Juxtaposing a historical and philosophical reconstruction of the origins of the idea of human rights with a description of the emerging challenges to human flourishing posed by modern technologies, we can see that there is a substantial gap between the concepts and practices of human rights as they are typically understood today and the human needs that they are supposed to address in the contemporary world. In order both to rescue human rights from the threat of irrelevance and to situate human rights in their proper boundaries, it will be necessary to return to and reassess some foundational connections: the relationship between human rights and human dignity; the relationship between human rights and responsibilities, the relationship between human rights and the common good; and the relationship between human rights and the question of what is truly just and justifiable.
