What do we mean by a new idea?

What do we mean by a new idea? In the last part of this book we discuss five concepts: human rights, civil disobedience, political violence, difference and global justice. What distinguishes these five concepts from those discussed in Part 1 – state, freedom, equality, justice, democracy, citizenship and punishment – is their relatively recent emergence within political theory. Of course, the ‘classical’ ideas themselves have undergone change and much of our discussion in Part 1 focused on contemporary debates, but those debates revolved around ‘problems’ that emerged in the earlier phases of modernity. For example, the problem of state legitimacy and political obligation, the justification of property rights, arguments over the nature of the human agent, conflicts between freedom and equality, and the debate about the nature of political authority and collective decision-making.