Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights

What makes something a human right? What is the relationship between the moral foundations of human rights and human rights law? What are the difficulties of appealing to human rights?

This book offers the first comprehensive survey of current thinking on the philosophical foundations of human rights. Divided into four parts, this book focusses firstly on the moral grounds of human rights, for example in our dignity, agency, interests or needs. Secondly, it looks at the implications that different moral perspectives on human rights bear for human rights law and politics. Thirdly, it discusses specific and topical human rights including freedom of expression and religion, security, health and more controversial rights such as a human right to subsistence. The final part discusses nuanced critical and reformative views on human rights from feminist, Kantian and relativist perspectives among others.

The essays represent new and canonical research by leading scholars in the field. Each section is structured as a set of essays and replies, offering a comprehensive analysis of different positions within the debate in question. The introduction from the editors will guide researchers and students navigating the diversity of views on the philosophical foundations of human rights.

Rowan Cruft, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Stirling,S. Matthew Liao, Director of the Bioethics Program and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy, New York University,Massimo Renzo, Associate Professor, University of Warwick

Rowan Cruft is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Stirling. He has published articles on the nature and justification of rights and duties, focusing on the relationship between rights, respect and individualism. His work aims to reveal the comparative importance of different forms of right including human rights, natural rights, contractual rights, property rights, legal rights.

Massimo Renzo is an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. His main research interests are in the problems of authority, political obligation, international justice and the philosophical foundations of the criminal law. He is co-editor, with R.A. Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall and Victor Tadros, of the volumes The Constitutions of the Criminal Law (OUP 2010) and The Structures of the Criminal Law (OUP 2011).


S. Matthew Liao is Director of the Bioethics Program and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is also Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Moral Philosophy. His research interests include ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, moral psychology, and bioethics.