Inventing Human Rights: A HistoryHow were human rights invented, and what is their turbulent history? Human rights is a concept that only came to the forefront during the eighteenth century. When the American Declaration of Independence declared "all men are created equal" and the French proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of Man during their revolution, they were bringing a new guarantee into the world. But why then? How did such a revelation come to pass? In this extraordinary work of cultural and intellectual history, Professor Lynn Hunt grounds the creation of human rights in the changes that authors brought to literature, the rejection of torture as a means of finding out truth, and the spread of empathy. Hunt traces the amazing rise of rights, their momentous eclipse in the nineteenth century, and their culmination as a principle with the United Nations's proclamation in 1948. She finishes this work for our time with a diagnosis of the state of human rights today. |
Contents
TORRENTS OF EMOTION Reading Novels and Imagining Equality | 35 |
BONE OF THEIR BONE Abolishing Torture | 70 |
THEY HAVE SET A GREAT EXAMPLE Declaring Rights | 113 |
THERE WILL BE NO END OF IT The Consequences of Declaring | 146 |
THE SOFT POWER OF HUMANITY Why Human Rights Failed Only to Succeed in the Long Run | 176 |
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abolished abolition Archives parlementaires argued Article authority autonomy Beccaria began body Britain British Burlamaqui Calas Calas Affair Cambridge Cesare Beccaria citizens civil claimed Clarissa Condorcet Constitution crime Criminal Law cruel punishment cultural declaration of rights decree deputies Diderot divorce droit naturel droits de l'homme eighteenth century emotions empathy Encyclopédie England English Enlightenment epistolary novel equal rights example feelings France free blacks freedom French Revolution Grotius honor human rights individual insisted Jean Jean Calas Jean Jacques Rousseau Jews judicial torture Julie justice king letters liberty London ment moral Muyart National Assembly natural law natural rights pain Pamela pamphlet Paris penal portraits principles Protestants published question quote readers reading reform religion religious Revolutionary Richard Price Richardson rights of humanity Rousseau Saint Domingue Samuel Richardson self-evident slavery slaves social society Thomas Jefferson tion torture and cruel translation University Press Voltaire voted women women's rights wrote