ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses in detail questions about the relationships among the individual, the community, and human rights. It argues for the principle of universal, equal, and individual human rights and considers the creation of the ideology of human rights within bourgeois capitalist society. It introduces the debate between universalism and relativism in the formulation of human rights principles. Constructivist theory accords with the sociological view that human rights are a social phenomenon, a creation of the human mind. Human rights are human rights because humankind has decided they are. Human beings create their own sense of a morally worthwhile life. The book discusses the differences between liberal and other conceptions of human rights and of human dignity. It argues that poverty is the primary and enduring form of social degradation in advanced capitalist states.
