This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant. The second was published at https://www.follesdal.net/ms/Follesdal-2014-Maliks-kant-hr.pdf. The third was published at https://www.researchgate.net/publi/337940285_Human_Rights_by_Virtue_of_Reaso_Kant's_latent_contribution_to_the_Declaration_of_Human_Rights
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy, being called the "father of modern ethics", and for bringing together rationalism and empiricism earned the title of "father of modern philosophy". Kant was born 1724 into a Prussian family of Lutheran faith in Konisberg, East Prussia. He was the fourth of nine children (six of whom reached adulthood). The Kant household stressed the pietist values of religious devotion, and humility. He never married but seems to have had a rewarding social life, he was a popular teacher as well as a successful author, even before starting on his major philosophical works. Kant showed a great aptitude for study at an early age. In 1740, aged 16, he enrolled at the University of Konisberg, where he would later remain for the rest of his professional life. Kant is best known for his work in the philosophy of ethics and metaphysics, but he made significant contributions to other disciplines. Kant developed his ethics, or moral philosophy, in three works: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Kant' political thought can be summarized as republican government and international organization Kant's political philosophy, being essentially a legal doutrine, rejects by definition the opposition between moral education and the play of passions as alternate foundations for social life. The Doctrine of Right, published in 1797, contains Kant's most mature and systematic contribution to political philosophy. It addresses duties according to law, which are "concerned only with protecting the freedom of individuals. Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound. Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried on at least up to the early 19th century. Human rights and the tribunals that protect them are increasingly part of our moral, legal and political circumstances. Commonly understood as inalienable rights that persons are entitled to by their humanity. These international human rights and the various judicial bodies make up th contemporary human rights regime. These treaties thereby provide a justification for international monitoring and other form of intervention against states that transgress them. The former professor of moral philosophy at the Uniersity of Oxford, James Griffin considers human rights as a way of protecting the supreme value of moral personhood, which he takes from Kant's writings on ethics. The German philosopher Jurgen Habermas employs Kant's egalitarian and universalist concept of dignity to explain the legal status of rights. This use of the Enlightenment thinker is not surprising, considering Kant's prominence in the universalism and egalitarianism, which is the foundation of almost all he wrote. The turn to Kant is also understandable, considering his pioneering international and cosmopolitan theory, based on the view that nations are connected in a community where "a violation of right on one place of the earth is felt in all". The Kantian perspective is sensitive to the historical origins of legal order, whilst seeking to present law from a universalistic standpoint. For kant, human rights are a priori rights, those rights which play a unique discursive functionas the constitutive conditions of any claim of right. A human right is direct requirement of a person's original right to independence. The concepts of human dignity and human rights are of fundamental value to the legal systems of modern societies. By human dignity, we stipulate that all people are to be treated with respect and must not be seen as a means to an end. Furthermore, it assumes equality in principle of all humans. These two premises lay the foundation of human rights. Immanuel Kant's edifice of ideas plays a crucial role in the advancement of human rights as it paved the way for a rational law doctrine, with its insistence on reason as the sole faculty to gauge moral actions. Not only the idea that equal dignity is inherent to all people is attributed to Kant. His entire intellectual endeavour is devoted to the core objective of the Enlightenment. Kant suggest the legal necessity to secure human dignity and rights as a normative demand of the practical reason.
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