Inventing Human Rights
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Hello everyone! My name is Tyesha Marius and I’m a psychology major. My goal Is to become a school psychologist in a special needs school. I’m interested in learning about women’s rights and issues because I would like to become more aware of issues that concern me. The rights of women are an ever changing thing and I would like to learn more about the changes. I’m particularly not a fan of these changes being dominated by males, but that’s another story.
In the introduction to Lynn Hunt’s “Inventing Human Rights”, Hunt highlights some key documents in history that were used in formulating the human rights we have today. She begins with the Declaration of Independence and how its inclusions of human rights seemingly didn’t apply to all humans. It left out slaves, people without property, some religious minorities, freed blacks, and women. I liked the fact that she said “human rights required three interlocking qualities” (p.20): it must be universal, equal and natural. She continues to say human rights are only valid in a political setting or a society. Which I would have to agree with.
Next, she discussed what “ human rights” meant to the French and English in the 18th century, before the Declaration of Independence. I seemed to have too general a use. They were trying to figure out what this phrase would mean outside of political use. To some French Catholic priests this meant running around naked, being in touch with nature as close as possible. Various terms such as “rights of man”, “rights of humanity” and “natural rights” seemingly floated around in plays by Rousseau and other intelligent works.
Then, she continues to discuss how human rights became self evident in the eighteenth century. A contemporary moral philosopher has shed some light on self evidence. He claimed that normal people are able to able to equally self-govern. But, in that era, not many were considered to have the capacity to self-govern. Children, servants, slaves, the insane, the property-less and actually women lacked the independence to be deemed morally autonomous. Women were only identifiable by their fathers or husbands.
Furthermore she brings forth the work of political scientist Benedict Anderson, who thinks that there is a “imagined empathy” (pg.32) that is the foundation of human rights over nationalism. Emerging experiences and awareness of self at that time were changing the basis of what was to be the rights of man.
