Works cited5
1. Introduction
The third chapter of Lynn Hunt’s book “Inventing Human Rights” called “They Have Set a Great Example” represents an insightful description of human rights’ concept development in 17th and 18th century. Using numerous historical sources Lynn Hunt uncovers the deployment of ideas on human rights in the 17th and 18th centuries. She primarily talks about how discussions unfolded in France and what finally they led to in this country. However, in the very beginning of the chapter Hunt describes what actually happened in the US at that time stating that the latter influenced all other countries giving them a brilliant example of shaping a true democracy based on human rights and liberties.
2. Lynn Hunt’s arguments and sources
The main argument made by Hunt is that, although discussions on human rights were not a rare case in France, England, and many other countries, the events happened in the US that resulted in emergence of the first declaration of human rights, had a considerable effect on forming new type societies in Europe. One of the main points emphasized by the author in this context, consists in that declaration and the action of declaring itself are very different from all other similar actions, such as clarifying or correcting articles of a law. It is not, hence, haphazard that Hunt begins her chapter with providing a definition of declaration from a dictionary and stating that a declaration being “the formal, public statement confirms the changes in underlying attitudes that have taken place” (Hunt, 113).
Looking into the phenomenon of declaration and its emergence in the US and France at that time, Hunt concludes that people in both countries were actually in need of such a document in order to mark and announce considerable shifts in all spheres of their societies, namely the emergence of the notion of human rights that was not a kind of verbiage anymore, but an important moral value which these societies wanted to base their principles on.
In order to prove this idea Hunt provides the history of discussions about human rights starting from the first proponents of universalism, such as Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, who were the first who proclaimed so-called natural rights that are not dependent on God , Jean-Jaques Burlamaqui who influenced famous Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. However, Hunt highlights that all these early discussions that took place in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, were not about “universally applicable rights”, but treated the subject from the perspective of a “free born” man (Hunt, 119).
Only in the second half of the 18th century discussions on human rights got more universalistic both in America and Great Britan whose breach at that time becomes inevitable. Hunt emphasizes that by 1777 the controversy between those whose minds were occupied by the idea of some unalienable human rights was opposed to the overall organization of societies and people’s lifestyle at that time (Hunt, 123). In this way, Hunt demonstrates that both American and British societies were in need of major social changes, reforms, and social transformations as well as France and other European countries where similar processes took place.
It is interesting to observe how Hunt builds her argumentation based on historical evidence. Despite referring to so many philosophers of that time and providing descriptions of multiple historical events, Hunt’s ideas and arguments are quite clear and well-founded. As a matter of fact, Hunt’s narration is very far from being a simple account of events and ideas of that time in different countries, but it represents a very logic enumeration of facts that shows how the notion of human rights was changing over the time and in different cultural and historical context. She intentionally emphasizes all the links that existed between thinkers and revolutionists of that time in different countries in order to reveal this global interindependence of historical events. For this reason, Hunt provides not only records of key events, but also extracts from letters that reveal important dialogues of that epoch.
Finally, Hunt writes a lot about moral issues embedded into the penal system that was significantly transformed in France by that time. Detailed descriptions of what actually was changed in the judicial system by the newly established French government, namely abolishment of all physical tortures and some moral humiliation punishments, are provided by Hunt in order to demonstrate her main idea on the meaning of human rights in this period of time. The implication of this new value was so important and it entered people’s minds so deeply that even the moral values themselves, values that were formed within long and bloody centuries of human history, became subject to change. For instance, Hunt focuses on such a value of medieval society as honor stating that it was of utmost importance in aristocratic societies. However, the notion of human rights destroyed this old value that was actually very ambiguous, since it was quite different for men and women for example.
3. Conclusion
In conclusion, Hunt repeats the sentence addressed by duc Mathieu Montmerency to French deputies during a discussion about following the great example of the United States (Hunt, 145). This highlights another major idea expressed by Hunt consisting in that Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was not a mere historical document, but sooner a key event that transformed the entire world unrecognizably by the way of proclamation of human right as a primordial value in any society.
Works cited
Hunt, Lynn. They Have Set a Great Example in Inventing Human Rights. 2007, Norton, pp. 113-145.
