This volume explores pressing questions about human rights in light of recent developments in Kant scholarship. The contributors are a mix of respected scholars and exciting new voices. Together, they bring to the study of human rights distinctive Kantian ideas about the relational nature of human rights and the conceptual necessity of institutions to guarantee them.
Arthur Ripstein, University of Toronto
In recent decades, Immanuel Kants legal and political philosophy has won much-deserved recognition. But while its contributions to domestic public law and international law are justly celebrated, the idea of human rights has not played a central role in the discussion of Kants political thought. Contributors to this timely and important volume open the debate as to what Kant himself has to say on the topic of human rights. They apply his ideas to the pressing contemporary debates on the meaning and implementation of human rights. The articles in this volume go beyond traditional interpretations of Kants political thought in developing rights to health care and social security from Kantian roots. They make a strong case that a Kantian understanding of human rights is more productive than competing approaches when debating the competences of international organizations and supranational courts.
Peter Niesen, University of Hamburg
Kantian Theory and Human Rights
Human rights and the courts and tribunals that protect them are increasingly part of our moral, legal, and political circumstances. The growing salience of human rights has recently brought the question of their philosophical foundation to the foreground. Theorists of human rights often assume that their ideal can be traced to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and his view of humans as ends in themselves. Yet, few have attempted to explore exactly how human rights should be understood in a Kantian framework. The scholars in this book have gathered to fill this gap. At the center of Kants theory of rights is a view of freedom as independence from domination. The chapters explore the significance of this theory for the nature of human rights, their justification, and the legitimacy of international human rights courts.
Andreas Follesdal is a Professor of Political Philosophy, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. He is also Principal Investigator on the ERC Advanced Grant project MultiRights: on the Legitimacy of Multi-Level Human Rights Judiciary and Director of PluriCourts, a Centre of Excellence for the Study of the Legitimate Roles of the Judiciary in the Global Order.
Reidar Maliks is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo and a research fellow in the MultiRights project. His book Kants Politics in Context is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. His articles have appeared in journals like Kantian Review and History of Political Thought.
Routledge Innovations in Political Theory
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
22 Deliberation, Social Choice and Absolutist Democracy
David van Mill
23 Sexual Justice / Cultural Justice
Critical perspectives in political theory and practice
Edited by Barbara Arneil, Monique Deveaux, Rita Dhamoon and Avigail Eisenberg
24 The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt
Terror, Liberal War and the Crisis of Global Order
Edited by Louiza Odysseos and Fabio Petito
25 In Defense of Human Rights
A non-religious grounding in a pluralistic world
Ari Kohen
26 Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory
Jason Glynos and David Howarth
27 Political Constructivism
Peri Roberts
28 The New Politics of Masculinity
Men, Power and Resistance
Fidelma Ashe
29 Citizens and the State
Attitudes in Western Europe and East and Southeast Asia
Takashi Inoguchi and Jean Blondel
30 Political Language and Metaphor
Interpreting and changing the world
Edited by Terrell Carver and Jernej Pikalo
31 Political Pluralism and the State
Beyond sovereignty
Marcel Wissenburg
32 Political Evil in a Global Age
Hannah Arendt and international theory
Patrick Hayden
33 Gramsci and Global Politics
Hegemony and resistance
Mark McNally and John Schwarzmantel
34 Democracy and Pluralism
The political thought of William E. Connolly
Edited by Alan Finlayson
35 Multiculturalism and Moral Conflict
Edited by Maria Dimova-Cookson and Peter Stirk
36 John Stuart MillThought and Influence
The saint of rationalism
Edited by Georgios Varouxakis and Paul Kelly
37 Rethinking Gramsci
Edited by Marcus E. Green
38 Autonomy and Identity
The politics of who we are
Ros Hague
39 Dialectics and Contemporary Politics
Critique and Transformation from Hegel through Post-Marxism
John Grant
40 Liberal Democracy as the End of History
Fukuyama and Postmodern Challenges
Chris Hughes
41 Deleuze and World Politics
Alter-globalizations and nomad science
Peter Lenco
42 Utopian Politics
Citizenship and Practice
Rhiannon Firth
43 Kant and International Relations Theory
Cosmopolitan Community Building
Dora Ion
44 Ethnic Diversity and the Nation State
National Cultural Autonomy Revisited
David J. Smith and John Hiden
45 Tensions of Modernity
Las Casas and His Legacy in the French Enlightenment
Daniel R. Brunstetter
46 Honor
A Phenomenology
Robert L. Oprisko
47 Critical Theory and Democracy
Essays in Honour of Andrew Arato
Edited by Enrique Peruzzotti and Martin Plot
48 Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy
Cities and Transcendence
Jonathan N. Badger
49 Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom
Two Concepts of Liberty 50 Years Later
Edited by Bruce Baum and Robert Nichols
50 Popular Sovereignty in the West
Polities, contention, and ideas
Genevive Nootens
51 Plinys Defense of Empire
Thomas R. Laehn
52 Class, States and International Relations
A critical appraisal of Robert Cox and neo-Gramscian theory
Adrian Budd
53 Civil Disobedience and Deliberative Democracy
William Smith
54 Untangling Heroism
Classical Philosophy and the Concept of the Hero
Ari Kohen
55 Rethinking the Politics of Absurdity
Albert Camus, Postmodernity, and the Survival of Innocence
Matthew H. Bowker
56 Kantian Theory and Human Rights
Edited by Andreas Follesdal and Reidar Maliks
