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1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Rousseau stated in his Social Contract that “Man is born free—and everywhere he is in chains.”[footnoteRef:2] The insistence on man’s nature right of freedom from the Enlightenment Era philosopher helped pave the way for the French Revolution with its insistence on liberty, fraternity and equality. A century and a half later, those same ideals would still hold significant appeal for the Western nations, especially following two World Wars in the 20th century that decimated Europe and parts of Asia. Liberalism was the main driver of the UN’s declaration of human rights—but the coming Cold War, the onset of which was very much in the minds of world leaders immediately following the carve-up of Europe between the unlikely Allies (capitalists in the West, Communists in the East), also played a part in the declaration: the West was anxious to promote itself as the standard bearer of liberal ideals—freedom, democracy, equality, brotherhood, human rights—i.e., the natural rights of man, as defined by the Enlightenment Era thinkers like Rousseau and Locke, whose ideas had come to be enshrined in modern Western politics. [2: Rousseau, Social Contract, 1.]
Locke was opposed to the idea of the “divine right of kings”[footnoteRef:3]—just...
This opposition to kingship was heralded by the American Revolutionaries and noted in the Declaration of Independence, infused as it was with the spirit of Thomas Paine, a virulent anti-monarchist. The monarchy represented the Old World power structure and what was left it following the Protestant Reformation and the splitting apart of Christendom, which had held distinctly different ideals than the ones that Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire and others proposed. [3: Locke, J. Two Treatises on Government. ISR: Google Books.]
By reaffirming its stance towards promoting human rights, equality, liberty and so on, the Western nations, through the mouthpiece of the EU were showing the Eastern nations that they essentially opposed their ideology. Stalin was basically a monarch in Soviet Russia—lacking all but the title to go with his unquestioned power. Mao in Communist China would essentially become the Chinese version of Stalin—and both opposed the West’s liberal influence. The East held collectivist views and promoted the concept of everyone contributing to the whole, as opposed to the concepts of individualism, individual liberty, and equality for all. Of course, the…
Social ideals and ethics are secondary. As such, if it were most beneficial to the State to commit genocide while conquering another nation, that would be the course of action taken. However, again thanks to increased media coverage, the world and governing bodies such as the U.N. Would not sit idly by. For this reason, this perspective is quickly becoming antiquated. Idealism, in contrast, is on the other end
Martin Luther King can also allude to Rousseau in the formation of the concept of civil disobedience. As Scott notes, "Rousseau argues that civil society is based on a contractual arrangement of rights and duties which applies equally to all people, whereby natural liberty is exchanged for civil liberty, and whereby natural rights are exchanged for legal rights." Legal rights are a natural extension of natural human rights. If
Rousseau: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen This is a paper that argues and proves how Rousseau would have reacted to the Declaration of Rights in the light of the French Revolutionaries. It has 3 sources. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen produced by the French Revolutionaries is considered as one of the founding documents of the human rights tradition. This paper argues that the document
The Rights of Man and Revolution in France Introduction Despite the push to eradicate a class based system during the Enlightenment and events leading up to the French Revolution, it was replaced instead by classes based on property and wealth rather than nobility. Two leading figures for and against the new classes were Robespierre and Sieyes. Sieyes supported separating voting rights from human rights while Robespierre believed voting rights were inherent rights
Human identity and human reflection today: A philosophical and personal overview Human 'identity' is not a given. In other words, human beings are seldom born with a clear sense of who they are and what is their individual and collective purpose in a larger society. Instead, it is up every human animal of the species to invest meaning in his or her life -- or so implies the popular post-modern conception
Rousseau's work on The Social Contract begins with a legendary ringing indictment of society as it exists: "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains" (Rousseau 1993, p. 693). Before examining Rousseau's theory of government in greater detail, however, it is worth noting what assumptions are contained in this first sentence of The Social Contract, which is perhaps the most famous line that Rousseau ever wrote. It contains