Seyla Benhabib

(Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Yale University)

"Hegel’s Concept of the Person and International Human Rights Today"

In this lecture I intend to re-read Hegel’s concept of the person in the light of developments in international human rights law. One of the great achievements of post-WW II legal developments is to declare that “all humans,” and not nationals or citizens alone, are to be considered as persons entitled to international human rights. There is a great deal of skepticism today among intellectuals as well as politicians and the general public about the validity and coherence of such claims. The rather lackluster celebrations of the 70^th anniversary of The Declaration of Human Rights in 2018 made that perfectly clear. It is my claim, however, that as Hegel clearly saw in the opening sections of his Philosophy of Right, the recognition of the individual as a person – as a Rechtssubjekt – is crucial to the legitimacy of the modern state. It was also Hegel who explored the aporias of the concept of the “person,” thus anticipating Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the paradoxes of “the right to have rights.”

Da die Platzanzahl limitiert ist, wird um Anmeldung per E-Mail an admin@dhc.fu-berlin.de bis zum 3. Juni 2019 gebeten.

Am Folgetag der Hegel Lecture findet ein Workshop mit Seyla Benhabib statt. Teilnehmen können Studierende und Promovierende der geisteswissenschaftlichen Fächer.