giving certain insights on the correlation among the concepts and together phenomena of 'hurnan rights', 'refugee', 'state' of exception/emergency' and also 'modem state' and, finally, 'law' in genera!. Despite that Hannah Arendt locates a refugee totally outside the scope of law, her certain insights on, on the one hand, totally organized/civilized humanity and, on the other hand, its failure to institute universal/eternal law (as civil/human rights) independent of the modern state's sov-ereignty, point to the failure of the modernity (as certain project) as tightly tied to the ideology of legal positivism. In paradox, this failure itself makes a refugee (as a rightless human) possible. The finalising leitmotiv of the analysis lies in the thesis that govemments should avoid overuse of exceptions to the modern constitutional regulation (especially as having rather unified/universal human rights component) if they want to temper this Arendt-type anxiety. Keytvords: