Assignment 4
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.
