Origins of Universal Human Rights – PLSC 359: Global Governance

At the beginning of the 3rd century BCE, the stoic philosopher Zeno of Cilium introduced the idea of Universal Human Rights in his now lost work “The Republic.” Criticized at the time by authors such as Plutarch, he imagined a world where:

“…neither in cities nor in towns we should live under laws distinct one from another, but that we should look upon all people in general to be our fellow-countryfolk and citizens, observing one manner of living and one kind of order, like a flock feeding together with equal right in one common pasture. This Zeno wrote, fancying to himself, as in a dream, a certain scheme of civil order, and the image of a philosophical commonwealth.” Plutarch, On the Fortune of Alexander, 329A-B

Before Zeno, and before the complete ascendancy of the Roman Empire, Mediterranean Europe and Asia where for a large part fragmented and broken into warring states and factions with different gods laws and traditions. In a polytheistic worldview, different gods favored different cities and people over others. People were not seen as equals, some were blessed by Hera, others by Bal-Hammon, and others cursed and destined only for misery and enslavement. Even all of the major monotheistic traditions today feature a god that favors some groups over others, which leaves out the divine as a source of Universal Human Rights. Not until the enlightenment did thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau theorize the concept of Universal Human Rights and equality in a way that would finally be taken up by policy makers first in the United States, and then in France.

Petra Formankova says:

April 22, 2016 at 1:13 pm

While I was writing my second essay about the human rights whether they are universal or culturally relative, I remembered reading this post and I would like to share some more thoughts. There are two examples of ancient cultures in Asia that according to me might have a sound reason for approaching the human rights the way they do. These are the cultures of China and India. They are based on sophisticated philosophical concepts and both of these cultures are considered by the West to be violating the human rights.

China’s philosophical paradigm is based on the assumption that China is in the center of the world, it is the closest to the Gods residing just above and the sovereign has a heaven’s mandate to rule and his role is to communicate with the Gods and keep them happy by maintaining harmony in the society. Then there is the principle of five relations in the society, four are unequal and one is equal: sovereign and subjects, older and younger, man and women, father and son, ant the last one friend and friend. Based on this view of the role of a sovereign and on the historical structure of society, it is difficult to impose ideas about human rights and equality.

In India, their philosophy is based on Brahma, the basis of the whole world which is present in every object and person and can change. Brahma in combination with the belief in reincarnation, which is enabled by the nature of Brahma, influences the caste system. The old Indian philosophy assumes that the life and status of a person in the present life is determined by how they acted in a previous life. If they did not live well, they were now born into a lower caste and therefore they are superior and cannot move to an upper caste. If they wish to do so, they have to behave well now and hope that in the next life, they will be borne in a better place. Again, with this kind of philosophical thinking, it is not easy to persuade the culture about equality and human rights.

As you say, the idea of Universal Human Rights originated in the West which defined the rights in accordance with how the Western culture interpreted the world. And as I explained above, there are cultures that have their own paradigm which explains the order of the world and the people’s role in it and therefore they might have a completely different view on what the West considers to be a human right. If the West keeps pushing on spreading its own values across the world, it will inevitably mean either a destruction of distinctive cultures or a conflict with cultures that will not want to succumb to the pressure. It is actually the spread of Western values that is the source of rising Anti-Americanism and the opposition against the globalization in general.