The aim of this paper is to offer a philosophical underpinning for the understanding of human rights. We try to answer questions like why and how we arrive at the conception of human rights, what do we understand by human rights and why are human rights valuable to today's human beings? But the most important questions are, why do we recognize rights to others and what makes us obey claims based on human rights? We move here beyond answers based on cultural explanations to those that postulate biological and neuroscientific bases
