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Inventing Human Rights: A History Paperback – April 17, 2008

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 193 ratings

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“A tour de force.”―Gordon S. Wood, New York Times Book Review

How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals and how human rights continue to be contested today.
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Elegant... intriguing, if not audacious... Hunt is an astute historian.”
-
Joanna Bourke, Harper's

“Fast-paced, provocative, and ultimately optimistic. Declarations, she writes, are not empty words but transformative; they make us want to become the people they claim we are.”
-
The New Yorker

“A provocative and engaging history of the political impact of human rights.”
-
Gary J. Bass, New Republic

“This is a wonderful story of the emergence and development of the powerful idea of human rights, written by one of the leading historians of our time.”
-
Amartya Sen

“Rich, elegant, and persuasive.”
-
London Review of Books

“As Americans begin to hold their leaders accountable for the mistakes made in the war against terror, this book ought to serve as a guide to thinking about one of the most serious mistakes of all, the belief that America can win that war by revoking the Declaration that brought the nation into being.”
-
Alan Wolfe, Commonweal

About the Author

Lynn Hunt is Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, former president of the American Historical Association, and author of numerous works, including Inventing Human Rights and Telling the Truth about History. She lives in Los Angeles.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Presumed to be 1st as edition is unstated (April 17, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393331997
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393331998
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 193 ratings

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4.2 out of 5 stars
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Customers say

Customers find the book provides a good overview of the topic. They appreciate the well-structured content and analysis. Readers also mention that the book sheds light on this period of history with an interesting perspective on human rights.

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6 customers mention "Content"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's content well-structured and helpful for research projects. They appreciate the analysis and writing style. The compilation work is well-organized, using the author's own resources or other historians.

"...of evolution of human rights from rights of Man and torture is well compiled, addictive and brilliantly arranged for general understanding...." Read more

"...the compilation work was well set up with the use of his own resources or other historians; -..." Read more

"...I couln't leave it untill I finished it! It was very helpful for my research project with the University of Costa Rica...." Read more

"...All in all it is a decent introduction to the topic" Read more

6 customers mention "Interest"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book interesting. They say it sheds light on this period of history and provides an interesting take on the history of human rights.

"...This interesting book sheds light on this period of history. Consider the following quote: “..." Read more

"A whirlwind of an intellectual history of the idea of human rights in a short spanse, even though the parts on epistolary novels and torture seem to..." Read more

"Awesome book! Must read for modern history lovers." Read more

"An interesting take on the history of Human Rights!..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2014
    The Enlightenment was a period of history when the influence and power of the Christian churches diminished, and can be blamed for the genocide and wars of the 19th and 20th century. This interesting book sheds light on this period of history. Consider the following quote:

    “Bentham objected to the idea that natural law was innate in the person and discoverable by reason. He therefore basically rejected the entire natural law tradition and with it natural rights. The principle of utility….served as the best measure of right and wrong.” (location 1405)

    What is utility and what is right and wrong? The principle of utility is that governments should strive to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Utility is the ability of a good to make a person happy. Utility can clearly be measured on an ordinal scale. In a Robinson Crusoe economy, if Man Friday spends his time hunting instead of fishing, the utility of meat is greater than the utility of fish for Friday. If Crusoe exchanges meat for fish with Friday, it means the utility of the fish is greater for Crusoe. But are there units of utility? If Friday is starving and steals a little meat from Crusoe, can you say Friday’s utility increased 5 units and Crusoe’s utility decrease only 1 unit?

    Whether utilities are measured on a cardinal or ordinal scale sheds light on the questions of morality, right and wrong, and justice. If utilities are measured on an ordinal scale, utilities are clearly maximized if Crusoe and Friday cooperate with one another. If utilities are measured on a cardinal scale, it is not so clear. The hypothetical island may need a beast of burden, and slavery may be a just or moral arrangement. This raises the question of what the difference is between cooperation and slavery? In other words, what is coercion and force as opposed to free interactions between human beings. The doctrine of original sin sheds light on this question, and the author brings it up in her discussion of the change in laws about judicial torture and public punishment:

    “This tendency toward evil in mankind resulted from original sin, the Christian doctrine that all people have been innately predisposed to sin ever since Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace in the Garden of Eden.” (location 1009)

    In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were like God because they possessed sanctifying grace. They were not subject to death or sickness, but they had bodies so they could communicate with one another. If they farmed the land, it was because they enjoyed the activity. They enjoyed eating, but did not suffer from hunger. Their communications were free because Adam could not affect Eve’s consciousness without her consent, and vice a versa. According Paradise Lost by John Milton, Eve committed the sin of disobedience and Adam the sin of being excessively fond of Eve, and they found themselves in the world we live in. In this world, we define cooperation/freedom and slavery/force in terms of utilities measured on an ordinal scale.

    According to Thomas Aquinas, morality is based on the principle that humans are responsible for their actions. Moral laws are secondary principles. What determines right and wrong is the tiny voice inside our mind that we call conscience. Sinning doesn’t mean violating a moral law, it means not following your conscience. Sinning and morality relate to family life, and justice relates to the actions of governments. If the Robinson Crusoe economy is a model for family life, slavery is immoral. If it is a model for government, slavery is unjust.

    The doctrine of original sin also sheds light on the question of property rights. There clearly was no property before the fall. God gave the Garden of Eden to both Adam and Eve. It follows that there was no property rights after the fall. Adam and Eve created property rights in their state of sin.
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2015
    first of all the book is very well structured with the content. Despite unstable and spreading issues, Lynn Hunt gathers and assimilated issues extraordinarily from third chapter. So first two chapter might embarrass and confuse you a bit, but a gradual and patient read ahead will make everything Crystal clear.

    Her analysis of evolution of human rights from rights of Man and torture is well compiled, addictive and brilliantly arranged for general understanding. Her writing of torture and change in prison and legal system makes me call her 'Simple Foucault'. Final chapter is equally persuasive wot her proper and unbiased analysis of the gestation of current Universal Declaration.
  • Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2018
    Just finished to read L. Hunt's text with many notes and notes, I write a review to say that:
    - the compilation work was well set up with the use of his own resources or other historians;
    - the historical precedents to reach 1789 are partially ignored; to get to "interiority" and "empathy" we started from Humanism and we crossed the Renaissance through literature and art to reach "self-awareness" and get out of deo-centrism.
    - rightly focuses on the work questioned but profitable during the first four years of the French Revolution, but the various non-French prior events are omitted as: the closure of the Tribunal of the Inquisition and related torture in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1742 (first in the world) after the case of Tommaso Crudeli, the abolition of the death penalty of November 30, 1786 with which the Grand Duke Leopoldo of Lorraine-Tuscany again brought Tuscany to be the first in the world. And this is a relevant historical fact that we can ignore.
    - rightly compares the scope of the deepening of the French Revolution with the superficial one of the American Revolution, without however taking away the merit of being the first in the world to affirm Human Rights.
    - on the question of women is detailed only in the statements of various judges, writers and nobles of the time; Hunt does not touch at all the role of the Church and of the other two monotheistic religions in which migsogyny is inherent in their structure, as we can still see today. The "female" consideration of the minimum human dignity if nothing, saves and increases the priestly role of the male who imposes his position above it in the self-referential hierarchy and which consequently reaffirms itself in civil society.

    The work is a good long-term contribution to the project the affirmation of Human Rights, which, if it had been upset in the XX century, after the WWII took effect again at least in Western countries.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars History
    Reviewed in Canada on December 25, 2020
    Excellent price bought this for an upcoming course Fast delivery !
  • docread
    5.0 out of 5 stars The 18th Century is the key to understanding the “ invention of human rights”
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2021
    An original work of cultural and social history, that covers a lot of ground in a clear concise manner and introduces an interesting thesis to explain the “ invention of human rights”. The author describes some of the cultural changes during the 18th Century in France, England, Scotland and America, that drove the gradual transformation in social attitudes and led to the political articulation of the declarations of “ human rights”. She traces this change of attitudes in the emergence of a new emotional and intellectual climate, facilitating a process of imaginative identification with the suffering of others, appeals to fellow feeling and a deeper preoccupation with personal autonomy. She contends that one of main drivers for this cultural change was the publication of the epistolary novels of Samuel Richardson: Pamela and Clarissa, and Rousseau’s Julie, that encouraged emotional identification and empathy with the heroines in their struggle for personal autonomy. Her astute analysis links up this affective transformation among the reading public with the rational arguments of the philosophers and political thinkers of the 17th and 18th Centuries, in favour of self determination, and freedom from the shackles of tradition, religion, social and racial hierarchy, with the adoption of more humane and egalitarian norms in the treatment of the others.

    One of the most important consequence of this revolution in attitudes feeding moral sensibility, was the condemnation of judicial torture and cruel corporal punishments, as she states “ Pain, punishment, and the spectacle of suffering gradually lost their religious moorings in the second half of the 18th Century”. This new sense of personhood captured in literature and Art, was also part of the Civilising process described by Norbert Elias that included amongst others a greater control of physiological functions and more self control and decorum in public. For the middle classes more privacy as with reading, more commissions for portraiture and a greater reverence for musical performances that used to be interrupted or drowned in loud conversations.

    The second half of the book is devoted to the numerous political debates around the formulation of human rights initiated by the American declaration of independence in 1776 and the French Revolution with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. She describes the lobbying from different quarters and how the internal logic of the whole process led to unanticipated results with the widening of minorities’ franchise and extension of rights. Even though, there were many inconsistencies in practice in the application of these highly sounding principles with regards to the black slaves and generally to women. This universalist idealism for human rights showed marked regression during the 19th Century with the rise of exclusive Nationalism and pseudo scientific explanations for racial and gender differences. Voting suffrage was progressively widened for non property holders but acquired much later by women even in GB in 1928 and France as late as 1944.

    One would have liked to learn a bit more about the political manoeuvring and behind the scenes debates with the adoption in 1948 of the Universal declaration of Human Rights. How consensus was obtained between such different protagonists and to what extent the Nuremberg trials and the decolonisation campaigns bore some influence on its deliberations? But I suppose this would make the subject of another book.
    This is an engaging history of the birth of “ human rights” in the European and American imagination and intellect.
  • Geschichte
    4.0 out of 5 stars Inventing Human Rights
    Reviewed in Germany on March 5, 2013
    Lynn Hunt hat eine sehr originelle, gut lesbare Geschichte der Menschenrechte geschrieben. Zwar wird die Geschichte der Menschenrecht sehr abgekürzt und reicht daher nicht weit zurück; das mag aber an dem zugrundegelegten Menschenrechtsbegriff liegen. Dieser berücksichtigt stark die Form der Menschenrechte. Daher resultiert auch die Originalität. Themen wie: Was bedeutet es, daß die Menschenrechte deklariert werden, findet man in anderen Darstellungen eher selten. Daß die Menschenrechte - wenn auch nur kurzfristig versagt hätten - ist freilich eine sehr bestreitbare These, auch wenn Lynn auf ihren langfristigen Erfolg hofft. Gerade wegen solcher kontroverser Ansichten, ist das Buch aber empfehlenswert.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Jean-Paul Azam
    4.0 out of 5 stars Une émotion en marche
    Reviewed in France on July 11, 2009
    Lynn Hunt raconte l'histoire des droits humains depuis le XVIII-ième siècle, comme un idée qui s'impose progressivement dans les couches moyennes de la société occidentale. Elle accorde une importance cruciale au développement d'une sensibilité égalitaire dans la société poussée par des romans populaires. Elle montre notamment comment La nouvelle Eloïse de Rousseau, et quelques autres romans dans les pays voisins, ont permis de renforcer l'empathie des lecteurs, en montrant comment des gens finalement assez médiocre d'un point de vue social ont des sentiments aussi nobles que ceux des héros de la littérature plus élitiste qui les a précédé. Elle montre ensuite comment cette sensibilité s'est imposée dans la déclaration d'indépendance américaine de 1776, dans la déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789, et enfin dans la déclaration universelle des droits humains de 1948. Lynn Hunt croit donc au pouvoir des idées et des émotions, mais elle ne souligne pas la façon dont ces idées ont servi les couches sociales montantes des deux siècles suivants. On souhaite qu'elle ait raison, et que le pouvoir de ces idées aide notre siècle à vaincre le racisme et la discrimination qui menacent les sociétés occidentales dans leurs fondements mêmes.
  • はっきり言う人
    5.0 out of 5 stars 読みやすい良書
    Reviewed in Japan on March 28, 2009
    著者は「人権」をあらゆる面から分析している。特に人権の歴史として研究したい人にはお勧めである。文法も変な癖がなくて、普通に読み進めることができる。人権の全体像を把握したい人、人権思想の基礎を英語で読みたい人、法学系の大学生や大学院生、また研究者の方々にはぜひお勧めします。