Political Philosophy 3: From the Rights of Man to the Republican Idea

What is the common element linking the right to health care and the right of free speech, the right to leisure and the right of free association, the right to work and the right to be protected? Debates on the rights of man abound in the media today, but all too often they remain confused and fail to recognize the fundamental political conceptions on which they hinge.

Several French theorists have recently attempted a new account of rights, one that would replace the discredited Marxist view of rights as mere formalities concealing the realities of class domination. In this final volume of Political Philosophy, Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut summarize these efforts and put forward their own set of arguments.

Luc Ferry has taught at the Sorbonne and at the University of Caen and is the former Minister of Youth, National Education, and Research in the French government. He is the author or coauthor of eight previous books published by the University of Chicago Press, including, most recently, The New Ecological Order and Man Made God.