ABSTRACT
Social science must examine the issue of human rights with the same critical dispassion and reserved cutting edge that it would apply to any political slogan or social myth. In particular, the notion of rights requires a compatible notion of obligations. Discussions of human rights have gotten beyond formal categories into substantial issues as to whether human rights implies a theory of justice involving impartiality, or a theory of behavior involving toleration of differences. The discussion concerning human rights has been linked to choices between political deprivation, presumably characteristic of the East, and economic exploitation, presumably characteristic of the West. The social science community needs to achieve a stage beyond the aggregated national data of the United Nations. The social science community is responsible for both the construction of a better future and the criticism of present realities. In the dialectic of construction and criticism inheres the great strength of social science.
