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| Inventing Human Rights: A History | 
 enlarge | Author: Lynn Hunt
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $7.99
You Save: $6.96 (47%)
New (45) Used (11) from $7.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 91421
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7
ISBN: 0393331997
Dewey Decimal Number: 909
EAN: 9780393331998
ASIN: 0393331997
Publication Date: April 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: new
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Product Description
"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 far and wide. Hunt also shows the continued relevance of human rights in today's world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 History of Human Rights from a Different Angle October 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Lynn Hunt's book "Inventing Human Rights: A History" focuses on the history and evolution of human rights and uses the Declarations in the year's 1776, 1789 and 1948 to trace it and to define the various stages when its violation was "no longer acceptable."
One of the issues that struck me in the book was that once people get a taste of human rights, whether they're natural, political, social etc...it's very hard to restrain. It's reminds me of how economists depict inflation and how hard it is to contain once it gets going. It can feed on itself and they make it akin to putting toothpaste back into a tube. Human Rights strikes in that say vein.
Professor Hunt begins by making a distinction between human rights as something that is natural or in a state of nature and the more modern interpretation of human rights as regards the "rights of humans in society." There is something strikingly secular when thinking about how it all evolved. Monarchical rule was beginning to make less sense at the time. And during the Enlightenment, the idea of the self as separate and apart from those things sacred began to take shape. She describes the use of the word "inalienable" which is defined as something that is not transferable and is not refutable. This is a powerful concept and is the underpinning of the notion of liberty and the rights of man.
She uses the advent of the novel as a seminal event that allowed people to feel empathy towards each other and realize that they all felt the same in some deep a priori
way. "Novels made the point that all people are fundamentally similar because of their inner feelings, and many novels showcased in particular the desire for autonomy." It's this sense of "equality and empathy" that she stresses were the social fabric and conceptual glue that bound society. She insists that the novel, among other things, was responsible for causing people to "identify across social lines" and create shared sympathies which can create strong identities and as she describes later, can be instrumental when thinking about how nationalism took off in the nineteenth century.
She describes how in the eighteenth century that people equated individual autonomy with human freedom. She uses Kant's essay "What is Enlightenment" to highlight his view that enlightenment translated into intellectual autonomy--"the ability to think for oneself." Enlightenment in this form was something that was gained in part through formal education. This was higher thinking in the extreme.
In the section "Bone of their Bone," the idea of torture was explored as indeed explored throughout the book which was an offshoot of the empathy toward one's fellow man and a "new concern for the human body." The rights of the condemned and the methods for punishment began to take shape as the rhetoric of revolution began to insist on the restriction of the use of cruel and inhumane punishments. The guillotine was in one sense a more humane way with which to meet out punishment. She makes the point that someone can't physically make the payment of dues to society if one's body parts are scattered around a field. "Torture ended because the traditional framework of pain and personhood fell apart, to be replaced, bit by bit, by a new framework, in which individuals owned their bodies, had the rights to their separateness and to bodily inviolability, and recognized in other people the same passions, sentiments, and sympathies as in themselves."
Much is made of the act of "declaring." A declaration, one that announces one way of thinking while all together abolishing another was essential in proclaiming ones rights to the world. It had a galvanizing effect but opened up a can of worms as well. Liberty, freedom, the rights of man are great concepts, but they're messy. Who is left out of this equation is as important as who is protected. What to do with children, slaves, the insane, and women is dealt with throughout the book. Ethnic minorities, particularly the Jews, were problematic when rolling out liberties and human rights. Condorcet describes it well: "Either no individual in mankind has true rights, or all have the same ones; and whoever votes against the right of another, whatever be his religion, his color or his sex, has from that moment abjured his own rights."
One of the more interesting parts of the book was the discussion about how different sets of authorities were vying with each other between 1789 and 1815. At issue were the rights of man on the one hand and what is described as "hierarchical society" on the other. Both made a "nationalistic" case with those heralding the rights of man trumping anything to do with the nation and those like Edmund Burke who argued that "liberty could only be guaranteed by a government rooted in a nation's history, with the emphasis on history. Rights only worked, he insisted, when they grew out of longstanding traditions and practices." Burke makes a compelling argument in his book "Reflections on the Revolution in France," that the rights of man were not worth the paper they were written on and did not have the gravitas or the moral high ground when thinking about the "love of God, awe of kings, duty towards magistrates, reverence of priests, and deference toward one's betters." This is all well and good if you're one of the revered.
Human Rights is something we expect today. And it's also something we're astounded is so routinely violated. This is why in this day and age everyone is on the look out for despots. When they're found they are deposed or lacking that despised. One's rights in some respects are elevated when you have the power to remove someone else's. These documents in the appendix of the book were written and "declared" because the rights of all must be preserved or we have no rights at all. They must be defended and protected individually and en masse. They are fragile and yet fundamental. In many ways they're circular. "The process had and has an undeniable circularity to it: you know the meaning of human rights because you feel distressed when they are violated."
 An the rest of the world? What kind of history is this? April 11, 2008
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
A very interesting topic, a very important issue, but defined through the eyes of a Cultural Historian that can not see further than her place of birth (the U.S.) or her academic interest (French history). Where is the discussion of the parts of the world that also discussed these issues? Where is Bartolome de Las Casas? Where is Costa Rica that abolished the death penaly in 1870? Why not to talk about the most extreme cases of Human Rights abuses, perpretrated by the French (Algeria) and the U.S. (Latin America, Vietnam)? A great topic is diminished by a square mind.
 A Novel Approach to Human Rights December 3, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Lynn Hunt's primary argument for the increased awareness of human rights in the eighteenth century is a novel one, literally. She argued that as citizens became emotionally involved in novels, they gained empathy skills, and thereafter saw the world in a new way. She drew a connection between the "three greatest novels of psychological identification of the eighteenth century" with the oncoming concepts of human rights. She chose three novels written by men but focusing on women lead characters: Julie, by Rousseau (1761), Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-48), by Samuel Richardson. These novels were epistolary, or written as a series of documents, such as letters. This approach avoided a third person narrator, and increased readers' empathy with the characters. As the readers identified with the characters, they transformed their own worlds around them. Reading about women as lead characters increased women's sense of autonomy.
Prior to the 1760's, European and American society often used torture as a means of crime deterrence and extraction of evidence. As the concept of the sacredness of the human body emerged in the mid-eighteenth century, eyes were opened to the cruel and unusual nature of such punishments. Hunt cited the rise in popularity of portrait painting, increased privacy in houses, and increased appreciation for music as evidence of increased awareness of the sanctity of the individual.
American colonists and French citizens asserted their natural rights by formal declaration. While they maintained rights as citizens of their respective countries, they declared that they had rights that were God-given, to all men. A reigning monarch had no authority to restrict these basic rights. However, once these rights were declared, how far would the implications go? To Jews? To poor men? To criminals? To women and children? Could they all vote and take part in the political process too? John Adams feared that there would be no end to it. Hunt explained that the process of granting rights followed the same pattern in France, England, and the United States. For example, the non-dominant Christian religion first gained rights, then the Jews, and then eventually all religions. In the natural course of events, slaves eventually would gain their freedom, and women would be considered equal.
The rise of nationalism in the early nineteenth century curtailed the universal view of human rights. Germans wanted to be purely German; South American countries wanted to shed Spain from their vestiges. Ethnic minorities became barred from the political process, and countries started to fight against immigration. Sexism, racism, and anti-Semitism took on biological explanations which trumped earlier arguments about the universality of the human experience. Certain people were regarded as naturally inferior, and no legislation could change that. Spiraling down to its nadir, this philosophy concluded in the reign of Adolf Hitler.
After World War II, the United Nations was formed to prevent such future atrocities as had been recently witnessed. However, even with Auschwitz fresh on their minds, Great Britain and the Soviet Union had to be prodded into accepting a human rights declaration, and only agreed when the United Nations stated that it would not interfere with domestic affairs. NGO's like Amnesty International have picked up the baton of enforcement of these rights. However, the fight has a long way to go, as Hunt included "Americans at Abu Ghraib" in her list of continued evidence of problems.
A Quick General Overview September 11, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found this book very easy to read and engaging but at the end of the day did not find it very substantive. I think it's fine as a general overview of the history of modern human rights, and especially as to the French Revolution, which I believe is the author's specialty. If you are interested in something substantive or heavy duty, this is not the title you're looking for.
Extremely disappointing August 28, 2007
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
I have to admit that I find virtually incomprehensible the strong reviews that this book has received in the press (and among some other amazon reviewers). Did they really read the same book? I made it to page 127 (half way) before putting the book down in despair. It's poorly written, badly organized, and as far as I could tell offers little insight into the development of human rights. Some of the arguments presented by the author are downright bizarre. For example, early on, the author declares that widespread reading of torture and epistolarly novels "had physical effects that translated into brain changes," which then led to new ideas about human rights. Weird. The author is a widely respected academic. What happened?
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