Samuel Moyn and The Evolution of Human Rights
The common refrain in regards to human rights today is the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Man and Citizen began to establish rights as we know them today. Continuing chronologically, World War II and the Holocaust lead not only to the creation of the United Nations but also the eventual Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Which in turn lead to the promotion and politics of human rights as we know them today.
In The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, Moyn argues that the current politics is much newer than the UN Declaration and further, the declaration’s true intent was not the promotion of human rights but rather a power play by Allied forces. Additionally, rights today differ drastically from the rights that came out of the American and French revolutions. I had read Moyn’s book a few years ago and at the time I did not find his argument convincing. I found them compelling and intellectually interesting, but not convincing.
Rereading chapter one and a bit of chapter two for this assignment, I still do not find his argument entirely convincing but some rings more true than it did with the first reading. Before Moyn can dive into the meat of his argument as outlined above, he must set the stage by making a distinction between the rights of man, as understood from the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Man and Citizen, and human rights as they are recognized today. He meanders through the concept of universalism and social and economic rights versus civil rights, but the true distinction is one of rights from within versus rights from outside.
Moyn convincingly makes an argument that the rights of man are tied to the formation of society whereas human rights are tied to the individual regardless of the sovereign state (12). Rights of man dealt with the establishing of rights for members of a new government, they looked internally. Human rights as they are known today, are based on a collective membership beyond the sovereign state. Human rights are tied to the individual and extend past the authority of the sovereign state.
Of all of his arguments, I found this to hold the most sway with me. To my knowledge, prior to WWII, the holocaust, and the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights, there were no protections available to individuals outside of the sovereign states where they resided if and when their rights were violated. And while the protection available today is still limited and wildly dependent on politics and economics, we now have international laws and courts and tribunals to address human rights violations. I would not argue that either have been terribly successful just yet, but it is a start.
