Human Rights Ethics: A Rational Approach

Human Rights Ethics makes an important contribution to contemporary philosophical and political debates concerning the advancement of global justice and human rights. Butler's book also lays claim to a significant place in both normative ethics and human rights studies in as much as it seeks to vindicate a universalistic, rational approach to human rights ethics. Butler's innovative approach is not based on murky claims to "natural rights" that supposedly hold wherever human beings exist; nor does it succumb to the traditional problems of justification associated with utilitarianism, Kantianism, and other procedural approaches to human rights studies. Instead, Butler proposes "a dialectical justification of human rights by indirect proof" that claims not to be question begging. Very much in the spirit of Hegel and Habermas, Butler proposes to vindicate a "totally rational account of human rights," but one that depends concretely and historically on a dialectically constructed "right to freedom of thought in its universal modes."

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Published: 04/30/2008
ISBN: 9781557534804
Pages: 308
Weight: 1.11lbs
Size: 8.95h x 6.13w x 0.76d

Review Citations: Chronicle of Higher Education 08/08/2008 pg. 18
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2008 pg. 196