Critics charge that Kantian conceptions of human dignity and normative agency, which some suggest underwrite the modern doctrine of human rights, are parochial, unable to account for the dynamism and context-dependence of human rights, aloof from human rights practice, and incapable of distinguishing human rights from the vast array of other political rights constitutional democracies generally recognize as demands of justice. I argue here that whatever force these charges might have against human rights theories inspired by Kant’s work, they do (...) not impugn Kant’s own conception of human rights. By tying human rights to official attitudes toward justice rather than, as familiar approaches do, to concrete conformity with ‘minimum prerequisites’ of justice, Kant’s approach fits core features of human rights practice while providing a dynamic, context-sensitive guideline for auditing the conduct of states and public officials. Just as Kant’s critical writings argue that agents must be able to assume that the natural world of efficient causes is purposive for morality’s ultimate ends, we can profitably understand Kant’s political philosophy as claiming, analogously, that agents must also be able to assume that the juridical world of state action is purposive for justice. Kant’s conception of human rights, I suggest, identifies the conditions under which that assumption is warranted. (shrink)

Critics charge that Kantian conceptions of human dignity and normative agency, which some suggest underwrite the modern doctrine of human rights, are parochial, unable to account for the dynamism and context-dependence of human rights, aloof from human rights practice, and incapable of distinguishing human rights from the vast array of other political rights constitutional democracies generally recognize as demands of justice. I argue here that whatever force these charges might have against human rights theories inspired by Kant’s work, they do (...) not impugn Kant’s own conception of human rights. By tying human rights to official attitudes toward justice rather than, as familiar approaches do, to concrete conformity with ‘minimum prerequisites’ of justice, Kant’s approach fits core features of human rights practice while providing a dynamic, context-sensitive guideline for auditing the conduct of states and public officials. Just as Kant’s critical writings argue that agents must be able to assume that the natural world of efficient causes is purposive for morality’s ultimate ends, we can profitably understand Kant’s political philosophy as claiming, analogously, that agents must also be able to assume that the juridical world of state action is purposive for justice. Kant’s conception of human rights, I suggest, identifies the conditions under which that assumption is warranted. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin’s unity of value thesis underlies his influential moral, political, and legal thought. This essay presents an interpretation of the unity thesis designed to isolate its distinctly ethical character, elaborate Dworkin’s fundamental ethical arguments for it, and to utilize this reconstruction to correct misinterpretations that, I argue, underlie recent criticism. This criticism largely depends on construing the unity thesis within a familiar dualistic meta-ethical framework according to which Dworkin’s theory of value is classified as either constructivist or realist in (...) character. Both options, however, misapprehend the epistemological framework within which Dworkin defends value judgments in general, and therefore fail to challenge his use of that framework in defending the unity of value in particular. Correcting this oversight is essential to a proper understanding of Dworkin’s novel account of moral epistemology and of the moral and political program that his unity thesis sponsors. The paper concludes by suggesting how more profitable criticism of the unity of value might proceed. (shrink)

This paper argues that we can better understand Ronald Dworkin's thesis that both individuals and governments must strive to act in accordance with principles that comprise a coherent moral conception, or with what he calls 'integrity', as an instance of Immanuel Kant's fundamental ethical injunction to act in accordance with principles that have the form of law. This Kantian reading of Dworkin highlights the internal, constitutive relation between integrity and a key condition of political legitimacy that Dworkin long stressed: that (...) governments take individual rights _seriously_. Governments take individual rights seriously only by treating humanity as an end in itself, and governments treat humanity as an end in itself only by striving to act in accordance with an integrated system of practical laws. Acting with integrity, taking rights seriously and respecting humanity are thus internally related acts. (shrink)