The argument between those who assert the universality of human rights, at least as claims that ought to be recognized, and those whose tendency it is to see any universalist claim in the context of a particular time and place has carried on in western thought, as we have seen, for at least two centuries. And we sought at the conclusion of the last chapter to defend the notion of a minimum content of universal human rights. The task now is to extend the discussion beyond western political theory to the world as a whole, and to investigate whether a doctrine of the minimum content of universal human rights survives the transition.

The first step in this process is to notice that there is a world beyond the west: namely, that great portion of the globe which is neither west European, nor North American, nor Australasian. And although it is a portion of the globe that may have been westernized, to various degrees, as a result of the dominance of western culture over the past several centuries, this is not a contingency that has emptied all meaning from the distinction between the western and the non-western worlds. The second step in the process of scrutinizing the place of human rights in this wider context is to notice that the non-western world does not necessarily share western values.