5 Assignment 04

Interestingly, Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History mentions the word “utopia” which refers to something or somewhere imaginary, ideal and ultimately, perfect. The contradiction, though, is that rights, both of man and human, are flawed in their preserved meanings, purposes, and consistency. “The rights of man” and “human rights,” both containing conceptual differences from the past to the present, are not exactly Utopian.

As we have previously examined in prior discussions and assignments, there were precursors that led to this idea of rights belonging to man. These rights that strayed more away from religious influences and kings, and aimed more toward civil liberty, equality before the law and political movement. Enlightenment philosophers began to analyze these rights, speaking upon them, and what they should consist of, vaguely of course. “If the laws of their country did not live up to the demands of the Rights of Man, they were expected to change them, by legislation … or through revolutionary action:’42. However human in basis, rights were national political achievements first and foremost,” (Moyn, 2010, p. 31). Moyn also mentioned the fight for the right to work as a part of the rights of man, which shows that this right was formulated with the intent to continue labor and industrialization for the preservation of that area’s economy, and not necessarily to ensure that man has the capability to do work, considering that compensation was not significant for men of lower socioeconomic status.

“It must have become clearer and clearer as time passed that not the assertion of Humanity before Human Rights 31 abstract principles but the achievement of specific citizenship is what truly mattered,” (p.31). The assertion and push for rights often only became evident when a need for revolution or democratic change appeared among the people of a society. The rights of man ultimately protected and secured human rights

Some time later, the idea of human rights began to gain acknowledgement. Human rights was a more universal proposal, however, they are born rights that belong to each individual regardless of individual differences. It can still be argued that human rights, like the rights of man, has political intention, as opposed to being a pure declaration of obvious born rights. Clearly, there is controversy on the origin of rights and universalism, and therefore, its credibility and effectiveness was and is still shaky.
“The true key to the broken history of rights, then, is the move from the politics of the state to the morality of the globe, which now defines contemporary aspirations,” (p.43). In regard to modern day conceptions of human rights, according to Moyn, human rights now is the interpretation of international ethics and the yearning of ethical rights for each individual. and not necessarily used for political notion.

In the first chapter of Samuel Myon’s, The Last Utopia he explains how “the rights of man” is different from “human rights”.

According to Myon human rights are a transition into the social movement. There have been people that created their own version of human rights. But explained by Myon human rights are treated as inborn, or long in preparation, people will not confront the true reason they have become so powerful today and examine whether those reasons are still persuasive (13). People know that human rights are treated as if you were born with it so why become so powerful when everyone was born with the same rights. Human rights were to be achieved through citizenship and to be protected. After 1945 Human rights didn’t serve as a foundation it just contradicted the sovereign nation. Human rights were seen as cosmopolitan faith (13) the Greeks thought they must have a place in history of human rights. That was opposed and equally believed that humans are apart of the same group and the rights are shared. In order for utopia to exist globalism and internationalism had to be ruled out. In the 1970 human rights focused on political and civil rights.

Myon described rights of man being a utopian that produced emotions, it inspired liberty and equality. These rights were a contemporary to human rights. Also it became the first principle of a constitution and farmers were forced to add it on to their own work in order to gain support of the right to man. This right is all about incorporating people a true meaning of citizenship. This is when democracy began. If this right became a movement it would secure the rights of the citizen nationwide.

Once the the rights was announced that they were God given or natural rights no one saw that they should include them. They could change them if they did live up to the demands. Rights were starting to be seen as creature, this made them decline. With the rights declining citizen movements were made. Women and workers and even enslaved blacks started to proclaim them. Animals were in deserving of rights. Human rights and rights of man may have seen to coincide with one another dealing with citizenship.

In the reading Moyn expresses how religion had a lot to do with the formation of what is considered to be ” human rights” I found that this text does not exactly point out in a clear way what the differences between human rights and the rights of man are, so as I was reading I had to pick key elements out and draw my own conclusions but in my opinion, the fact that religion had a lot to do with the formations of these two topics it is strange to me that they still exclude so many aspects of different “humans” such as slaves, women , non-property holders ect were excluded when the rights of man was constructed. This reading ties into everything we have read so far in the since that we have talked about exclusion playing a heavy part in these constructions of rights and human rights , the rights of man and universal rights. Exclusion says that only a select few get to have rights and if people are excluded from something that should be for all humans then those people must not be “real humans”. To be influenced by religions and to still be so harsh and exclusive to specific types of people could make one questions the religion and its message all together. However as explained in the reading, once Christianity came into the picture it spread from city to country, from place to place offering a message of hope but in its travels to these different places it was interpreted and understood in many different ways and what was universal became specific to the individual place which is why rights for humans were realized and followed in different ways. The French said that the human claim to “natural rights” were false and pretend which birthed the reinvention of rights by Burke and was formed into the “Rights of man”. On page twenty nine it says that the rights of man and human rights show no relationship to each other or gives evidence that all humans are from the same group. I don’t think that there is a yes or no answer to todays question, Moyn shows how both human rights and the rights of man have similarity in which both speak to or about specific groups of people and how they tell of different liberties granted to these people but are different in how the “rights of man” really speaks to men (white men) while “human rights” speaks to “all men” including women. These rights have since not changed but rather society has changed the way they view these rights.

In the Last Utopia by Samuel Moyn, the first chapter covers many important points to make the readers understand how human rights and rights of men emerge. To understand much better his argument and extremely informative first chapter and whole book, he gave us the history of human rights, talked about important philosophers, and theorists who played a big role when writing and giving ideas about rights of man. As I was reading the first chapter I notice how rules and meaning of these two terms has changed throughout history. My understanding is that there was a cause and effect. In other words, the rights of men weren’t a specific or fair for all individuals, so, Human Rights was invented to protect citizens from unfair situations and with the purpose of having freedom. Human rights offer hope and inspiration to take action in any adequate situation. Moyn doesn’t really define what human rights means or what he believes it is. However, he does define what human rights means in different times and places he is very detailed about how things happened in history. The right of men and human rights are two very different things. Moyn’s demonstrates the concept of human rights which, becomes more significant in the 1970s and was more focused on political and civil rights. Social and economic was put as a second-regeneration principles. Rights of men was during the Revolutionary era (p.34), exemplify by the political of the states basically saying it was created by the government. The rights of man were written by all male philosophers and everything was written to benefit all man in society with the outcome of revolution. Then, he shows the enlightenment theorist influence, well they came up with these ideas from Ancient Greece and Rome, and other religions to invent a new form of human rights.  Human rights go more towards to individual rights against unconstitutional situations, this also means that human go against the unfairness of the state. Throughout history man and women has always being separated, meaning all man are superior in all situation. something that is changing each day is how women are included in the same group man are. In conclusion, Samuel Myon gives us a very detail history of human rights, how they change, and the different definition it took in different times and places. He also says that human rights were more significant in the 1970s. Human rights and rights of man have different purpose.

Initially  Moyn gives a brief history of the term “human rights” and explains that human rights are a relatively new concept that was believed to have emerged after WWII in response to the “crimes against humanity” that took place in the German concentration camps. But according to Moyn, human rights did not gain attention  or momentum until the 1970’s when NGOs began to use human rights to represent individual protection against the state.

As far as I understand the Declaration of Rights of Man was intended to declare the rights of citizenship within the nation-state mainly in relation to the protection of property, which is different from human rights  today. “The rights of man were about a whole people incorporating itself in a state, not a few  foreign people criticizing another state for its wrong doings” (Moyn, 2010, p. 26) Moyn also argues that the concept of  human rights is an ideology or ideal for the world to aim for. Moyn also argues that human rights is the “the last utopia” for the world to believe in especially due to the crumbling over time of other, as Moyn calls them, alternative ideologies (religion, socialism, etc).

Moyn  also  discusses how  the problems during WWII  were not framed as human rights violations , which kept the public from knowing the issues and atrocities that had taken place. As mentioned before, the destruction and devastation caused by WWII had hardly any impact on  producing a set of human rights standards for countries to live by. There were many events that took place throughout history that have helped to shape the concept of human rights one of which was that President Carter  who began incorporating human rights language into foreign policy as a way to further the countries self interest and not necessarily out of the concern for international human rights.

Human rights can only be recognized and enforced by the state. Human rights imply moral principle and today while such organizations as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are in place to monitor/prevent human rights violations, they are not doing such a good job. Human rights are violated everyday here in the U.S as well as abroad. Human rights today is used as a tool to interfere in other governments such as the War on Terror. If human rights are intended to protect humanity  and to lessen the suffering of people then why do countries continue to use human rights rhetoric to justify military interventions in other countries as well as economic sanctions.

I think I learned that human rights today are very broad and interpreted very differently because they seem to promise everything to everyone. Also  having protections of rights depends on citizenship, as it always has. Citizenship or the “right to have rights” implies communal inclusion  “without communal inclusion the assertion of rights by itself makes no sense” (Moyn, 2010, p. 12).  Rights of man addressed citizenship and “belonging to a political community” (Moyn, 2010, p. 12) at home and human rights implies “the politics of suffering abroad” (Moyn, 2010, p. 12).

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.