The Politics of Human Rights

The Politics of Human Rights provides a systematic introductory overview of the nature and development of human rights. At the same time it offers an engaging argument about human rights and their relationship with politics. He suggests that an understanding of human rights should focus primarily on politics and that there are no universally agreed moral or religious standards to uphold them, they exist rather in the context of social recognition withina political association. The author explains that we comprehend both our own humanity and human rights through our recognition relations with other humans, principally via citizenship of a civil state. Vincent concludes that the paradox of human rights is that they are upheld, to a degree, by the civilstate, but the point of such rights is to protect against another dimension of this same tradition (the nation-state). Human rights are essentially part of a struggle at the core of the state tradition.

Andrew Vincent is currently Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics, Sheffield University. He was formerly Professor of Political Theory and co-director of the Collingwood and British Idealism Centre at Cardiff University. He is now Director of the Centre for Political Theory and Ideologies at Sheffield University and associate editor of The Journal of Political Ideologies and Collingwood and British Idealism Studies. He was a former Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Australian National University and a Visiting Professor in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Professor Vincent is an internationally respected specialist on political theory. His book The Nature of Political Theory (published by Oxford University Press) won the W.J.M. Mackenzie book prize.