Historical Origins of Human Rights

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Historical Origins of Human Rights

• Lecture 2
• Origins of the Concept of Humanity
• January 22, 2007

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outline

• universalism as a historical problem
• how to think about it
• Greek Origins?
• E. Troeltsch Christianity and Stoicism
• digression monotheism in general
• Roman fusion
• Ecce Homo
• to be human is to be dignified
• from humanization to dehumanization
• an invention of recent date

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ethical universalism as a historical problem

• the prevalence of exclusionary worldviews in
  human societies in history
• simple ethnocentrism the tribalistic view
• complex ethnocentrism humans versus non-humans
• compare ethical universalism the notion that
  humans, in virtue of being human, have dignity
  and value
• the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  inherent dignity of all members of the human
  family.
• did ethical universalism have to be discovered
  (or invented)?

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how to think about it

• minimalist versus maximalist versions of unity
• biological unity
• formal versus substantive unity
• humanness has dignity, a quasi-sacred value
• when does the belief that biological unity
  implies some further content arise?
• in particular, when does the idea that humanity
  confers dignity arise?

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Hannah Arendt

• a human being or homo in the original meaning
  of the word indicated someone outside the range
  of the law and the body politic of the citizens,
  as for instance a slave  but certainly a
  politically irrelevant being.

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Greek origins?

• Greeks versus barbarians 
• Aristotle Affects also exists by nature between
  members of the same species, and especially among
  men and for this reason we praise those who love
  their fellow men. Even on our travels we can see
  how near and dear ever man is to every other
  (Nicomachean Ethics 1155a16-22).
• Aristotle natural slavery

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Greek origins? contd

• Bruno Snell 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 as a barbarian she has no rights, but as
  a human she has.
• philanthropia
• Peloponnesian war
• the Melian genocide
• Stoicism

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Troeltsch on the combination of Stoicism and
Christianity

• Ernst Troeltsch (not important who he was) argued
  that the universalism of the natural law/natural
  right tradition arose from the fusion of Stoicism
  and Christianity
• Christianity as a religion of the end-times that
  could by itself give rise to no this-worldly
  moral and political thought
• hence Stoicism as vessel of Christian values

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Stoic universalism

• why physics ? theology ? anthropology 
• nature is one, animated by a divine principle,
  humans are part of nature, aware of this
  principle through thought, therefore humanity is
  one
• Marcus Aurelius If the power of thought is
  common to all, common also is reason, through
  which we are rational beings. If so, that reason
  is common which tells us what to do and what not
  to do. If so, law also common. If so, we are
  citizens. If so, we are fellow members of a
  community. If so, the universe is as it were a
  city. For of what other community can the whole
  human race be said to be fellow members?
• Cicero, De finibus The mere fact of their
  common humanity requires that one man should feel
  another man to be akin to him.
• Seneca

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Israelite religion

• tribalism
• election
• Adam and Noah as common ancestors
• Noachide law (Talmud)
• prophetic universalism
• Jesus

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Christianity

• Christian universalism
• There is no Jew or Greek, there is no longer
  male and female for all of you are one in Christ
  Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are
  Abrahams offspring, heirs according to the
  promise (Galatians 3 28-9)
• Troeltschs argument about why Christianity not
  enough on its own

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christianity, contd

• limits to the Christian story
• physical cruelty body as devotional object
• slavery (Hams curse)
• holy war

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compassion for suffering humanity

• after year 1000, changes in Christian devotion
• from Jesus as judge
• to Jesus as sufferer
• Anselm, Cur deus homo (Why God Became Man)
• devotion to Mary as compassionate

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ecce homo

• The scourged and mocked Christ is shown wearing a
  crown of thorns and purple robe placed on him by
  the Roman soldiers. In many examples, his wrists
  are tied and a rope is knotted around his neck.
  Scourge marks are frequently emphasized, and his
  face expresses compassion toward his accusers. In
  the narrative versions, two guards are often
  shown supporting the suffering figure while
  Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea,
  gestures toward Christ, illustrating his words

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antonello da messina (1473)
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hieronymus bosch (1490)
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titian (1543)
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caravaggio (1600)
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georg grosz (1924)
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thinking about ecce homo

• from literalism to symbolism
• Jesus as symbolic of humanness in general?
• nudity (cf. Joseph de Maistre I have seen in my
  time Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc. I even
  know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one may be a
  Persian but as for Man, I declare I never met
  him in my life if he exists, it is without my
  knowledge.
• suffering
• victim of politics
• to be human is to be the representative of non-
  or suprapolitical values

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to be human is to be dignified

• the one single result of the Renaissance is
  enough to fill us with everlasting thankfulness.
  The logical notion of humanity was old enough
   but there the notion became a fact. (Jacob
  Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance
  in Italy)
• Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of
  Man (1486)
• Christian perfectionism
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of
  Morals (1785)

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human dignity, contd

• the formula of humanity
• humanness not simply as a power (choice and
  freedom, the agency to set ends for oneself), but
  also both sacredness in worth and vulnerability
  to attack and violation
• man is not a thing and hence is not something
  to be used merely as a means he must in all his
  actions always be regarded as an end in himself.
  Therefore, I cannot dispose of man by
  mutilating, damaging, or killing him (Kant, Ak.,
  429).

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from humanization to de-humanization

• dehumanize, v. trans. To deprive of human
  character or attributes.
• 1818 MOORE Diary 4 Dec., Turner's face was a good
  deal de-humanised. 1889 Pall Mall G. 26 Nov. 1/2
  Our great towns de-humanize our children.
• Hence dehumanized ppl. a. dehumanizing vbl. n.
  and ppl. a. also dehumanization.

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from humanization to de-humanization, contd

• Dehumanization 1844 N. Brit. Rev. II. 109 These
  almost de-humanized creatures. 1856 R. A. VAUGHAN
  Mystics IV. ii. note, The mystics..representing
  regeneration almost as a process of
  dehumanization. 1857 J. PULSFORD Quiet Hours 156
  It would seem as though the world's method of
  Education were dehumanizing. 1860 O. W. HOLMES
  Elsie V. xxii. (1891) 325 Centuries of
  de-humanizing celibacy. 1882 F. HARRISON Choice
  Bks. (1886) 446 To rehumanise the dehumanised
  members of society. 1889 G. GISSING Nether World
  III. i. 19 The last step in that process of
  dehumanisation which threatens idealists of his
  type.
• similarly, the word-concepts of humane and
  humanitarian

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an invention of recent date

• Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1966)
• Humanity is an invention of recent date. And one
  perhaps nearing its end. If the arrangements
  that allowed it were to disappear as they
  appeared. . . one can certainly wager that
  humanity would be erased, like a face drawn in
  sand at the edge of the sea.