This chapter identifies the conditions under which human rights can be put to the service of a progressive and emancipatory politics. Having been used for decades as a weapon of the Cold War, in the last decade human rights have been converted into the universally valid language of emancipation, and thus into the mainstay of counterhegemonic globalization. This universalist ambition clashes, however, with the philosophical basis of human rights, which is western and derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Human rights constitute a specific formulation of the value of human dignity that coexists with other formulations in cultures other than the western.

In these conditions, the author defends that the plural universalism of human dignity requires the multicultural reconstruction of human rights. Taking as a reference three great cultural traditions (western culture, Hinduism, and Islam), the chapter resorts to an interpretative procedure named "diatopic hermeneutics," in order to define the terms of an inter-cultural dialogue that will allow us to choose the best contributions from these different cultures for an emancipatory politics based on a respect for human dignity conceived in all of its multicultural wealth.