The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism

The fatal embrace of human rights and neoliberalism

Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, Jessica Whyte uncovers the place of human rights in neoliberal attempts to develop a moral framework for a market society. In the wake of the Second World War, neoliberals saw demands for new rights to social welfare and self-determination as threats to “civilisation”. Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects.

Jessica Whyte is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Catastrophe and Redemption: The Political Thought of Giorgio Agamben.