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 Kant’s 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 Kant’s Politics in Context is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. His articles have appeared in journals like Kantian Review and History of Political Thought.