Debates on assisted dying remain controversial and call out for conceptual clarification. What is the moral basis for assessing competing arguments, and what is the best way to frame these arguments in terms of actual and potential human rights? This article aims to investigate whether autonomy alone suffices as a moral source for human rights and whether, on this basis, there should be a positive human right to assisted dying, and a negative human right to assist others in dying. Drawing upon discussions in political theory, medical ethics, and human rights scholarship, the article develops an account of autonomy as multidimensional and subject to trade-offs. Autonomy is divided into the dimensions of liberty, opportunity, capacity, and authenticity. Furthermore, there is a common intuition that human beings ought to be endowed with a domain of core autonomy that must never be compromised in any trade-off. This analytical framework is used to map conflicts and trade-offs concerning assisted dying. By way of conclusion, it is argued that autonomy suffices to describe what human rights protect, but not why they do so. Furthermore, it is argued that the terminology of rights used in debates on assisted dying risks misrepresenting what the debate is actually about, and that the debate should be framed in terms of the right to health and exceptions to the right to life, rather than general rights related to assisted dying. Thus, assisted dying should be seen as an extreme option, where death is not the end, but the means, and ought to be considered alongside other means, as a last resort, already in the legislative process.

A growing focus on pleasure in human rights discourse has been used to address patterns of sexual exclusion, often when addressing the problems of people with disabilities (PWD). As convincingly argued by Liberman, however, not all PWD suffer from sexual exclusion, and not all who suffer from sexual exclusion are PWD. Danaher and Liberman have thus argued in various ways for a broader range of measures, addressing sexual exclusion. This article builds on previous research and offers a conceptual framework for addressing sexual pleasure and exclusion in terms of human rights. It argues that human rights aim to safeguard autonomy, which is interpreted as multidimensional. It, thus, divides autonomy into the four dimensions of liberty (freedom from threat and coercion), opportunity (options to choose between), capacity (what an agent is capable of doing) and authenticity (the extent to which choices are genuine). Furthermore, it distinguishes between distinct egalitarian strategies, which offer different problems and possibilities, and may be combined. Thus, there is direct egalitarian distribution, indirect egalitarian distribution, baseline or threshold strategies and general promotion strategies. By way of conclusion, the importance of sexual authenticity as the ultimate aim of sexual rights is emphasised.

The aim of this article is twofold: to interpret human dignity in terms of multidimensional autonomy, and to apply this conceptual framework to the question of a potential human right to friendship, addressing problems of social deprivation. Several objections to such a new human right are answered, including charges of indignity, conceptual redundancy, misleading terminology, feasibility (weak objections) rights intrusion, responsibility, tolerability, and illiberality (strong objections). A conceptual framework of autonomy is presented, dividing it into liberty (freedom from coercion) opportunity (available options to chose from) capacity (for an agent to act) and authenticity (information on the likely consequences of choices). Not all of these can be maximised simultaneously, and decisions on how to safeguard human dignity involve difficult trade-offs between them, as well as considerations on their extension across space, and over time. Finally, several potential public measures, aimed at alleviating social deprivation are presented, ranging from education, information, and social training, to access to transportation, and public gatherings at major holidays. These measures, it is argued, should be considered in relation to the multidimensional character of human autonomy, as well as the varying causes of social deprivation, and they should be proportional to the perceived extent of the problem. 

This article aims to provide a conceptual framework forexploring the relations between liberal nationalism and reli-gion. Combining multidimensional analyses of autonomy aswell as religion, the article aims to provide a framework forconsidering, with greater precision, different potential ver-sions of liberal nationalism, and which kinds of pri-oritisations and trade-offs they would involve. Religion isapproached in terms of Wittgensteinian family resem-blances, referring to a host of overlapping narratives, norms,objects and practices. Autonomy is analysed in terms of col-lective and individual autonomy, and the latter is dividedinto four major dimensions: liberty (freedom from coercion)opportunity (available options) capacity (for making choices)and authenticity (the degree to which choices are genuine).These, furthermore, may be distributed differently acrossspace and time: for example, liberty may be restricted in thepresent to preserve it over time. Liberal nationalism ulti-mately has to balance intrinsic and instrumental arguments,while respecting human rights.

Inspired by the works of Marx and Engels, this essay addresses the role of religion in postcapitalist communities by adopting a Wittgensteinian understanding of religion as a series of elements held together by family resemblances rather than a monolithic entity with a core essence. It analyzes proposals concerning both the content of religion, in terms of needs and functions, and also the potential form of religion, in terms of the degree of voluntary cooperation and the extent to which practices are open to continuous reinterpretation and transformation. The essay concludes that it would be desirable to retain many elements commonly considered as core components of “religion”—including collective rituals, sacred sites and symbols, metanarratives, and altered states of consciousness—but consciously transformed and organized in a framework characterized by voluntary cooperation and an openness to continuous transformation that is comprehensive in range and adapting to the shifting cultural and power-political contexts of the communities in question.

This chapter considers the role of the people in Carl Schmitt’s theorizing on democracy, and invokes the concept of constitutive boundaries as a way of understanding how communities are reproduced by way of territorial borders as well as criteria for membership and cultural markers, e.g. symbols, rituals, and holidays. The chapter suggests that the latter constitute instances of a larger logical space of constitutive exceptions, that, Schmitt implies, reproduce existing orders, but also threaten to replace them with new ones; thus, such exceptions may be surrounded by protective boundaries of the sacred, concretely as well as abstractly. Ultimately, we may visualize an entire topology of the exceptional, which is subject to fierce contestation, since it points to the possibility of new orders beyond existing ones, which may be interpreted in terms of different trajectories of highly ambiguous processes of secularization.

Carl Schmitts kompakta essä Der Begriff des Politischen, eller Det politiska som begrepp, utkom 1932 och har blivit berömd för sin kärnfulla huvudtes: att det politiska, den farliga, kokande kärna som genomströmmar mänskligt samliv, inklusive men inte uteslutande det vi kallar ”politik”, karaktäriseras av skillnaden mellan vän och fiende. ”Varje religiös, moralisk, ekonomisk, etnisk eller annan motsättning”, skriver Schmitt, ”förvandlas till en politisk motsättning om den är stark nog att dela upp människor i vänner respektive fiender.”

En provocerande tes. En farlig tes. 1932 är som bekant inte vilket årtal som helst. Bättre blir det inte av att Schmitt kom att legitimera Hitlers maktövertagande. Att Schmitt hos många fått dåligt rykte överraskar alltså inte. Likväl hävdade Schmitt själv efter kriget att han aldrig varit övertygad nazist – men att han var en tänkare som fann inspiration hos reaktionära teoretiker och som hyste grava misstankar gällande demokratins förmåga att upprätthålla fred och stabilitet står bortom rimligt tvivel.

Denna text presenterar, tolkar och vidareutvecklar centrala begrepp som Carl Schmitt använder sig och tillämpar dessa på samtida svenska debatter om mångkultur och migration. Schmitts teori om det politiska tolkas i termer av två dimensioner, en som handlar om uppdelningar i vänner och fiender och en som snarare fokuserar på ständiga rörelser av politisering och avpolitisering som olika aktörer försöker strukturera i vän- fiendeuppdelningar i sina egna syften. I denna kamp om vilka vän- och fiendeuppdelningar som skall etableras blir normer, narrativ, symboler och ritualer viktiga politiska verktyg, vilket innebär att vi inte på ett förenklat sätt kan förstå samtida svensk politik som entydigt sekulär – snarare finns element som vi kan kalla heliga, liksom marginaliserade och tabubelagda element. Ytterst kan vi därmed fråga oss vad en konsekvent sekulär ordning faktiskt skulle innebära – en fråga som öppnar upp för en djupare reflektion kring alternativa sociopolitiska ordningar.

This text presents, interprets and further develops key concepts that are used by Carl Schmitt and apply them to contemporary Swedish debates about multiculturalism and migration. Schmitt’s theory of the political is interpreted in terms of two dimensions, one that is about distinctions between friends and enemies and one that focuses, rather, on constant processes of politicisation and depoliticisation, which different actors try to structure into friend/enemy distinctions for their own purposes. In this struggle about which friend/enemy distinctions are to be established, norms, narratives, symbols and rituals become crucial political tools, which means that we cannot understand contemporary Swedish politics in a simplistic way as unambiguously secular – rather, there are elements which we may call sacred, as well as elements which may be considered marginalised and taboo. Ultimately, we may thus pose the question as to what a consistently secular order would actually entail – a question which opens up for a deeper reflection on alternative socio-political orders.