THE RISE OF RIGHTS:SOME COMPARATIVE CIVILIZATIONAL REFLECTIONS

THE idea that individual human beings have rights which it would be morally wrong to violate and which ought to be protected by law is a relatively unique product of modern Western civilization.It did not exist in the conceptual universes of premodern societies,including the great Axial Age civilizations of the ancient Graeco-Roman world,of medieval Christendom,or of traditional China.