Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights

If human rights express the equal claim of every person to the recognition and protection of their vital interests, they necessarily assert universal obligations of justice that cross borders. Sharon Anderson-Gold asks here whether there is a normative consensus on human rights and articulates the role of a cosmopolitan or global community in shaping the theory and practice of international politics. She considers several important works in the field of universal human rights and discusses whether a cosmopolitan system of law is a necessary condition for the stable association of nation states.

Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights presents an ethical foundation for the idea of human development and attempts to demonstrate the normative character of universal human rights. It claims that Kant's idea of a federation of nations based upon principles of international right remains highly relevant to contemporary aspirations for global justice, and concludes by suggesting that a ‘cosmopolitan community’ is the locus of a global democratic order and is the necessary framework for the maintenance of human rights.

Sharon Anderson-Gold is associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. She has written extensively on Kantian philosophy and human rights and is the author of Unnecessary Evil: History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (2000).