Following Kant, we need no longer understand reason, human rights or other moral ideals as existing in some way independently of human beings. Rather, we are to see human nature, the natural world and the world of morality as all structured in terms of reason. Reason both provides the ultimate justification for our fundamental moral standards and frames our understanding of them. The reasoned detail of Kant's moral philosophy requires that we act from duty, and the rights of others are to be understood in terms of whatever correlates with those duties.

Kant's arguments concerning the rational structures of the human mind were based particularly on his analysis of the structures of human language. The way we use language expresses our understanding of the world and of our moral status and duties within it, and so expresses the rational structures of our minds. In the twentieth century the analysis of language came to be central in philosophical understanding, and such analysis has permitted a major advance in our understanding of rights. This analysis of language continues the Kantian approach beyond the determination of general structures to involve a fine-grained analysis of particular concepts. At the present stage of our argument we are working with Kant's position in holding that it is the structures of our own understanding that are foundational to rights. Human nature is eternal and unchanging and essentially rational.