The Idea and Values of Europe: From Antigone to the Charter of Fundamental Rights

This book discusses the 2450 year-long journey of the evolution of human rights, beginning from their earliest manifestation through Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone (442 BCE). It then moves on to look at the relationship between human rights and the likes of Cicero and Jesus, Erasmus and the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, before considering the very roots of the idea of Europe, which goes back to the liberal and federalist thought of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book concludes with the Charter of the EU Fundamental Rights becoming legally binding for Member States in Lisbon in 2009. While inquiring into the origins of European shared values, it assesses their compatibility with a non-European culture and religion such as Islam.