Rights, virtues and humanity: re-thinking the ethics of human rights

Contributor(s): Professor Kimberly Hutchings | For the past twenty years the idea of human rights as an absolute and universal ethical standard has been subject to a barrage of criticism. Critiques have come from all philosophical and political directions, including communitarian, pragmatist, poststructuralist and decolonial. In this lecture, Kimberly Hutchings explores the critical landscape of human rights thinking today and how we might re-think the concept of human rights in ways that will sustain its power as an ethical discourse into the future.