å Sunday, February 26th, 2017

The author Samuel Moyn in his work The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History starts us off by having an understanding that before the happenings of the America’s and France’s revolution, there were Greeks and Romans philosophers of the Stoic age who had sided to the idea of rights which humans should have, in particular for men at those times. Ideologies of such, have had an influence which have evolved to modernize such rights which then set a precedent to become effective in producing the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789. That it’s transformation from John Locke’s “natural rights” and moving ahead to the age of the Enlightenment, has caused a political action that favors to the rights of citizens, and again focusing on men all over again. From the political establishment, the social and economic status with in the local setting of the where the government is abusive towards it’s private citizens. Nonetheless, such “rights of man” only pertains to what for men is beneficial, from their happiness of life, to their liberty to act and conduct themselves as they see fit towards society and to the ownership of property. It’s true essence of the “rights of man” also partakes in the political agenda, by that I mean that the usage of “rights” was for a pollical gain, exclusively to that group, at which only change was the form of protection from the government.

With regards of the “human rights” of which Moyn describes, he infers that there was no beginning or true foundation from which this term and concept emerged. Yes, there were rights to men, individual rights, naturalistic rights, universal rights, from which previously mentioned, all sort of derived from the nature of rights. To an unfortunate extent, the idea of “human rights” was born from an atrocity being done to humanity right after World War II. With the formation of the United Nations to then setting a course to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which protects all human beings yet undoubtfully not inclusive of all but certain groups only. Needless to say, it began an action settling across the globe to view morally the actions being done across the globe towards human beings, by imposing international laws which were seen as good and bad. Thereafter, the idea of “human rights” takes a big impact in the 1970’s, to which then focused on a more in-depth avenue towards involving itself in the civil liberties.

As I started reading Samuel Moyn’s book, The Last Utopia: Human Rights In History, the mentioning of Greek philosophy and early literary works stood out to me immediately. These early literary works did not think of any of the concepts that they included in their writing to be “rights” of any individual, because that notion didn’t exist at the time. Although, Moyn tries to make sense of it all by finding a way to interpret these early writings into the contemporary human rights we know today. Moyn defines contemporary human rights as “a set of global political norms providing the creed of a transnational social movement” (Moyn 11). Much like a previous text we read, Moyn defines contemporary human rights as a political movement, although that’s how it was even before the concept of “human rights” came about.

Although before the term “human rights” came about, a different set of rights that were created with the intentions to protect an individual’s rights, was accepted. That was known as the “rights of man”, with the title saying they will protect an individual’s rights however, that individual is a man. In addition, Moyn states that since human rights came into politics, they have been proclaimed the “birthright of man” (Moyn 14). However, Moyn is arguing that there is a great difference between the rights of man and human rights, even though they seem to come hand in hand.

One prime example is that the early rights of an individual, the rights of man, were mainly politically motivated and maneuvered. While social and economic issues were regarded as second generation issues or problems (Moyn 17). The incorporation of not only political and civil rights, but social and economic rights are a part of the new, contemporary human rights. Human Rights is as Moyn said a movement, although not come tell political anymore. Moyn quotes Hannah Arendt, who points out that after the second World War, people were intent on helping to make human rights transcend the “nation state” (Moyn 42).

Moyn also quotes from Arendt, “if simple humanity in Rome had moral associations beyond the realm of educational formation, it implied unimportance rather than ultimate value. ‘A human being or homo in the original meaning of the word,’ she observed, ‘indicat [ed] someone outside the range of law and the body politic of the citizens, as for instance a slave – but certainly a politically irrelevant being.”(Moyn 15). The very definition of a human being and that we are to exist outside the law and any restrictions.

Samuel Moyn takes us through multiple points that describe the differences in the earlier “rights of man” theories and the contemporary “human rights theories. Foremost among his arguments is the relationship of the theories to politics and government, but before getting into that Moyn lays some groundwork. He encourages us to look at history with a more critical eye, and see that events and philosophies that we accept as obvious precursors, leading to one inevitable end that is human rights, are actually just part of the random facts of history, created by warring factions, personal desires and mistakes. That means that human rights is only one universal ideology, not the only one, despite it’s present ubiquity and acceptance,. It also indicates that we as humans likely will evolve and expand up on this theory or remove it altogether as another dominating moral thread comes into power. The true nature of the definition of human rights is further shown by tracing the individual histories of each right considered part of current dogma (using the UN Declaration). The different paths each right took didn’t necessarily interact or engage at all, and came from various instances, from fights for suffrage, to the civil rights movement. Moyn points out that social and economic rights are considered part of a newer group of rights to be considered, but reaching back to supposed precursors of human rights, pre-Enlightenment, it is easy to find examples of worries of socioeconomic inequality (one prime example being the Bible).

As we saw when discussing Enlightenment theorists (and as Moyn points out – their influences from Ancient Greece and Rome, to Stoicism, through various religions) the rights of man were structured through government. This is especially clear when considering both the American and French revolutions, whose concern with rights was wrapped up in their discontent with the monarchies. The rights of man were set up by these groups to be within the realm of the government – the government couldn’t infringe upon them (and, as in the original contract) was responsible for maintaining and protecting them. While the advent of the human rights movement really was a movement to transcend and go beyond governments, who were not adequately protecting rights. Human rights define themselves outside and above the government, as a universal right of all humans for simply existing, not due to their belonging to one or another nation, as with the rights of man.  The universality and “natural” qualities of these rights may seem similar, but as we discussed, “universal” meant something very different during the Enlightenment (and earlier) – it meant property owning white men.

Samuel Moyn’s fascinating first chapter from his book, The Last Utopia, traces the emergence of the modern notion and politics of human rights. What he uncovers is that the route to this conception – still, a relatively abstract one – was by no means linear and is fraught with more than a few contradictions to untangle. The very question of the differences between today’s “human rights” and yesterday’s “rights of man” gets at the heart of these contradictions.
Moyn helps readers to place this ideological development (the “rights of man,” as we have discussed, was the precursor to “human rights”) in their context. It was an era of democratic revolution which, by definition, meant the replacement of monarchical systems or autocratic rule in both the US and in France. From these revolutionary demands for the rights of man – again, it is a revolutionary notion that mere mortals, not just the nobility, should have anything afforded to them – emerged the modern state, a codified system of laws and institutions governed by elected and appointed officials. Moyn shows that the notion of “the rights of man” was intimately connected to and tied up with the emergence of the state. It was the threat of collective, or democratic, action (27) that could be used as leverage to ensure that rights were respected. The rights of man, then, were more about collective rights of “peoples” seen previously as subjects of a brutal autocracy that acted with complete and utter impunity. It’s rule was supreme and unmitigated.
By contrast, today’s “human rights” are tied to deeply embedded notions of individual rights – as set up against state power. While, in some ways, “individual rights” seem almost entirely unobjectionable, Moyn shows that the most persistent individual right that has been propagated through the years is that of “property rights.” Further, he includes revolutionary criticism of human rights as a farce to uphold the powers of the capitalist state and the propertied class. While Moyn speaks only briefly of Marx, it is interesting – and important – how he shows the very profound connection between the notion of collective rights (emerging from the rights of man) and that of workers rights. Marx saw those things in opposition to individual rights, though, as Moyn explains, he was not a proponent of the state either.
While the “rights of man” laid the ground work in important ways for the emergence of today’s modern notion of “human rights,” the path has gone largely in the opposite direction from where it initially seemed to be leading – collective struggle against a powerful minority vs. individual rights set up against state institutions (though, as Marx argued, they help to hold up the very institutions that they seem to be set against). While Moyn doesn’t say it explicitly, at least not in the first chapter, human rights may be less about empowering the powerless than one might think.

Moyn starts off by telling us what human rights are which is a set of global political norms providing the creed of a transitional social movement. Moyn then goes on to say that in the book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the new Universal Decleration of Human Rights states that “without communal inclusion, the assertation of rights by itself made no sense.” What I got from the reading was that since there weren’t equal rights or all, there was the creation of human rights to protect those who were subject to their rights not being equal to everyone else’s. Today, human rights are being limited, if not, taken away completely. They are also being taken away to benefit others. I know ive used this example before but I just want to make a point. So the example was that Donald Trump took away Muslim rights by banning them to travel. However, people are also using their human rights to protest the unfair acts that our “president” and what he is doing. For example, there has recently been a protest where people protest that Donald Trump is NOT our president. There was another protest where women marched for their rights because Donald Trump tried to take them. Also, this thought brings me back to one of the last discussions where I spoke about if you don’t know the full extent of your rights then it’ll be easy for someone to take them away from you. When Moyn stated “Because when human rights exploded in the 1970s they were focused so centrally on political and civil rights, their social and economic cousins have come to be regarded as “second generation” principles” I think it’s important to keep the original rights and if it must be tweaked to fit society then tweak it so that it makes everything, social, economic, political and civil rights, equal. I don’t think that just because the higher power tweaks the rights they add some and then either ignore or weaken the previous rights. Also what I got from the text was that concerns for inequality and socioeconomic deprivation even appeared in the bible so it’s nothing new, this has been a concern for centuries. Also when Moyn pointed out that places witnessed that their government provide visions of natural rights that weren’t too focused on self-preservation, they didn’t that because they don’t really want to zero in on rights on individuals. So what ii got from that alone was that they rather tell people as a whole that they have rights rather than telling them that as individuals they have their own set of rights. Moyn starts off by telling us what human rights are which is a set of global political norms providing the creed of a transitional social movement. Moyn then goes on to say that in the book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the new Universal Decleration of Human Rights states that “without communal inclusion, the assertation of rights by itself made no sense.” What I got from the reading was that since there weren’t equal rights or all, there was the creation of human rights to protect those who were subject to their rights not being equal to everyone else’s. Today, human rights are being limited, if not, taken away completely. They are also being taken away to benefit others. I know ive used this example before but I just want to make a point. So the example was that Donald Trump took away Muslim rights by banning them to travel. However, people are also using their human rights to protest the unfair acts that our “president” and what he is doing. For example, there has recently been a protest where people protest that Donald Trump is NOT our president. There was another protest where women marched for their rights because Donald Trump tried to take them. Also, this thought brings me back to one of the last discussions where I spoke about if you don’t know the full extent of your rights then it’ll be easy for someone to take them away from you. When Moyn stated “Because when human rights exploded in the 1970s they were focused so centrally on political and civil rights, their social and economic cousins have come to be regarded as “second generation” principles” I think it’s important to keep the original rights and if it must be tweaked to fit society then tweak it so that it makes everything, social, economic, political and civil rights, equal. I don’t think that just because the higher power tweaks the rights they add some and then either ignore or weaken the previous rights. Also what I got from the text was that concerns for inequality and socioeconomic deprivation even appeared in the bible so it’s nothing new, this has been a concern for centuries. Also when Moyn pointed out that places witnessed that their government provide visions of natural rights that weren’t too focused on self-preservation, they didn’t that because they don’t really want to zero in on rights on individuals. So what ii got from that alone was that they rather tell people as a whole that they have rights rather than telling them that as individuals they have their own set of rights.