Debates about the concept of human rights are characterized by difficulty negotiating the tension between the universal and the particular. This book addresses one of the central challenges of a global society, of determining how we can affirm universal human rights while respecting the distinctive traditions of individual cultures.

Curle concludes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, understood in a Bergsonian context, provides us with a way to affirm in the modern context that there is a ground to human fellowship which is transcendent and which offers a basis to establish a universal ethics without a radical homogenization of cultures.