The Utopian Human Right to Science and Culture ― Toward the Philosophy of Excendence in the Postmodern Society

This book explores the question of whether the ideal right to science and culture exists. It proposes that the human right to science and culture is of a utopian character and argues for the necessity of the existence of such a right by developing a philosophical project situated in postmodernity, based on the assumption of a€?thinking in terms of excendencea€?. The book brings a novel and critical approach to human rights in general and to the human right to science and culture in particular. It offers a new way of thinking about access to knowledge in the postanalogue, postmodern society. Inspired by twentieth-century critical theorists such as Levinas, Gadamer, Bauman and Habermas, the book begins by using excendence as a way of thinking about the individual, speech and text. It considers paradigms arising from postanalogue society, revealing the neglected normative content of the human right to science and culture and proposes a morality, dignity and solidarity situated in a postmodern context. Finally the book concludes by responding to questions on happiness, dignity and that which is social. Including an Annex which presents the authora€?s private project related to thinking in the context of the journey from a€?myth to reasona€?, this book is of interest to researchers in the fields of philosophy and the theory of law, human rights, intellectual property and social theory.

Since December 2012, Anna Maria Andersen Nawrot has been Deputy Head of the Center for Theory and Philosophy of Human Rights, Faculty of Law and Administration, Lodz University, Poland (CENHER Lodz) and a Head of the CENHER Regional Office in Lund, Sweden. In 2007 she was awarded a second prize for the best PhD in law by the Polish Science Academy and Kluwer Poland. Since 2008 she has been Senior Lecturer in Human Rights on the Master Course in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund University and during 2010-11 she was Director of one of the specializations available on the course. From 2007-2012, she was a senior researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund with postdoctoral grants received from the Swedish Institute. She was Managing Editor of the Nordic Journal of International Law (NJIL) from 2009-11 and in 2013 she was awarded an individual stipendium on the child rights project from the Justa Gardi Foundation, Sweden.