The Architecture of Concepts The Historical Formation of Human Rights [Hardcover]

The Architecture of Concepts proposes a radically new way of understanding the history of ideas. Taking as its example human rights, it develops a distinctive kind of conceptual analysis that enables us to see with precision how the concept of human rights was formed in the eighteenth century.

The first chapter outlines an innovative account of concepts as cultural entities. The second develops an original methodology for recovering the historical formation of the concept of human rights based on data extracted from digital archives. This enables us to track the construction of conceptual architectures over time.

Having established the architecture of the concept of human rights, the book then examines two key moments in its historical formation: the First Continental Congress in 1775 and the publication of Tom Paines Rights of Man in 1792. Arguing that we have yet to fully understand or appreciate the consequences of the eighteenth-century invention of the concept rights of man, the final chapter addresses our problematic contemporary attempts to leverage human rights as the most efficacious way of achieving universal equality.

The Architecture of Concepts presents a new history of ideas. Using digital archives to track the historical formation of the concept of human rights across the Anglophone eighteenth century, it argues that a better understanding of the architecture of the concept will enable us to deliver on its universal aspirations.De Bolla's concern for contemporary human rights is clearly evident, and there can be no doubt that he has undertaken the studies that comprise his carefully composed, intricately argued book with the ultimate aim of contributing to the cause of human rights.

The Architecture of Concepts surprises us at every turn. It uses the latest data bases and search engines to upend the standard history of the concept of human rights, which exploded much later in the
eighteenth century than usually supposed. lÌ