The Cement of Humanity

We live in a world beset by crises. A tenth of humanity live below the poverty line, billions lack access to education and healthcare, and almost a million people are held in prisons for speaking truth to power. Political freedoms and democratic processes are under threat everywhere. At a time when human rights are invoked and dismissed more forcefully, Amartya Sen reminds us that their foundation lies not in the goodwill of governments or the survival of enlightened institutions, but something far more powerful and enduring: our ability to reason.

The Cement of Humanity presents an urgent analysis of the power of human rights. Engaging with a rich tradition of reasoning – from the teachings of the Buddha in the 5th century BCE to the Magna Carta and the work of Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and Mary Wollstonecraft – Sen shows that the pursuit of human rights is a product of our global civilization. He expands on the work of John Rawls and Kenneth Arrow on the social contract and social choice to show how the fulfilment of these rights and our capacity for collective and individual decision-making can be enriched by considerations of justice, fairness and our obligations to one another.

Philosophically rigorous, bracingly practical and full of characteristic acuity, this is a remarkable treatise from one of the world’s leading public intellectuals.