Rights-Based Ethics: Foundations and Applications

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Marcus Düwell (Technical University Darmstadt, Germany) Johannes Graf Keyserlingk (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany)

Rights-Based Ethics

Foundations and Applications

Marcus Düwell (Technical University Darmstadt, Germany), Johannes Graf Keyserlingk (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany), Philipp Richter (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany)

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English

Routledge
16 September 2025

Series: Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory

Rights-based ethics offer a conceptual framework to address the complex ethical issues of our time. This volume combines systematic and historical perspectives on rights-based ethics with discussions of a broad range of topics in applied ethics to assess the achievements and limits of rights-based approaches.

The normative concepts of fundamental human rights and human dignity play an essential role in considerations about global justice and international politics. However, these concepts have not been taken up sufficiently in the standard approaches to normative ethics. This volume contends that rights-based approaches in ethics not only offer a theoretical framework to explain complex normative concepts, but they can also offer answers to some of today’s most complex moral questions. First, the book addresses the conceptual and foundational questions of rights-based ethics. Second, it offers historical and cultural perspectives on rights. Third, it explores how rights-based ethics can address applied issues related to climate change, health systems, global supply chains, and the finance industry.

This volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and the social sciences.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 4.0 International license. This publication was made possible by generous support of the Open Access-monograph funds of the university library of the TU Darmstadt and by generous support of the Institute for Philosophy I at the Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Research of the Ruhr-University Bochum.

Edited by: Marcus Düwell (Technical University Darmstadt Germany), Johannes Graf Keyserlingk (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany), Philipp Richter (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032848396
ISBN 10: 1032848391
Series: Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory
Pages: 350
Publication Date: 16 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Marcus Düwell is a Professor of Philosophy at Technical University Darmstadt, Germany. His research interests include foundational questions of moral and political philosophy, philosophical anthropology, bioethics, and climate ethics. His publications include the Cambridge Handbook on Human Dignity (2013) and Towards the Ethics of a Green Future (Routledge, 2018). Johannes Graf Keyserlingk is a philosopher and social scientist who gained a PhD at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, in 2017. His research interests are political philosophy, digital ethics, and economic ethics. Philipp Richter is a Professor of Philosophy at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Since 2019, he has held the Chair of Teaching Philosophy and Ethics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences. Richter has published books and papers on methods of teaching philosophy and on normative and applied ethics.

Reviews for Rights-Based Ethics: Foundations and Applications

""In the intensity of its examination of the thesis that agent rights form the essential ground of morality, and in the scope and design of a practical ethics based upon it, this expert and critical collection provides invaluable analyses of rights in the context of climate change policy, ‘too big to fail’ banking, the crisis of health care, bioethical threats to freedom, and human rights abuses in corporate supply chains."" Stuart Toddington, University of Huddersfield, UK ""This is a remarkable text bringing together some of the best rights theorists at work today. In part it is a welcome continuation of the Gewirthean tradition in rights thinking. In part it is a radical attempt to ensure that rights theory speaks directly to contemporary problems and crises. This is an essential and powerful demonstration that human rights, as moral rights, contain the philosophical and practical resources to meet real problems in principled ways."" Stephen Riley, University of Leicester, UK