ABSTRACT
Seyla Benhabib has emphasized the importance of the work of Hannah Arendt, especially her idea of "the right to have rights" the notion of human rights needs to be understood within this context. More than one commentator has argued that Arendt is best understood as a Kantian thinker. For example, Benhabib refers to "Arendt's and Kant's moral cosmopolitanism". She claims that Arendt can and should be thought of as being a "Kantian in moral theory" and that Arendt's political thought generally is "thoroughly Kantian". In short, like Aristotle before him, Hegel maintained that all human beings, simply because they are human beings, ought also to be citizens of some political society or other. To employ a phrase of Arendt's, Hegel followed Aristotle and maintained that all human beings, simply because they are human, possess the "right to have rights," the right to citizenship.
