Introduction: Globalization and the Millennial Ascent of Individual Rights

Abstract

The introduction discusses the evolving conceptualizations and policies of human societies since the antiquity regarding the rights and duties of people. The attention is focused on codes of conduct and institutions of societal support for poor and weak people and to the gradually evolving notions of natural law, human rights, common good, as well as to mutual aid societies in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Christianity. The rise of objective and subjective individual rights in Medieval Christianity is discussed, as well as their elaboration in the political realm by the thinkers of the first and second Enlightenment. Special attention is placed also on the evolution of the notion of civil society in the Ancient Rome and Greece, in the 17th century Dutch Republic, in the Enlightenment and subsequent intellectual and political milieux. The historical excursus ends with an overview of the pluri-millennial march of humankind toward human rights up to the 1948 UDHR, which incorporates three traditions of rights: a) the civil–political rights of the Enlightenment as well as the English, American, and French Revolutions; b) the socio-economic rights of the nineteenth century political revolutions; and c) the solidarity rights of the twentieth century.