| Description |
xi, 298 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction : cosmopolitanism without illusions -- From The dialectic of enlightenment to The origins of totalitarianism : Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the company of Hannah Arendt -- International law and human plurality in the shadow of totalitarianism : Hannah Arendt and Raphael Lemkin -- Another universalism : on the unity and diversity of human rights -- Is there a human right to democracy? Beyond interventionism and indifference -- Twilight of sovereignty or the emergence of cosmopolitan norms? Rethinking citizenship in volatile times -- Claiming rights across borders : international human rights and democratic sovereignty -- Democratic exclusions and democratic iterations : dilemmas of just membership and prospects of cosmopolitan federalism -- The return of political theology : the Scarf Affair in comparative constitutional perspective in France, Germany and Turkey -- Utopia and dystopia in our times. |
| Summary |
The language of human rights has become the public vocabulary of our contemporary world. Ironically, as the political influence of human rights has grown, their philosophical justification has become ever more controversial. Building on a theory of discourse ethics and communicative rationality, this book addresses the politics and philosophy of human rights against the background of the broader social transformations that are shaping the modern world. Rejecting the reduction of international human rights to the Trojan horse of a neo-liberal empire's bid for world power, as well as the conservative objections to legal cosmopolitanism as encroachments upon democratic sovereignty, Benhabib develops two key concepts to move beyond these false antitheses. International human rights norms need contextualization in specific polities through processes of what she calls 'democratic iterations.' Furthermore, such norms have a 'jurisgenerative power,' in that they enable new actors to enter fields of social and political contestation; they promote new vocabularies for public claim-making and anticipate a justice to come. -- Book Description. |
| Subject |
Human rights -- Political aspects.
|
|
Human rights.
|
| ISBN |
9780745654430 paperback |
|
0745654436 paperback |
|
9780745654423 |
|
0745654428 |
|
