Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights [Paperback]

Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity explores the theme of human rights in the work of Hannah Arendt. Parekh argues that Arendt's contribution to this debate has been largely ignored because she does not speak in the same terms as contemporary theoreticians of human rights. Beginning by examining Arendts critique of human rights, and the concept of a right to have rights with which she contrasts the traditional understanding of human rights, Parekh goes on to analyze some of the tensions and paradoxes within the modern conception of human rights that Arendt brings to light, arguing that Arendts perspective must be understood as phenomenological and grounded in a notion of intersubjectivity that she develops in her readings of Kant and Socrates.

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Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Groundlessness of Modernity

Chapter One: The Paradox of Human Rights

Chapter Two: Human Dignity and the Ethos of Modernity

Chapter Three: The Common World

Chapter Four: Two Realms of Existence

Chapter Five: The Foundations of Human Rights

Chapter Six: Conscience, Morality, Judgment

Concluding Remarks

Notes

Bibliography

Index

This volume examines contemporary debates on the foundations of human rights through the lens of Arendt's writings, showing how Arendts phenomenological standpoint, unique within these debates, is able to shed new light a number of problems within human rightslÃ/