Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Finding foundations
- Part II Law, rights and revolution
- Part III Rights, justice, politics
- 9 From “human rights” to “life rights”
- 10 Democracy, human rights and cosmopolitanism: an agonistic approach
- 11 Plural cosmopolitanisms and the origins of human rights
- Part IV Rights and power
- Index
- References
11 - Plural cosmopolitanisms and the origins of human rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
By
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Finding foundations
- Part II Law, rights and revolution
- Part III Rights, justice, politics
- 9 From “human rights” to “life rights”
- 10 Democracy, human rights and cosmopolitanism: an agonistic approach
- 11 Plural cosmopolitanisms and the origins of human rights
- Part IV Rights and power
- Index
- References
Summary
In the course of 1948, the notion of human rights surged in western Europe, especially due to debates around the Universal Declaration, to be ratified by the United Nations in December of that year. While human rights did not rise so much as to define any live public option for politics in either the domestic or international spheres – notably, no movement in the service of human rights appeared — it is true that some people noticed.
One was the great German classicist Bruno Snell. When revising an essay for its inclusion in his still-renowned book The Discovery of the Mind as the debate proceeded, Snell added the following remarkable passage: “Euripides, in his Medea, is the first to portray a human being who excites pity by the mere fact of being a human being in torment,” Snell declared. He continued: “[A]s a barbarian she has no rights, but as a human being she has. This same Medea is also the first person in literature whose thinking and feeling are described in purely human terms . . . No sooner does man declare his independence of the gods, than he acclaims the authority of the free human spirit and the inviolability of human rights.” It is a remarkable set of assertions, and deserves to be placed in context. And it is helpful to define the conceptual task of writing the history of human rights even today, because it shows the need to depart from the model of the cosmopolitan discovery of humanity as a one-time breakthrough.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Meanings of RightsThe Philosophy and Social Theory of Human Rights, pp. 193 - 212Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
References
, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, (trans.) (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 250.Google Scholar
, “Die Entdeckung der Menschlichkeit, und unsere Stellung zu den Griechen,” Geistige Welt, 2(1) (1947), 1–9.Google Scholar
’s bitter open critique of Jaeger’s first instalment in Paideia had appeared immediately in Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 97 (1935), 329–353, rpt. Gesammelte Schriften (Göttingen, 1966)Google Scholar
, Down from Olympus: Archeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1950 (Princeton, 1996),Google Scholar
, “Restoring the German Spirit: Humanism and Guilt in Post-War Germany,” in , (ed.), German Ideologies since 1945 (New York, 2003).Google Scholar
, The Dignity of Man: Studies in the Persistence of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass., 1947),CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Greeks and Barbarians in Euripides’ Tragedies: The End of Differences?,” in , (ed.), Greeks and Barbarians (Edinburgh, 2002)Google Scholar
, Werden und Wesen der Humanität im Altertum: Rede zur Feier des Geburtstages Sr. Majestät des Kaisers am 26. Januar 1907 (Strasbourg, 1907);Google Scholar
, “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Political Significance,” in , Between Past and Future: Six Exercises in Political Thought (New York, 1961), 297, .Google Scholar
, “Humanitas: Romans and Non-Romans,” in , (ed.), The Romans, (trans.) (Chicago, 1993), 346.Google Scholar
, “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, 7(4) (1958), 425–444;Google Scholar
, Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human–Animal Relationships (New York, 2005).Google Scholar
, The Languages of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley, 2006), 280.Google Scholar
, “Philosophical Influence on Roman Jurisprudence?: The Case of Stoicism and Natural Law,” both in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II.36.7 (1994), 4812–4900.Google Scholar
, “L’idée du droit subjectif et les systèmes juridiques romains,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4(23) (1946), 201–227.Google Scholar
and , “Empire, droits, et citoyenneté, de 212 à 1946,” Annales ESC, 63(3) (2008), 495–531.Google Scholar
, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, 1999),Google Scholar
, “Human Rights, Natural Rights and Europe’s Imperial Legacy,” Political Theory, 31(2) (2003), 171–199CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Nature of Rights and the History of Empire,” in , (ed.), British Political Thought in History, Literature, and Theory (Cambridge, 2006).Google Scholar
, “Protestant Natural Law Theory, A General Interpretation,” in and , (eds.), New Essays on the History of Autonomy: A Collection Honoring J.B. Schneewind (Cambridge, 2004), 95.Google Scholar
, Die Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte: ein Beitrag zur modernen Verfassungsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1895);Google Scholar
, “La Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen et M. Jellinek,” Annales des sciences politiques 17 (1902): 415–443;Google Scholar
, “La Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen et M. Boutmy,” rpt. in Ausgewählte Schriften und Reden, 2 vols., (ed.) (Berlin, 1911).Google Scholar
, “Studien zur Erklärung der Menschen- und Bürgerrechte,” Historische Zeitschrift, 142(3) (1930): 516–545;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Georg Jellinek et la Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme de 1789,” in Mélanges offerts à Claude Petitfrère: Regards sur les sociétés modernes (XVIe-XVIIe siècle), (ed.) (Tours, 1997)Google Scholar
, “Revisiting the Rights of Man: Georg Jellinek on Rights and the State,” Law and History Review, 22(3) (2004): 493–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, La déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen et ses antécédents américains (Washington, 1945).Google Scholar
, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (Chicago, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review (New York, 2005).Google Scholar
, The Birth of Judicial Politics in France: The Constitutional Council in Comparative Perspective (New York, 1992).Google Scholar
, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), esp. 17–18.Google Scholar
, “The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind: ‘Contemporary Crisis of the Nation-State’ in Historical Perspective,” Political Studies, 42 (1994): 166–231, esp. 191–198CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “National Sovereignty and the General Will: The Political Program of the Declaration of Rights,” in , (ed.), The French Idea of Freedom (Stanford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
, “Six Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 505–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Defending the Plurality of States: Cloots, Kant, and Rawls,” Social Theory and Practice 32 (2006): 559–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Fraternité universelle et intérêt national (1713–1795): les cosmopolitiques du droit des gens (Paris, 1996)Google Scholar
, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” Journal of Political Philosophy 5, 1 (March 1997): 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , (eds.), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Idea (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).Google Scholar
, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (Chapel Hill, 1996), 255–256.Google Scholar
, “Nationality and Liberty,” rpt. in , European Political History, 1815–1870: Aspects of Liberalism (New York, 1967), 139–141Google Scholar
, “Nation and Universe,” in Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory (New Haven, 2007)Google Scholar
and , (eds.), Giuseppe Mazzini and the Globalisation of Democratic Nationalism, 1830–1920 (Oxford, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Rights in France: Reflections on the Etiolation of a Political Language,” Tocqueville Review 14, 1 (1993): 67–108.Google Scholar
, “Diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino nel secolo XIX in Europa,” and other essays in , et al., (eds.), Grundrechte im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1982).Google Scholar
, Staat, Bürger, Mensch: die Debatten der deutschen Nationalversammlung 1848/1849 über Grundrechte (Aarau, 1947);Google Scholar
, Debating Germany: The 1848 Frankfurt Parliamentarians and National Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 2002);Google Scholar
, (ed.), Die Grundrechtsdiskussion in der Paulskirche: eine Dokumentation (Darmstadt, 1973).Google Scholar
- 2
- Cited by