What are the origins of human rights? This question, rarely asked before the end of the Cold War, has in recent years become a major focus of historical and ideological strife. In this sequence of reflective and critical studies, Samuel Moyn engages with some of the leading interpreters of human rights, thinkers who have been creating a field from scratch without due reflection on the local and temporal contexts of the stories they are telling. Having staked out his owns claims about the postwar origins of human rights discourse in his acclaimed Last Utopia, Moyn, in this volume, takes issue with rival conceptions—including, especially, those that underlie justifications of humanitarian intervention.
Author(s): Samuel Moyn
Publisher: Verso Books
Year: 2014
Language: English
Commentary: ---PDF Conv (From .epub)---
Pages: 113
Tags: Human Rights
Halftitle Page......Page 2
Title Page......Page 3
Copyright Page......Page 4
Dedication......Page 5
Contents......Page 7
Preface......Page 8
1. On the Genealogy of Morals......Page 14
2. The Surprising Origins of Human Dignity......Page 26
3. Spectacular Wrongs: On Humanitarian Intervention......Page 36
4. Of Deserts and Promised Lands: On International Courts......Page 47
5. Human Rights in History......Page 58
6. The Intersection with Holocaust Memory......Page 70
7. Torture and Taboo......Page 77
8. Soft Sells: On Liberal Internationalism......Page 91
Epilogue: The Future of Human Rights......Page 100
Acknowledgments......Page 108
Index......Page 109
