Series: Spinoza lectures

Being set up in 1995 the Spinoza Chair has seen a formidable number of
striking thinkers of our time. Each of them has demonstrated in his or
her own way what philosophy and, more broadly, what the humanities
have to tell us today. And this indeed is one of the tasks of the Spinoza
Chair: demonstrating to a wider public how philosophy in connection
with other sciences comprehends its time in thoughts.
Cristina Lafont became well known with her writings on Hermeneutic
Philosophy, especially about the role of language and socalled
“worlddisclosure”
in Heidegger. But for some years her research is already
focussed on conceptions of deliberative democracy and their possible
extension beyond national borders. As Spinoza Chair she continues
that line and presents two lectures on a political, moral, and legal
subject: on the project of human rights.
The subject of human rights appears officially on our intellectual
and political agenda since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
in 1948. It appears there offcially because the actual discourse on
human rights combines several ideas we are familiar with since the
17th century. Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke and Kant are the heroes of that
discourse – which, by the way, should be remembered also in times
when the humanities, die Geisteswissenschaften, are underestimated,
once again, as ‘soft’ sciences which are writing down history but not
making it, like the tough guys and the ‘hard’ sciences apparently do.
We all know that there are central controversial points concerning the
claim of human rights. Clarifying these points would be a great help, in
a global world more than ever. And philosophy still is a central source
of conceptual clarification. Cristina Lafont gives us a welcome example
for this.
(website publisher)