Habermas on Kant and the problems with human rights

Hey everyone!

I had chosen the question about Habermas' hindsight of Kant's proposals for a "perpetual peace", but i really didnt have a clue for deciding the starting point of it and its perspective.

I have to say that last class' discussion kind of helped me to figure out where i should point the focus....i think it should be the justification of human rights, and the problems with them.

I want to explain Habermas' cosmopolitanism, because i think his analysis looks quite sound to me. I want to try to disentangle the puzzle of Habermas' distinction of Moral, Human and Basic rights, in the light of his criticism of Schmitt's accuse of 'moral universalism' to the cosmopolitan order being carried about with the establishment of organizations as the UN.

From what i understand, Habermas' threefold distinction of rights is only formal . Human rights are not borne in morality: they have a juridical character. This means that human rights don't have a moral content, but a moral form, because the form of their validity (i guess Habermas could have chosen a better word than "suprapositive"....) "points beyond the legal order of the nation-state" (as we read in p 137).

I think it is important to acknowledge that in a cosmopolitan order there cannot be space for that sort of "fascism of morality" criticized by Schmitt, because in that world-scenario the legal order, and not morality itself would prosecute as crimes violations of human rights. It is as if within the structural (formal) domain of moral universalism the law came to be stretched to the very borders of the domain, and not the other way round: human rights are not inflated by any moral content. Schmitt's concerns about a morality that turns humanity into bestiality should not constitute a problem in a cosmopolitan order, because morality is only a form for basic rights that does not undermines their legal force.

I have to admit that this is just an idea and i haven't structured yet the paper, so if anyone has an advice it's more than welcome!

Cheers
Giacomo