Kantian Theory and Human Rights

by Reidar Maliks

"The growing interest in 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. Divided in three parts, firstly the Kantian notion of human rights is explored, with particular emphasis on how it applies to levels of government beyond the...