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Preface Readers may understand this book better if they know something about its lengthy genesis. The basic idea was directly inspired by the two books I wrote in the second half of the 1990s (The Genesis of Values and War and Modernity). I wished to test out the theory presented in the first of these books, which centers on the genesis of value commitments of all kinds, by examining a specific value system. I wanted this to be a value system that has been influenced by and has itself exerted an influence on the history of violence, to which the second book was dedicated. The history of human rights seemed an ideal choice for such a project. But as I set about implementing this plan I found myself confronted with a problem that caused me far greater trouble than I had expected. Familiarizing myself with the extensive historical literature and getting to grips with a wide range of philosophical and theological contributions to the justification of human rights proved not just unavoidable but extremely time-consuming. This came as no great surprise. But it became increasingly unclear how, in a positive sense, I should conceive of my own contribution—which I envisaged neither as history, philosophy, nor theology. The individual chapters of the present book certainly draw extensively on major sociologists and their theories: chapter 1 on Max Weber, chapter 2 on Émile Durkheim , and chapters 5 and 6 on Talcott Parsons. But my central aim is not just to explain historical processes of value change through the prism of social science, but to link such explanation with a discussion of the justification of these values. This approach is so far from being self-evident that it requires detailed explanation. I therefore had to supplement the historical-sociological sections with a methodological chapter. Here one author emerged as crucial, an author who has done more than anyone else to think through the problems lying at the intersection of a sociologically informed historical science and a philosophical-theological discussion of values: Protestant theologian Ernst Troeltsch, who might also be said to have pioneered the ix x Preface historical sociology of Christianity. I was, however, increasingly concerned that these studies were becoming unmanageable and impossible to integrate into a whole. A number of invitations to present my ideas and discuss them with others proved extremely useful to the progress, and ultimately to the successful conclusion, of this program of study. I am truly grateful for all these opportunities, but can mention only the most important here. AtanearlystageIwasaidedbyaninvitationfromSusannaSchmidt, then director of the Catholic Academy in Berlin, to give the Guardini Lectures at Humboldt University of Berlin in 2002; this allowed me to impose an initial order on my ideas. I am greatly indebted to her and the discussants of the four lectures (Wolfgang Huber, Herfried Münkler, Michael Bongardt, and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann). An invitation from the Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie Hannover in February 2009 to teach a so-called master class in philosophy on the topic of this book played an important role. I would especially like to thank its then director, Gerhard Kruip, and the young scholars who attended this course for this opportunity to sharpen up my arguments . Important to the book’s final form was an invitation from the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, to hold a series of public lectures on the topic in autumn 2009. This allowed me to streamline a project that risked becoming hopelessly unwieldy. Thanks are due here to the directors of the center, Thomas Banchoff and José Casanova. In certain chapters of the book I draw on some of the ideas already set out in published essays; this is indicated throughout. Over the last few years I have had the privilege of being invited to take up fellowships at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala, the Berlin Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Study), and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (South Africa). As well as working on other book projects, I used these fellowships to advance the present work. I am deeply grateful to the directors of these institutions and the other fellows for the excellent working atmosphere. Bettina Hollstein, Wolfgang Knöbl, and Christian Polke read the entire manuscript and made helpful comments. It’s wonderful to have such friends and colleagues. I dedicate this book to three of them with whom I enjoyed a particularly productive association during my [18.222.69.152...

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