30 The Modern Invention of Human Rights
Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, Third Edition (Cornell University Press, 2013)
Question: Why did the idea of human rights arise in the West?
3. The Modern Invention of Human Rights
What in “modernity” led to the development of human rights? In a gross (but I hope insightful) oversimplification, I want to suggest that modern states and modern markets triggered social processes and struggles that eventually [87] transformed hierarchical polities of rulers and subjects into more egalitarian polities of offi ce holders and citizens. [8]
To reduce three centuries to a few paragraphs, ever more powerful capitalist markets and sovereign, bureaucratic states gradually penetrated first Europe and then the globe. In the process, “traditional” communities, and their systems of mutual support and obligation, were disrupted, destroyed, or radically transformed, typically with traumatic consequences. These changes created the problems that human rights were ‘designed’ to solve: vast numbers of relatively separate families and individuals left to face a growing range of increasingly unbuff ered economic and political threats to their interests and dignity.
The absolutist state--increasingly freed from the constraints of crosscutting feudal obligations, independent religious authorities, and tradition---offered one solution: a society organized around a monarchist hierarchy justified by a state religion. But the newly emergent bourgeoisie, the other principal beneficiary of early modern markets and states, envisioned a society in which the claims of property balanced those of birth. By the late seventeenth century, such claims increasingly were formulated in terms of natural rights.
More or less contemporaneously, the Reformation disrupted the unity of Christendom, with consequences that were often even more violent. By the middle of the seventeenth century, however, states gradually began to stop fighting over religion. Although full religious equality was far off–just as
bourgeois calls for ‘equal’ treatment initially fell far short of full political equality even for themselves, let alone for all--religious toleration (at least for some Christians sects) gradually became the European norm.
Add to this the growing possibilities for physical and social mobility--facilitated by the consolidation of states and the expansion of markets--and we have the crucible out of which contemporary human rights ideas and practices were formed. As ‘modernization’ progressed, an ever-widening range of dispossessed groups advanced claims first for relief from legal and political disabilities, then for full and equal inclusion. Such demands took many forms, including appeals to scripture, church, morality, tradition, justice, natural law, order, social utility, and national strength. Claims of equal and inalienable natural or human rights, however, increasingly came to be preferred--and over the past couple decades have become globally hegemonic.
fn8 If I were to add one more element to this story it would be the development of modern scientific rationality, which both helped to tear down traditional hierarchies and to establish new forms of social, economic, and political organization. The association of modern with scientific rationality has been especially emphasized by the “Stanford School” of “world society theory.” See, for example, Meyer et al. (1997), Meyer and Jepperson (2000), and Thomas (2010).
Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, Third Edition (Cornell University Press, 2013)
Question: Why did the idea of human rights arise in the West?
3. The Modern Invention of Human Rights
What in “modernity” led to the development of human rights? In a gross (but I hope insightful) oversimplification, I want to suggest that modern states and modern markets triggered social processes and struggles that eventually [87] transformed hierarchical polities of rulers and subjects into more egalitarian polities of offi ce holders and citizens. [8]
To reduce three centuries to a few paragraphs, ever more powerful capitalist markets and sovereign, bureaucratic states gradually penetrated first Europe and then the globe. In the process, “traditional” communities, and their systems of mutual support and obligation, were disrupted, destroyed, or radically transformed, typically with traumatic consequences. These changes created the problems that human rights were ‘designed’ to solve: vast numbers of relatively separate families and individuals left to face a growing range of increasingly unbuff ered economic and political threats to their interests and dignity.
The absolutist state--increasingly freed from the constraints of crosscutting feudal obligations, independent religious authorities, and tradition---offered one solution: a society organized around a monarchist hierarchy justified by a state religion. But the newly emergent bourgeoisie, the other principal beneficiary of early modern markets and states, envisioned a society in which the claims of property balanced those of birth. By the late seventeenth century, such claims increasingly were formulated in terms of natural rights.
More or less contemporaneously, the Reformation disrupted the unity of Christendom, with consequences that were often even more violent. By the middle of the seventeenth century, however, states gradually began to stop fighting over religion. Although full religious equality was far off–just as
bourgeois calls for ‘equal’ treatment initially fell far short of full political equality even for themselves, let alone for all--religious toleration (at least for some Christians sects) gradually became the European norm.
Add to this the growing possibilities for physical and social mobility--facilitated by the consolidation of states and the expansion of markets--and we have the crucible out of which contemporary human rights ideas and practices were formed. As ‘modernization’ progressed, an ever-widening range of dispossessed groups advanced claims first for relief from legal and political disabilities, then for full and equal inclusion. Such demands took many forms, including appeals to scripture, church, morality, tradition, justice, natural law, order, social utility, and national strength. Claims of equal and inalienable natural or human rights, however, increasingly came to be preferred--and over the past couple decades have become globally hegemonic.
fn8 If I were to add one more element to this story it would be the development of modern scientific rationality, which both helped to tear down traditional hierarchies and to establish new forms of social, economic, and political organization. The association of modern with scientific rationality has been especially emphasized by the “Stanford School” of “world society theory.” See, for example, Meyer et al. (1997), Meyer and Jepperson (2000), and Thomas (2010).
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