Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2006 The existence and grounding of human or natural rights is a heavily contested issue today, not only in the West but in the debates raging between "fundamentalists" and "liberals" or "modernists in the Islamic world. So, too, are the revised versions of natural law espoused by thinkers such as John Finnis and Robert George. This book focuses on three bodies of theory that developed between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries: (1) the foundational belief in the existence of a moral/juridical natural law, embodying universal norms of right and wrong and accessible to natural human reason; (2) the understanding of (scientific) uniformities of nature as divinely imposed laws, which rose to prominence in the seventeenth century; and (3), finally, the notion that individuals are bearers of inalienable natural or human rights. While seen today as distinct bodies of theory often locked in mutual conflict, they grew up inextricably intertwines. The book argues that they cannot be properly understood if taken each in isolation from the others.

弗朗西斯•奧剋利，美國威廉姆斯學院榮休教授、名譽校長及美國學術團體協會名譽主席。其研究領域為中世紀和現代早期的宗教史、思想史。他的主要著作有《中世紀晚期的西方教會》《政治與永恒：對中世紀和現代早期政治思想的研究》等

王濤，中國人民大學法學博士，牛津大學訪問學者，華東政法大學科學研究院助理研究員。