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•奥克利，美国威廉姆斯学院荣休教授、名誉校长及美国学术团体协会名誉主席。其研究领域为中世纪和现代早期的宗教史、思想史。他的主要著作有《中世纪晚期的西方教会》《政治与永恒：对中世纪和现代早期政治思想的研究》等

王涛，中国人民大学法学博士，牛津大学访问学者，华东政法大学科学研究院助理研究员。