This book, as a monograph devoted to the concept of right, takes as its vantage point the historical transformation of human society from agricultural civilization to commercial-industrial civilization. It traces the formation and evolution of the concept of right, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the right-related thought of three major Western jurisprudential traditions and their representative figures, repudiates the intellectual constraints that existing Western notions of right have imposed upon the Chinese legal academy, and develops a theoretical system of right supported by such core concepts as the constitution of right, the ontological foundation of right, the bearer of right, the function of right, and the semantic transformation of right.
