Idealism and Rights: The Social Ontology of Human Rights in the Political Thought of Bernard Bosanquet

Idealism and Rights discusses the theory of rights of the British idealist political philosopher, Bernard Bosanquet. Bosanquet's political philosophy, like that of the British idealists in general, has long been subject to misunderstanding and prejudice. Yet its practical influence, in Great Britain and its empire from the late nineteenth until the mid-twentieth centuries, was profound. The author argues that Bosanquet's account of rights provides a serious response to the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill and to the natural rights-based political philosophy of Herbert Spencer. A complete statement of Bosanquet's account requires an elaboration of his 'metaphysical theory of the nature of social reality.' This volume therefore presents Bosanquet's work in relation to his contemporaries, and shows how it depends on new understandings of such notions as the individual, the general will, the 'best life, and the state.