“We are beckoned to see the world through a one-way mirror, as if we are threatened and innocent and the rest of humanity is threatening, or wretched, or expendable. Our memory is struggling to rescue the truth that human rights were not handed down as privileges from a parliament, or a boardroom, or an institution, but that peace is only possible with justice and with information that gives us the power to act justly.”
John Pilger

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

A New Book: Human Rights on Trial A Genealogy of the Critique of Human Rights

Human Rights on Trial A Genealogy of the Critique of Human Rights

Justine Lacroix, Université Libre de Bruxelles , Jean-Yves Pranchère, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Cambridge - May 2018
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/human-rights-on-trial/B060533D35B0CE6B870791518F5CE20B#.WucmfqtyReU.twitter

The first systematic analysis of the arguments made against human rights from the French Revolution to the present day. Through the writings of Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, Auguste Comte, Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Karl Marx, Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt, the authors explore the divergences and convergences between these 'classical' arguments against human rights and the contemporary critiques made both in Anglo-American and French political philosophy. Human Rights on Trial is unique in its marriage of history of ideas with normative theory, and its integration of British/North American and continental debates on human rights. It offers a powerful rebuttal of the dominant belief in a sharp division between human rights today and the rights of man proclaimed at the end of the eighteenth century. It also offers a strong framework for a democratic defence of human rights.