Abstract

This note is aimed at exploring and critically discussing the contribution of Claudio Corradetti's Relativism and Human Rights (Springer, 2009) to the present debate on human rights. The book provides a counterfactual and pluralistic account of human rights by relying in particular on two theoretical frameworks: the Kantian paradigm of judgment and the Hegelian concept of «concrete universality». The original combination of these perspectives attempts to cope with two main questions: on the one hand, the challenge to cognitive and practical relativism; on the other hand, the mediation between the universalistic and the contextual claim raised by human rights. I would like to show that such mediation does entail a critical potential, which becomes rather fruitful within transnational public spheres.