At some point or another, every state pursues a foreign policy which it will try to explain or justify in moral terms. From simple censures and sanctions against states who behave not only in opposition to international law, but also against a more loosely defined international morality, to full scale military interventions for expressly "humanitarian" purposes, ideas of morality and human rights clearly exist in international relations. This does not mean that these ideas exist clearly. What are the origins of these rights? What is the moral standing of states? And when shall human rights be sacrificed to protect the autonomy of a state (or vice versa)? These questions are but a sampling of the normative issues with which the discipline of international relations was originally concerned and to which it is now focusing a renewed interest. This academic essay, written by the author at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1998, addresses the core questions mentioned above by reviewing two major schools of thought in International Relations (Communitarianism and Cosmopolitanism) and by attempting to present an alternative approach by introducing the concept of "trickle up morality".