Kantian Theory and Human Rights

The growing interest in 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.

Divided in three parts, firstly the Kantian notion of human rights is explored, with particular emphasis on how it applies to levels of government beyond the state. The second part explores the scope of human rights, including the contentious questions of whether it includes welfare rights and freedom of speech across borders. The topic of the final section is human rights institutions, with a special focus on the legitimacy of international human rights courts. Human rights have become a force to reckon with in international politics. This book, written by an international team of specialists on Kant and human rights, contributes to understanding a major political development of our times.

Reidar Maliks is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, Norway. He received his Ph.D. in political theory at Columbia University in 2008. Prior to coming to the University of Oslo he was a Preceptor at Columbia (2005-8), a Lecturer at Harvard (2008-9), and a Junior Research Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford (2009-11).

Andreas Follesdal is Professor of Political Philosophy at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and on the Law Faculty at University of Oslo. He is Principal Investigator for the European Research Council's Advanced Grant MultiRights from 2011-2016, 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.