scholarly journals The Self-Evidence of Human Rights

Author(s):  
Bardo Fassbender

The chapter is a comment on Lynn Hunt’s reconsideration, in the same volume, of a crucial moment in the history of human rights when in North America and in France for the first time a ‘self-evidence’ of certain rights of ‘all men’ was claimed in constitutional discourse and documents, and a fundamental shift occurred in the explanation of human rights from a religious framework towards a secular one. The first part of the comment is devoted to the drafting history of the 1776 Declaration of Independence of the United States and to the meaning of the claim to ‘self-evidence’ in the Declaration. In a second part, the author returns to Lynn Hunt’s analysis of the limitations of the actual enjoyment of rights in eighteenth-century North America and France. The third part of the comment deals with the importance, or rather unimportance, of the notion of the self-evidence of human rights in the present age. It is argued that the idea of self-evidence proclaimed in 1776 failed to find general recognition, so that we must search for a new credible foundation of universal human rights.

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 311-352
Author(s):  
Owen Dudley Edwards

To assert at the outset of this study, as I do, that the task before me is both impossible and essential, may be justly proclaimed a proceeding both cowardly and obvious. We are principally concerned with the nineteenth century, but the twentieth century prolonged many of the features of Irish Roman Catholic clerical identity of the nineteenth, in North America as elsewhere. Vitally important patterns and castes (social and mental) were established in the eighteenth century, and the first Irish-American Roman Catholic priestof major significance in the United States, John Carroll (1735-1815), first Roman Catholic bishop in the U.SA and first archbishop of Baltimore, owed his American birth initially to migration of his father’s kinsmen in the late seventeenth century. Anglophone North America from 178 3 consisted of two political obediences, with similarities and contrasts both subtle and, at least superficially, forceful. The huge and consistently expanding area of white settlement in North America in which the Irish Catholic clergy participated, created other great divergences: when American historians at the end of the nineteenth century under the influence of figures as divergent as Frederick Jackson Turner of the ‘frontier thesis’, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips of slavery apologetics, and Alfred Thayer Mahan of sea-power celebration, looked to environmentalism as the chief explanation of the American past, they may have oversimplified—indeed, they did oversimplify—but their sheer preoccupation with the question gives its own warnings against a filio-pietism which chooses to see an Irish ethnic character resolutely asserting itself to the third, fourth, and even later generations.


Author(s):  
Doni Whitsett ◽  
Natasha Post Rosow

This chapter focuses on the experiences of women in high demand groups, also known as “cults.” Despite the chapter’s regional focus on North America, particularly the United States, this is a transnational phenomenon with satellite communities throughout the world. The chapter provides a brief history of cults in the United States and highlights the various abuses to which women are subjected, from psychological abuses such as medical neglect, loss of reproductive rights, separation from children, and attachment trauma to physical and sexual violence. The chapter also discusses legal obstacles to remedying these human rights violations, provides resources for assistance, and makes suggestions for advocacy.


1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 140-156
Author(s):  
Hans Kohn

A few hours before his sudden death last year in Bonn, Hajo Holborn remarked that in spite of the ill health of his last years his life had been a happy one. He had an unusually successful career in his beloved profession, first as a young man in Germany, then as a leading scholar in his field in the United States; and he was able to finish his magnum opus,A History of Modern Germany, before his death. Its first volume appeared in 1959; its third and last, in 1969. As a disciple of Wilhelm Dilthey and of Friedrich Meinecke, Holborn gave special attention to the “realm of ideas,” to the religious, intellectual, and artistic achievements of Germany. While he wrote primarily political history and succeeded in ordering the mass of information which he provides into a meaningful narrative which holds the reader's interest, the high points are his discussion of the thinkers and poets from Germany's rapid cultural rise in the late eighteenth century to its decline after the mid-nineteenth century. One of the best of these subchapters is the one on Marx and Engels, a masterpiece of objectivity. It is to be found in the second volume of theHistory, though chronologically Marx and Engels belong in the third volume, which covers the period from 1840 to 1945. (After all, the two young men met and their public activity began only after 1840 and their thought and dedicated life began to exercise their impact only decades later.) By 1945, when Holborn's History ends, Marx had become the most widely known German, whose influence shaped history on a worldwide scale and to a degree surpassing by far that of the other great German with whom Holborn starts hisHistory, Martin Luther.


Author(s):  
Lynn Hunt

Human rights depend on universal claims made at a particular place and moment in time. The most crucial and vulnerable of these claims is the assertion of the self-evidence of the rights of all humans. The claim to the self-evidence of the rights of ‘all men’ or ‘man’ was established in the eighteenth century for distinct historical reasons; some of these still have resonance today and others do not. A consideration of this founding moment of self-evidence can provide a critical perspective on discussions of human rights today by drawing attention both to its power and its limitations. The history of human rights alerts us to the pitfalls that lay before us still.


1983 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Boucot ◽  
C. H. C. Brunton ◽  
J. N. Theron

SummaryThe Devonian brachiopod Tropidoleptus is recognized for the first time in South Africa. It is present in the lower part of the Witteberg Group at four widely separated localities. Data regarding the stratigraphical range of the genus elsewhere, combined with information on recently described fossil plants and vertebrates from underlying strata of the upper Bokkeveld Group, suggest that a Frasnian or even Givetian age is reasonable for the lower part of the Witteberg Group. The recognition of Tropidoleptus in a shallow water, near-shore, molluscan association, at the top of the South African marine Devonian sequence, is similar to its occurrence in Bolivia, and suggests a common Malvinokaffric Realm history of shallowing, prior to later Devonian or early Carboniferous non-marine sedimentation. It is noteworthy that Tropidoleptus is now known to occur in ecologically suitable environments around the Atlantic, but is absent from these same environments in Asia and Australia. Tropidoleptus is an excellent example of dispersal in geological time — first appearing in northern Europe and Nova Scotia, then elsewhere in eastern North America and North Africa, followed by South America and South Africa, while continuing in North America.


2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Balthazar

This paper's objective is to bring forth some elements which confirm the following hypothesis : Canada is consigned to continentalism, namely to economic and cultural integration with the United States though this fact is shrouded in a Canadian nationalism of sorts. The continentalist mentality is rooted in the history of British North America, inhabited mostly by refugees from America who have remained inherently "Yankees" in spite of their anti-americanism. The Confederation itself is based on a sort of complicity with the United States. More recently there were talks of a "North American nationality", and continentalism both cultural and economic has come to be seen as a 'force of nature" which the governments, at the most, put into a chanelling process. Still, it is possible for Canadian nationalism to exist provided it does not go beyond the threshold whence it would run headlong into the continental mentality. Canada has defined itself through an international or non-national perspective far too long for today's nationalism not to remain weak and poorly established. But the Americans whose "manifest destiny" has succeeded in spreading over Canada without even their having tried to hoist their flag there find it to their advantage to maintain some form of Canadian sovereignty. Canada as a "friendly nation" can be of use to Washington. That is why there are almost as many advocates for Canada's independence in the United States as there are north of the border. Canadian nationalism can thus further the interests of some Canadian elites without seriously prejudicing continental integration which can very well afford not to be set up into formalized structures.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-276
Author(s):  
LUCA LÉVI SALA

In October 2014 scholars from Europe and North America took part in a conference dedicated to two important figures active during the eighteenth century as composers and virtuosos of the violin, to mark the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of their death: Pietro Antonio Locatelli (Bergamo, 1695–Amsterdam, 1764) and Jean-Marie Leclair l’aîné (Lyon 1697–Paris, 1764). The event was organized by the Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini (Lucca) in partnership with the Fondazione MIA of Bergamo and the Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de Musique Romantique Française in Venice, and also with the collaboration of the Edizione Nazionale Italiana delle Opere Complete di Locatelli. Accommodated in the magnificent Sala Locatelli of the Fondazione MIA, the conference was subdivided into six sessions. First came ‘Pietro Antonio Locatelli and His Legacy’, with speakers Paola Palermo (Bergamo), Christoph Riedo (Universität Freiburg, Switzerland) and Ewa Chamczyk (Uniwersytet Warszawski), followed by ‘French Routes’, featuring Étienne Jardin (Palazzetto Bru Zane – Centre de Musique Romantique Française), Candida Felici (Conservatorio di Musica di Cosenza) and Paola Besutti (Università di Teramo). The third session, ‘Pierre-Marie-François de Sales Baillot’, was held to mark the bicentenary of Baillot's foundation of his séances de musique de chambre (chamber music concerts).


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron White ◽  
John L. Oliffe ◽  
Joan L. Bottorff

In the context of concerns about the effects of secondhand smoke on fetal health and the health of children, North American health promotion interventions have focused on reducing tobacco consumption among women to a greater extent than men. This is problematic when the health effects of men’s secondhand smoke in family environments are considered. This article examines this gendered phenomenon in terms of a history of cigarette consumption that positions smoking as masculine. Furthermore, it demonstrates the value of addressing men’s smoking using a gendered methodology, with an emphasis on fatherhood as an expression of masculine identity. Garnering health promotion programs to promote a culture of masculinity that is less individualistic, and defined in terms of responsibility and care for others, in addition to the self, has the potential to render men’s smoking problematic and challenge the historic linkages between smoking and masculinity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-376
Author(s):  
Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson

In December 1977, a tiny group of U.S. glove makers—most of whom were African American and Latina women—launched a petition before the U.S. International Trade Commission calling for protection from rising imports. Their target was China. Represented by the Work Glove Manufacturers Association, their petition called for quotas on a particular kind of glove entering the United States from China: cotton work gloves. This was a watershed moment. For the first time since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, U.S. workers singled out Chinese goods in pursuit of import relief. Because they were such a small group taking on a country as large as China, their supporters championed the cause as one of David versus Goliath. Yet the case has been forgotten, partly because the glove workers lost. Here I uncover their story, bringing the history of 1970s deindustrialization in the United States into conversation with U.S.-China rapprochement, one of the most significant political transformations of the Cold War. The case, and indeed the loss itself, reveals the tensions between the interests of U.S. workers, corporations, and diplomats. Yet the case does not provide a simple narrative of U.S. workers’ interests being suppressed by diplomats and policymakers nurturing globalized trade ties. Instead, it also underscored the conflicting interests within the U.S. labor movement at a time when manufacturing companies were moving their production jobs to East Asia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
André Figueiredo Rodrigues

ABSTRACT This article discusses the seizure of assets owned by the participants in the Minas Gerais State separatist movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira in Brazil, and whether these seizure records may serve as a source for research on the history of books, libraries, and general reading habits in Minas Gerais in the second half of the eighteenth century. First, the historical context of books and the intersection between the seizures and the region’s literary culture were examined. The possibilities and the limits to the use of these seizure records in the study of private libraries is also analyzed. Finally, some of the conspirators’ reading habits, which were influenced by the revolutionary ideas that circulated Europe and North America, are presented.


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