Rights,cosmopolitanism and public reason

Abstract

In this discussion of Seyla Benhabib’s Claims of Culture, I defend a more pluralist conception of deliberative democracy and a stronger conception of the cosmopolitan content of human rights. I will discuss three main issues: first, problems of incommensurability and deep conflict; second, the role of impartiality and normative constraints embodied in the ‘syntactic’ and ‘semantic’ interpretations of the deliberative formula ‘reasons that all could accept’; and third, the differences in our conceptions of cosmopolitanism and the status of rightless persons, particularly as illustrated through the example of the European Union. In the first two cases, I argue that the democratic minimum required for the resolution of second-order conflicts without domination demands a weaker interpretation of procedural norms of deliberation; in the case of rightless persons, I argue that the ‘right of hospitality’ that Benhabib employs is not robust enough and that there is more content to the conception of human rights that is applicable to the fate of refugees, asylum seekers, and other stateless persons.