THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
HUMAN RIGHT
What is Human Right? In everyday language, ‘human rights’ has become a phrase easily used. It has almost become a platitude, used whenever someone wants to make a claim or justify his behaviour. And when we refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or to serious human rights violations, we use the two-word term with an almost indifferent self-evidence. But what is actually the difference between human rights and other types of rights? One might say that in fact all rights are human rights, since they are meant for humans – with the exception animal rights or, according to some environmentalist theories, the rights of pieces of nature.
In this essay I will investigate the meaning of the concept of human rights. First, I will ask where the notion of human rights has come from. In order to do that I will give a brief overview of the history of the philosophical concept, highlighting a few key figures and texts from the Enlightenment via the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 into the 20th century. Instead of asking which rights are claimed to as human rights and why, I will focus on the description of the concept. When did these rights become described as human, and when did the term become common usage? Secondly, I will try to answer the question: is the concept of rights any more meaningful because it has ‘human’ attached to it?
The history of human rights
Before we start, it is important to know what we eHJxactly refer to when speaking of human rights. The definition of human rights I derive from Ishay (2004), Donnelly (2007) and Hunt (2007). ‘Human rights are held by individuals simply because they are a part of the human species. They are rights shared equally by everyone regardless of sex, race, nationality and economic background. They are universal in content’ defines Ishay (2004: 3). Donnelly describes them as ‘equal and inalienable entitlements held by all individuals that may be exercised against the state and society’ (2007: 40). One has them simply because one is human. According to Hunt (2007: 12), to be called human rights they require three overlapping qualities: ‘rights must be natural (inherent in human beings), equal (the same for everyone) and universal (applicable everywhere).’ As for their actual content, human rights are the rights that are described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations of 1948, the Human Rights Covenants and the subsequent Human Rights Conventions. (1) It is difficult to decide where the history of human rights as a concept begins. Some scholars argue that conceptions of human rights can be found in almost all societies in all times. Ishay’s The history of human rights begins with ‘contributions’ of Hammurabi’s Code of ancient Babylon, the three major world religions, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Epictetus and Stoicism in general, and of medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. She sees human rights as ‘a result of a cumulative historical process that takes on a life of its own’ (Ishay 2004: 2).
This approach leads to a far too large conception of human rights in which almost any legal idea with any sense of universality found in history can come under the umbrella of ‘human rights’, even though it stands far from what we nowadays understand by them (2). These earlier forms of universalist thinking are neither in their content, nor their naming, nor their enforcement the same as present-day human rights. Although the Roman Stoics, for example, thought of reason as the universal leading principle that made all humans in essence the same, they kept excluding women, foreigners and slaves from civi l rights, (3) did not speak of ‘human rights’, and did not develop an international charter or court. According to Donnelly (2007: 40), no pre-modern society, Western or non-Western, recognised or practised human rights how we define them. I agree with him.
The approach chosen by Ishay can also lead to Whig history: the tendency to see earlier thinkers and events as mere predecessors, being there to pave the way for present-day facts that are seen as part of an inherent progressive path in history. Moyn (2012: 12) talks about ‘the construction of precursors after the fact’. (4) Enlightenment thinkers invented the language of human rights discourse. The earliest examples of this way of thinking are found in the 17th century. Thomas Hobbes describes natural rights – entitled to each person by nature – in his Leviathan (1651). ‘The right of nature…is the liberty that each man has to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature…’ (5) He also stresses the right to be free from impediments like imprisonment, torture and forced labour, principles that are now acknowledged as human rights – but he does not use the word as such. John Locke invents in his Second Treatise of Government (1690) a natural state of living, a ‘state of perfect freedom’ (6) in which all are equal and independent. He proclaims the right of individual liberty, bodily integrity and to the fruits of one’s labour: ‘…every man has a property in his own person; this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.’ (7) Interesting is that he consistently uses the word ‘man’, not ‘human’, but it appears that he means both men and women and makes no distinctions in race either. Everybody has the same natural rights in Locke’s state of nature: ‘…promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties … equal amongst another without subordination or subjection.’ This is an early example of rights that we can fully call human according to the definition used above. (8)
Two crucial documents in the history of human rights are the US Declaration of Independence (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789). ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,’ (9) thus begins the US Declaration with its famous words. The rights and freedom proclaimed are said to be universal, natural, unalienable and individual, and can be used against government – all crucial characteristics of human rights. Also, the term ‘rights of men’ is explicitly mentioned – but not human rights. Justly. Women and slaves were excluded from these rights and political participation. We can speak indeed of the rights of (some) men, but not yet of human rights. The same counts for the French Declaration: women and property less men were excluded from the rights mentioned. Here too, a droit de l’homme is not yet a droit humaine.
Thomas Paine, though, translated droits de l’homme once as ‘human rights’ in his Rights of Man (1792), as an ‘accidental variation’ (Moyn 2012: 25), but the phrase did not catch on yet. Another rare early usage of the term comes from Massachusetts Senator Charles Summer after the Civil War in the US: ‘Our war [means] the institutions of our country are dedicated forevermore to human rights, and the Declaration of Independence is made a living letter instead of a promise’ (Ibid: 33).
In Rights of Man, Thomas Paine uses most of the time the word ‘man’ and ‘his’. He says that ‘every individual is born equal in rights with his contemporary’, and: ‘Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights.’ (10) However, there is evidence that with ‘men’ he may also refer to humans in general. In his African Slavery in America (1775), Paine writes: ‘Our traders in men must know the wickedness of that slave-trade…’ (11) – but these traders also dealt in women. And since he speaks of slavery, he cannot refer to white men only. Paine also calls these men ‘people’, ‘multitudes’, ‘those who are enslaved’, ‘these injured people’ (12), and concludes his statement against slavery with: ‘These are the sentiments of justice and humanity,’ a universal notice applying to all humans regardless sex and race. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1790), based on the French Declaration, Olympe de Gauges tries to expand the conception of droits de l’homme to women. Mary Wollstonecraft makes a similar contribution to the expansion of rights in Rights of Woman (1792). But in doing that, it is notable that both use a particularist language as well. They claim the rights of women in particular, not human rights in general. (13)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) also contributes to our contemporary appreciation of human dignity. He thought not only of a universal morality in form of two categorical imperatives (14), but also of a Weltbürgerrecht, a ‘world citizen right’. However, for Kant, this had to be realised in the context of a nation state. The same can be said of the American and French Declarations: they were national documents, whereas modern human rights are international. (15)
The 19th century is a less flourishing intellectual climate for human rights concepts. (16) Rights became even more attached to particular nations through the rise of nationalism, and universal claims got lost. There exists, too, the Marxist criticism of human rights. For Karl Marx, universal rights were just a camouflage for the interests of the self-made mercantilist bourgeoisie. ‘Feudal society was resolved into its basic element – man, but… egoistic man. … Political emancipation is the reduction of man on the one hand to a member of civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and on the other hand to a citizen, a juridical person’ he writes in On the Jewish question (1843). This would undermine solidarity and joint class struggle. Social-democratic thought, however, played a huge part in the struggle for civil, political and economic rights and became included in the later UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).
What made human rights a big issue in international politics was the Second World War and in particular the Holocaust, a crucial catalyst for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. (17) In 1945, the United Nations was established and made human rights – called by this name in its Charter – a central part of its activities. ‘Encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all’ was declared as a goal in the Charter. (18) Trials were held in Nuremberg against nazi officials with the new charge of ‘crimes against humanity’. For the first time, government officials of one country were held responsible internationally for offences against their own citizens. The UN created a Commission on Human Rights, a Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, and a Commission on the Status of Women. In the course of the 20th century, several internationally binding human rights Covenants and Conventions followed.
Although the UN declared 1968 International Human Rights Year, the term was not yet widely used. There were few NGO’s that promoted human rights, and Amnesty International was almost unknown. This changed in the 1970’s. With the election of Jimmy Carter as President, the US government started pursuing human rights in its foreign policy more and more. This is reflected in the press: the words ‘human rights’ were printed in The New York Times in 1977 five times more often than in any year before. (19) In the same year, Amnesty International received the Nobel Peace Price, which contributed to a broader knowledge of the work of human rights organisations. Here, the term human rights really becomes common usage. In the 1970s, the number and activities of human rights organisations increased. The popularity, knowledge of and advocacy for the term and content of human rights have since then only grown.
This unit seeks to compare the work of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) to that of John Locke (Two Treatises on Government) with regards to their views on civil liberties, the role of government, and the extent to which their background in the English Civil War affected their respective philosophies. In doing so the students will explore the history of the English Civil War, define the concepts of civil rights and civil liberties, debate/defend the positions of these men, and evaluate the works of these men with regards to civil liberties, and the role of government.
This unit necessarily covers a great deal of material in a relatively short period of time. In the interest of achieving the unit's goals within that short space of time, and in consideration of the reading levels and the abilities of my students, I have chosen to make use of outlines and quotes, rather than full excerpts of the works of Hobbes and Locke. I believe this choice to be necessary, and given the procedures used in the lessons, this choice serves to enhance certain aspects of this unit.
I have outlined here not only the procedures that I will use in teaching the unit to my students, but also a series of modifications, and a small number of alternative assignments which might be useful in circumstances other than my own.
CHAPTER TWO
STRATEGIES
DEFINING CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
The first lesson of the unit begins with an anticipatory set that asks students to make a list of 10 rights they have. The teacher will then lead a brainstorming session in which the students state all of the rights that they have put down while the teacher writes those rights on the board in 3 separate columns. The first column will represent those things that are actually rights, the second will be those rights, which are civil liberties, and the third column would be rights that they think they have, but they do not.
The class will then discuss these columns. The teacher will pose the question "why did I put these in columns like this?" Ideally a discussion will ensue, though it will be important to give the students ample time to answer, as they may have to think about it. The ultimate goal of this discussion is to identify the fact that civil rights and civil liberties are different, and that they are indeed terms in need of definition. It will be up to the students to then use their textbooks, or potentially the Internet, to define these terms.
When the students have working definitions in place of these terms the class will return to the board and make new lists of things that definitely fall under each category. This series of activities will prepare the students for their homework assignment, which asks them to create more distinctions between the two by explaining the differences between the two terms.
The English Civil War
The third lesson of the unit will focus on conveying the basic facts of the English Civil War to the students. The English Civil War is a vital component to this particular unit, but it is not the focus and the students need only have a basic understanding of the concepts at play here.
The process of this lesson is quite simple. The students will first be asked to create a timeline of events of the English Civil War which includes any battles, actions involving Parliament, actions involving the King, and the resolution of the war. There are many other resources one might choose, encyclopedias or the Internet, for example, but as it is necessary to keep this short and simple, I will limit my class to their textbook Patterns of Interaction.
Once the timeline of events is complete the students will be asked to compile a list of causes and effects of the war that must be written in their own words, rather than copied word for word from sources. I do this to help ensure that they comprehend the information that they are reading. This list, in combination with the timeline will be important in the homework, which is to write one page in which the students answer the question "Was the English Civil War worth fighting? Why or why not?"
This lesson is geared toward giving the students a cursory understanding of the English Civil War. The activities could be substituted with any other activities or resources that would serve that same goal.
The life and work of Thomas Hobbes.
In the fourth lesson of the unit the class progresses to a discussion of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The class will begin with a brief recap of who Hobbes was. At this point the students should have accomplished the assignment to write one paragraph on him, and they will be asked to recall this in the beginning of class by writing 5 lines on the man and his importance.
The students will then be broken into heterogeneous reading groups, in which the weaker readers are paired with the stronger readers in groups of 3 or 4 in the interest of reading a short text. These groups will read the "Introduction Thomas Hobbes" 1 by Vere Chappell. The teacher will circulate and ensure that the groups are reading. The students will be required to create a brief outline of the work, which includes the answers to the questions "What effect did the Civil War have on Hobbes?" and "At what stage in his life did he write Leviathan?" It may be necessary to give a short quiz to assess whether or not this has happened.
With that activity complete the class will reconvene and discuss the answers to these questions before breaking into pairs and beginning the next activity. In the next activity the students will be given four quotes which appear in the Quotes section. These are representative of Hobbes' feelings on civil liberties and the role of government.
Each pair will be tasked with reading the quotes, explaining what they mean in their own words, and coming up with a short outline that treats the quote as a thesis, showing how they would go about proving these theses. Once again it will be necessary for the teacher to circulate around the room and ensure that work is being completed.
Class will wrap up with a discussion of the pro's and con's of the Hobbes method as it is understood by the students. This closure will lead into the homework in which they have to write one paragraph on a pro and one paragraph on a con to Hobbes' view.
While this method does not ensure complete understanding of the depth and breadth of Leviathan, it does allow the teacher to assess the student's ability to make an argument based on a given thesis. Such an approach also allows for use of the material without having to approach whole excerpts. If however this approach is lacking in form or function it would be entirely appropriate to provide the students with outlines or summaries of Leviathan and ask them to answer questions regarding what Hobbes thought of government and civil liberties.
REFERENCES
Beck, Roger, Et al. Eds. World History: Patterns of Interaction. Boston, MA: McDougal Little, 2003.
Chappel, Vere. Ed. Essays on Early Modern Philosophers Thomas Hobbes. Volume 5. New York, NY, Garland Publishing 1992.
Chappel, Vere. Ed. Essays on Early Modern Philosophers John Lock Theory of Knowledge. Volume 8. New York, NY, Garland Publishing 1992.
Chappel, Vere. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Locke. New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Condren, Conal. Thomas Hobbes. New York, NY. Twayne Publishers, 2000.
Laslett, Peter. Ed. John Locke Two Treatises of Government A Critical Edition with an Introduction and Aparatus Criticus. Second Edition. New York, NY. Cambridge University Press. 1960-1967.
Tuck, Richard. Eds. Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Revised Student Edition. New York, NY. Cambridge University Press. 1996.