Human Rights on Trial

Justine Lacroix is Professor of Politics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. She is an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Political Theory. Jean-Yves Pranchère is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He is an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Social Sciences.

• Acknowledgements; Introduction: from the rights of man to human rights?; 1. Critiques of human rights in contemporary thought; 2. Human rights against inheritance: a conservative critique: Edmund Burke; 3. Human rights versus social utility: a progressivist critique: Jeremy Bentham and Auguste Comte; 4. Human rights against the rights of God: a theologico-political critique: Louise de Bonald and Joseph de Maistre; 5. The rights of man against human emancipation: a revolutionary critique: Karl Marx; 6. Human rights against politics: a nationalist critique: Carl Schmitt; 7. The 'right to have rights': revisiting Hannah Arendt; Conclusion; Index.

'In their masterful inventory of styles of critique of human rights since the birth of modernity, Justine Lacroix and Jean-Yves Pranchère bring a new sensibility to more parochial recent controversies about the historical origins and philosophical grounding of human rights. Human Rights on Trial offers calm and clarity at a moment of doubt.' Samuel Moyn, Yale University, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World