Relativism and Human Rights : A Theory of Pluralist Universalism

This is an innovative contribution to the philosophy of human rights. Considering both legal and philosophical scholarship, the views here bear an importance on the legitimacy of international politics and international law. As a result of more than 10 years of research, this revised edition engages with current debates through the help of new sections.

Pluralistic universalism considers that, while formal filtering criteria constitute unavoidable requirements for the production of potentially valid arguments, the exemplarity of judgmental activity, in its turn, provides a pluralistic and retrospective reinterpretation for the fixity of such criteria. While speech formal standards grounds the thinnest possible presuppositions we can make as humans, the discursive exemplarity of judgments defends a notion of validity which is both contextually dependent and "subjectively universal". According to this approach, human rights principles are embedded within our linguistic argumentative practice. It is precisely from the intersubjective and dialogical relation among speakers that we come to reflect upon those same conditions of validity of our arguments. Once translated into national and regional constitutional norms, the discursive validity of exemplar judgments postulates the philosophical necessity for an ideal of legal-constitutional pluralism, challenging all those attempts trying to frustrate both horizontal (state to state) and vertical (supra-national-state-social) on-going debates on human rights.

On the first edition of this book: "Claudio Corradetti's book is a thoughtful attempt to find an adequate theoretical foundation for human rights. Its approach is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on issues in analytical philosophy as well as contemporary political theorists, and the result is a densely argued text aimed at scholars ... ." (Andrew Lambert, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Vol. 14 (3), January, 2010)

"Charting a clear course through a vast landscape of theories, Claudio Corradetti develops an original and profound account of human rights beyond objectivism and relativism. A remarkable achievement." (Rainer Forst, Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt/Main)

Claudio Corradetti is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. He has been an undergraduate student at Oxford University and at the University of London, where he has obtained a Ma Philosophy. Once back in Italy, he has gained a doctoral degree at LUISS Guido Carli, Roma. Claudio has been trained also in law, having obtained a Diploma in European Public Law and an admission to the advanced seminars in international public law at the Hague Academy. Among his teaching records, he has taught at the University of Oslo and at the University of Graz, Austria.

He is a founder and co-chief director of the journal ‘Jus Cogens. A Critical Journal of Philosophy of Law and Politics’, Springer. Claudio has published extensively in Human Rights, Transitional Justice, the Frankfurt School and Immanuel Kant for Oxford University Press, Routledge, Sage, Cambridge University Press etc.