The Rights of Man
In chapter one of Samuel Myon’s, “The Last Utopia”, and Myon explains how human rights differ from the rights of man.
Going just off of chapter one alone isn’t enough to fully understand what and how human rights differ from the rights of man. From what I understood, human rights are a transition in a social society. What continues to puzzle me as we discuss the foundations of human rights is how much religion played a part in defining those rights. Thinking about what the “religion” should represent, how can then have rights, while still excluding some of your citizens? You have philosophers, theorist, and clergy that believe “rights of man” are unfair, yet the clergy didn’t take into consideration slaves, woman, or non-property owners. In my opinion, based on the text, human rights were created to protect citizens that were excluded from traditional rights of man. I feel since I have only read the first chapter, there are a lot of things that may have been explained later that I have missed. Myon doesn’t clearly define what human rights are, nor does it clearly define what the rights of man are. To me the difference between the rights of man and human rights are the purpose and the individuals it serves, and time. The rights of man come from the revolutionary era during a time when men felt entitled, and privilege to things that others were not. For example, because I am a property owner and you’re not, I am entitled to have certain necessities and resources that you are not because you don’t own property. Human rights are people standing up against this entitlement and privilege and saying we are all humans and should all have access. In today’s society I feel we still have what can be considered the “rights of man” and then “human rights”. In modern time our government regulates human rights and we laws to “protect” against it. At the same time, we still have people show execute their “rights of men”, and feel certain types of people shouldn’t have the same rights as them because of race, religion, gender and the list goes on. The dilemma is now, what do you do when the government as chosen to execute their “rights of men”?
