Inventing Human Rights: A History

In my first year of humanitarian work I was called on to help start up a program in Kosovo after the end of that bloody conflict. Ethnic cleansing they called it, genocide without the murder I suppose. I was 21 or 22, wet behind the ears – young and idealistic. I was going to change the world! I went into Kosovo walking alongside the new UN government, setting up shop in Prisren as we all began to work with the people who were returning in rivers from Albania and Macedonia to help winterize their homes for the coming frigid Kosovar winters and to get winter wheat planted before the earth became frozen and hard; a crop to begin that painful process of recovery.From there, after the program was on its way, I was sent into the Democratic Republic of the Congo – Goma specifically and Bukavu where the second civil war had just started. Who knew it was going to be the worst war since WWII. Africa’s world war. I was still green – and plunged from one crisis to the next, literally flying from Tirana in to Kigali and driving across the border into Goma – I was struck by the difference between these two conflicts.Kosovo – a population of maybe two million. The response? 35,000 NATO soldiers; every NGO on the planet (including “Clowns Without Borders” – its nice to know Clowns also have no borders); every UN agency. The work divided up into quadrants, funds flowing in for relief work which were staggering in their scope. Then Congo – I was there even before the incompetent peacekeepers. Uruguayans setting up prostitution rings, but this was before then. The sound of the silence of Congo’s civil war was deafening. In Kosovo we’d had the beating of helicopters and the crunch of friendly tanks and the huge parties with hundreds of foreigners who had come to help the little blond refugees. In Congo? A few haggard aid workers chain smoking and drinking themselves into early graves.There has been much written on this of course, donor fatigue and the like. But all the analysis comes down to one word – empathy. With whom we identify has a great role in how we react to the evils we see around us.I just finished reading Lynn Hunt’s well-written book “Inventing Human Rights”. First what it is not, it is not a story about westerners inventing human rights. Human rights – by their very “self-evident” nature have always existed; they weren’t dreamt up in a bar in Oxford or Geneva. The book might better be called “Re-discovering Human Rights” but I’d probably go with a different title – “Human Rights and the Discovery of Empathy”. Because that’s what this book is about. It is a well-researched and well-written account of how, coming out of the renaissance and the enlightenment and the industrial revolution people in western Europe began to rediscover their humanity, but more importantly the humanity of others, through the process of empathizing. The author chooses an interesting entry into this topic, the beginning of novel-writing in Europe. And how reading novels like Clarissa helped revolutionize the way people thought about other people by putting themselves in others’ shoes – in the abstract. The book then goes into the epic fights (legislative and in public opinion) against torture; on writing the different declarations which we hold now almost for granted; the pitched battle against slavery – as step by step humans rediscovered why we are different, and above the animals. Lynn avoids the religious arguments into the “Truths we hold self-evident” or the “Laws of God written on the hearts of men” or the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” – which is why the book is misnamed. Nevertheless as one in an endless series of tomes to help us figure out how we saved ourselves as a species from the rack and debtors prisons and enslavement – “Inventing Human Rights” belongs alongside others such as “Liberalism: The Life of an Idea” and “The Triumph of Liberty” to lead us in understanding the nature – and responsibility – of our humanity.The case that the greatest piece of technological advancement in history was Gutenberg’s press is one that could be well-argued using this book; that is when everything started changing in the west – and the world.On a personal note – I am very glad she started with making the case for fiction (a novel), and I feel somewhat vindicated for the sneers I receive in choosing literary fiction as my avenue for expression. There are too many people today who arrogantly and ignorantly announce to the world “I don’t read fiction” – probably not even knowing what they’re saying. Empathy – it is what I try to do with my fiction, to connect people to situations that they probably don’t think of. “I, Charles, From the Camps” the first person account of a black man from a refugee camp who becomes an LRA soldier in Uganda. “Lords of Misrule” about a Tuareg boy who joins jihad.But I digress. Read Lynn Hunt’s excellent book, and then continue on to the others I recommend and keep learning. We are losing our humanity – social media and hate are taking it from us – lets rediscover our humanity, and with it the rights not of ourselves but of others.

The Enlightenment was a period of history when the influence and power of the Christian churches diminished, and can be blamed for the genocide and wars of the 19th and 20th century. This interesting book sheds light on this period of history. Consider the following quote:“Bentham objected to the idea that natural law was innate in the person and discoverable by reason. He therefore basically rejected the entire natural law tradition and with it natural rights. The principle of utility….served as the best measure of right and wrong.” (location 1405)What is utility and what is right and wrong? The principle of utility is that governments should strive to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Utility is the ability of a good to make a person happy. Utility can clearly be measured on an ordinal scale. In a Robinson Crusoe economy, if Man Friday spends his time hunting instead of fishing, the utility of meat is greater than the utility of fish for Friday. If Crusoe exchanges meat for fish with Friday, it means the utility of the fish is greater for Crusoe. But are there units of utility? If Friday is starving and steals a little meat from Crusoe, can you say Friday’s utility increased 5 units and Crusoe’s utility decrease only 1 unit?Whether utilities are measured on a cardinal or ordinal scale sheds light on the questions of morality, right and wrong, and justice. If utilities are measured on an ordinal scale, utilities are clearly maximized if Crusoe and Friday cooperate with one another. If utilities are measured on a cardinal scale, it is not so clear. The hypothetical island may need a beast of burden, and slavery may be a just or moral arrangement. This raises the question of what the difference is between cooperation and slavery? In other words, what is coercion and force as opposed to free interactions between human beings. The doctrine of original sin sheds light on this question, and the author brings it up in her discussion of the change in laws about judicial torture and public punishment:“This tendency toward evil in mankind resulted from original sin, the Christian doctrine that all people have been innately predisposed to sin ever since Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace in the Garden of Eden.” (location 1009)In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were like God because they possessed sanctifying grace. They were not subject to death or sickness, but they had bodies so they could communicate with one another. If they farmed the land, it was because they enjoyed the activity. They enjoyed eating, but did not suffer from hunger. Their communications were free because Adam could not affect Eve’s consciousness without her consent, and vice a versa. According Paradise Lost by John Milton, Eve committed the sin of disobedience and Adam the sin of being excessively fond of Eve, and they found themselves in the world we live in. In this world, we define cooperation/freedom and slavery/force in terms of utilities measured on an ordinal scale.According to Thomas Aquinas, morality is based on the principle that humans are responsible for their actions. Moral laws are secondary principles. What determines right and wrong is the tiny voice inside our mind that we call conscience. Sinning doesn’t mean violating a moral law, it means not following your conscience. Sinning and morality relate to family life, and justice relates to the actions of governments. If the Robinson Crusoe economy is a model for family life, slavery is immoral. If it is a model for government, slavery is unjust.The doctrine of original sin also sheds light on the question of property rights. There clearly was no property before the fall. God gave the Garden of Eden to both Adam and Eve. It follows that there was no property rights after the fall. Adam and Eve created property rights in their state of sin.

An original work of cultural and social history, that covers a lot of ground in a clear concise manner and introduces an interesting thesis to explain the “ invention of human rights”. The author describes some of the cultural changes during the 18th Century in France, England, Scotland and America, that drove the gradual transformation in social attitudes and led to the political articulation of the declarations of “ human rights”. She traces this change of attitudes in the emergence of a new emotional and intellectual climate, facilitating a process of imaginative identification with the suffering of others, appeals to fellow feeling and a deeper preoccupation with personal autonomy. She contends that one of main drivers for this cultural change was the publication of the epistolary novels of Samuel Richardson: Pamela and Clarissa, and Rousseau’s Julie, that encouraged emotional identification and empathy with the heroines in their struggle for personal autonomy. Her astute analysis links up this affective transformation among the reading public with the rational arguments of the philosophers and political thinkers of the 17th and 18th Centuries, in favour of self determination, and freedom from the shackles of tradition, religion, social and racial hierarchy, with the adoption of more humane and egalitarian norms in the treatment of the others.One of the most important consequence of this revolution in attitudes feeding moral sensibility, was the condemnation of judicial torture and cruel corporal punishments, as she states “ Pain, punishment, and the spectacle of suffering gradually lost their religious moorings in the second half of the 18th Century”. This new sense of personhood captured in literature and Art, was also part of the Civilising process described by Norbert Elias that included amongst others a greater control of physiological functions and more self control and decorum in public. For the middle classes more privacy as with reading, more commissions for portraiture and a greater reverence for musical performances that used to be interrupted or drowned in loud conversations.The second half of the book is devoted to the numerous political debates around the formulation of human rights initiated by the American declaration of independence in 1776 and the French Revolution with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. She describes the lobbying from different quarters and how the internal logic of the whole process led to unanticipated results with the widening of minorities’ franchise and extension of rights. Even though, there were many inconsistencies in practice in the application of these highly sounding principles with regards to the black slaves and generally to women. This universalist idealism for human rights showed marked regression during the 19th Century with the rise of exclusive Nationalism and pseudo scientific explanations for racial and gender differences. Voting suffrage was progressively widened for non property holders but acquired much later by women even in GB in 1928 and France as late as 1944.One would have liked to learn a bit more about the political manoeuvring and behind the scenes debates with the adoption in 1948 of the Universal declaration of Human Rights. How consensus was obtained between such different protagonists and to what extent the Nuremberg trials and the decolonisation campaigns bore some influence on its deliberations? But I suppose this would make the subject of another book.This is an engaging history of the birth of “ human rights” in the European and American imagination and intellect.

A clear and persuasive writer.

Lynn Hunt raconte l'histoire des droits humains depuis le XVIII-ième siècle, comme un idée qui s'impose progressivement dans les couches moyennes de la société occidentale. Elle accorde une importance cruciale au développement d'une sensibilité égalitaire dans la société poussée par des romans populaires. Elle montre notamment comment La nouvelle Eloïse de Rousseau, et quelques autres romans dans les pays voisins, ont permis de renforcer l'empathie des lecteurs, en montrant comment des gens finalement assez médiocre d'un point de vue social ont des sentiments aussi nobles que ceux des héros de la littérature plus élitiste qui les a précédé. Elle montre ensuite comment cette sensibilité s'est imposée dans la déclaration d'indépendance américaine de 1776, dans la déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789, et enfin dans la déclaration universelle des droits humains de 1948. Lynn Hunt croit donc au pouvoir des idées et des émotions, mais elle ne souligne pas la façon dont ces idées ont servi les couches sociales montantes des deux siècles suivants. On souhaite qu'elle ait raison, et que le pouvoir de ces idées aide notre siècle à vaincre le racisme et la discrimination qui menacent les sociétés occidentales dans leurs fondements mêmes.

Lynn Hunt hat eine sehr originelle, gut lesbare Geschichte der Menschenrechte geschrieben. Zwar wird die Geschichte der Menschenrecht sehr abgekürzt und reicht daher nicht weit zurück; das mag aber an dem zugrundegelegten Menschenrechtsbegriff liegen. Dieser berücksichtigt stark die Form der Menschenrechte. Daher resultiert auch die Originalität. Themen wie: Was bedeutet es, daß die Menschenrechte deklariert werden, findet man in anderen Darstellungen eher selten. Daß die Menschenrechte - wenn auch nur kurzfristig versagt hätten - ist freilich eine sehr bestreitbare These, auch wenn Lynn auf ihren langfristigen Erfolg hofft. Gerade wegen solcher kontroverser Ansichten, ist das Buch aber empfehlenswert.

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