Overview
- Summary
- Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today's idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. Here, historian Samuel Moyn elevates that transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal's troubled present and uncertain future. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.--From publisher description.
- Format
- Book
- Published
- Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010
- Contents
-
Humanity before human rights
Death from birth
Why anticolonialism wasn't a human rights movement
The purity of this struggle
International law and human rights
The burden of morality
"Human rights" in Anglo-American news
Human rights in the 1940s
Human rights between 1968-1978. - Notes
-
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Humanity before human rights -- Death from birth -- Why anticolonialism wasn't a human rights movement -- The purity of this struggle -- International law and human rights -- The burden of morality -- "Human rights" in Anglo-American news -- Human rights in the 1940s -- Human rights between 1968-1978.
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780674048720
0674048725 - Physical Description
- 337 pages ; 22 cm
Keywords & Subjects
- Subjects
- Human rights--History. Human rights.
- Record last modified:
- 2024-06-21 18:46:00
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib214587
Additional Resources
Librarian ViewDownload & Licensing
- Terms of Use
- This record is not digitized and cannot be downloaded online.
In-Person Research
- Not Available for Research
- Plan a Research Visit
- Check Nearby Libraries
-
Request in Shapell Center Reading Room
Bowie, MD
