ans Joas ranks among the most distinguished European social theorists of the past two or three decades. Deeply grounded in the classical sociological tradition, his work has contributed to reshaping conceptual debates on action and value theory (Joas, 1996, 2000) and it has also reflected on war as a major pillar of modern society (Joas, 2003). In this new book, Joas brings together these strands of his work in order to develop a new genealogy of human rights that centres on the idea of the sacredness of the person.
