The Introduction highlights the main research topic, the research questions, the research methodology and the course of the argument. It argues that human rights form a central normative achievement of human moral and legal history. It highlights the egalitarian epistemic foundations of the human rights project. The assumption that all human beings have equal access to normative insights empowers human beings. The research in human rights as part of an inquiry into human moral and legal understanding is one of the most interesting projects of current science. Only an approach including perspectives from history, philosophy, legal theory, law and psychology and cognitive science can hope to provide sufficiently rich insights. The inquiry is also important because of different current attacks against human rights – for instance, from human rights history and cognitive science. The epistemology of human rights needs to address in particular the rich research in moral psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science on moral and legal phenomena. Human rights considered are not only found in international law, but also in constitutional and supranational law, in ethics and politics.

The Epilogue provides a summary of the main arguments and findings of the book.

This chapter uses the book's main findings to draw broader conclusions on the history of human rights and the place of human rights in post-Cold War international politics. It makes three points. First, it argues that the events described in this book were harbingers of the pivotal role human rights came to play in post-Cold War global politics. Second, however, it shows that human rights discourses changed considerably during the 1990s. The ideas about collective agency and social self-organization which had been at the center of Polish, French, and US human rights discourses disappeared for the sake of a human rights vernacular centered on how powerful international actors supported helpless victims in distant countries. Third, the chapter concludes that these changes do not mean that the origins of human rights really lie in the 1990s. It argues instead that the very power of human rights derived from how actors could adopt them to different aims and political projects. The history of human rights shouldtherefore not be about the quest for a moment when human rights took on a definite meaning ad established clear-cut practices but about the conditions under which human rights became plausible and useful and were reinterpreted as historical actors adapted them to their needs.

This chapter gives an overview of the current debates regarding the way human rights has been defined and historicized. It argues that understanding these debates is crucial for an understanding of the ways in which human lights matter to literary study. Referencing the works of Johannes Morsink, Paul Gordon Lauren, Lynn Hunt, and Samuel Moyn, the author moves the through the varied points of origin and genealogies of human rights as we understand them today. The chapter shows that this present concept is by no means unambiguous, and argues that literature and its analysis provides us with one of the best ways to investigate the historical and political tensions that exist at its very foundations.

This chapter gives an overview of the current debates regarding the way human rights has been defined and historicized. It argues that understanding these debates is crucial for an understanding of the ways in which human lights matter to literary study. Referencing the works of Johannes Morsink, Paul Gordon Lauren, Lynn Hunt, and Samuel Moyn, the author moves the through the varied points of origin and genealogies of human rights as we understand them today. The chapter shows that this present concept is by no means unambiguous, and argues that literature and its analysis provides us with one of the best ways to investigate the historical and political tensions that exist at its very foundations.