"Essays retrace the historical development of rights in the West, assessing the influence of Locke, Burke, and the authors of the Declaration of Independence to clarify the experience of rights within the Western tradition, showing that rights need to be rethought so that they may again truly serve the human good"--Provided by publisher.

"In a book that is at once passionate and provocative, Stephen Hopgood argues, against the conventional wisdom, that the idea of universal human rights has become not only ill adapted to current realities but also overambitious and unresponsive. A shift in the global balance of power away from the United States further undermines the foundations on which the global human rights regime is based. American decline exposes the contradictions, hypocrisies...

The language of human rights has become the public vocabulary of our contemporary world. Ironically, as the political influence of human rights has grown, their philosophical justification has become ever more controversial. Building on a theory of discourse ethics and communicative rationality, this book addresses the politics and philosophy of human rights against the background of the broader social transformations that are shaping the modern world....