Human Rights and the Uses of History

by Samuel Moyn

What are the origins of human rights? This question, rarely asked before the end of the Cold War, has in recent years become a major focus of historical and ideological strife. In this sequence of reflective and critical studies, Samuel Moyn engages with some of the leading interpreters of human rights, thinkers who have been creating a field from scratch without due reflection on the local and temporal contexts of the stories they are telling.

Having staked out his owns claims about the postwar origins of human rights discourse in his acclaimed Last Utopia , Moyn, in this volume, takes issue with rival conceptions—including, especially, those that underlie justifications of humanitarian intervention

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, European History

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Samuel Moyn is professor of law and history at Harvard University. He is the author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History, and Christian Human Rights (2015), among other books, as well as editor of the journal Humanity. He also writes regularly for Foreign Affairs and The Nation.

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Human Rights and the Non-Uses of Logic

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Human rights are a remarkable piece of infrastructure (or 'UN machinery' as the author has it). Like 'the markets', they inspire awe. But what is the stuff they are made of?

In this collection of articles published in the Nation (?), the author does not quite answer the question, apart from setting the record straight as to what human rights are not. They are not revolutionary, they are not a response to the Holocaust, they were not established in the 1940s.

Maybe, they were a consolation prize for the colonized, to whom self-determination was denied immediately after the end of World War II. Maybe, they were a reaction to the disarray in which the defeat in Vietnam left American conscience. Maybe, they have something to do with liberal internationalism. Maybe, they were the brainchild of Amnesty International in the 1970s.

Maybe, Samuel Moyn is practising the neoliberal art of disinformation.

Human rights are legal in nature - like treaties and constitutions. Enforceable words. So no analysis is possible unless one looks at who enforces them on whom, and to what legal effect - i.e. at the expense of which other enforceable words. Intuitevely, human rights are enforced against something to protect someone by a third party. The third party can be Amnesty International, the UN, the US, a court of justice. 'Third partiness' - if I may - is what makes human rights the piece of infrastructure they are. And they share this infrastructural element of third partiness with the IMF, the World Bank, the EU, the ECB, Standard & Poor's and Moody's, and 'the markets'. A third party comes and tells how good or bad things are.

It is 'third partiness', not protection, what makes of human rights a dangerous weapon. But in common parlance, protection obscures intervention. Protection resonates with the public's feelings, and third partiness goes unnoticed.

Failing to disentangle protection from third partiness is an unforgivable weakness of the author's analysis. Human rights as we know them were not born in 1789 or 1776 because no triangle (oppressor-oppressed-third party) could be thought of back then. The colonies protected THEMSELVES from the British. The bourgeois protected THEMSELVES from feudalism.

The authors posits that the real puzzle of human rights is why they were dormant for twenty-five years, 1948 to 1973. And he debates at length the emergence of a 'protection' mood and culture in the seventies, which literally woke them up. But it is third partiness he should keep an eye on instead. The demise of the Keynesian welfare state and the collapse of Bretton Woods freed capital from its 'golden fetters'. Capital started to flow thus becoming third party to any government, any sovereignty, any representation. And poltics followed suit. It was free capital flows, not decolonization, that made utopia - here, legislation disconnected from teriitory and sovereignty, law coming in from nowhere - viable and useful.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays, mostly book reviews, that trace the major thesis of Moyn's work. Human rights are not only misunderstood today, that misunderstanding distorts our understanding of history and our political actions. Moyn's most important but difficult contention is to remind readers that there are competing and more effective types of politics that seek to protect or champion the powerless, the marginalized, or the abused. In his hands, readers are reminded that facile talk of rights and dignity has a history of wordy abstractions and diverted activities.

[Jodesz Gavilan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"International courts may not be a mirage, but one thing is clear. They emerged as an oasis because people had stopped searching for a promised land where the fight for equity involves more than litigating past crime."

In HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE USES OF HISTORY, Samuel Moyn begs us to reconsider our own understanding of the various concepts linked to human rights not just for argument's sake, but for future applications that do not live up to the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

I dove into this collection of essays not knowing what to expect. I've been a journalist covering human rights for most of my career and I might not be as smart as lawyers, I can say I have a good grasp of the field already. On the surface level, Moyn reviews other scholarly works on human rights and can be borderline an asshole in doing so. But I guess he makes up for his amazing analysis, being able also to introduce new things while dismantling some thoughts I've learned from traditional sources.

Take for example his essay on the ever revolving relevancy of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the roots of human rights, and why "human rights in their specific contemporary connotations are an invention of recent date." He argued that human rights cannot be insulated from history, and one's grasp should well be anchored on contemporary events and not the other way around. In another essay, he discussed how humanitarianism and human rights have been used as "justifications for invasion, expansion and annexation."

My favorite essay, however, is about altruism and how extremism in morality deters the full realization of humanity in itself. It's an organized and thoughtful examination of how society views suffering as a separate entity vs the one suffering.

The closing essay touches on the future of human rights and what it takes for it to maintain relevancy. It's a matter of deciding whether or not to present it as reeking partisanship as opposed to maintaining a non-politicized approach that many movements aspire to. In the end, Moyn cautions that choosing the latter might be more detrimental to the future of human rights. He writes that "human rights can retain their current prominence by becoming an open language of partisanship, so that other realists, for whom universalist justice is at best a secondary concern, do not hold the field." And I agree.

Anyway, this is not an easy read! It can be dragging at times and so academic. Though it is saved perhaps by Moyn's snark, but I'd be honest and just admit that I got annoyed a few times.

Overall I recommend this to anyone who wants to expand their knowledge on human rights. I might not agree with everything that Moyn presented, but being able to witness his arguments is a good exercise of widening one's understanding.

4/5

[vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Evan Welber]

More a collection of book review-like essays (some of which have quite an unforgiving tone). It's a bit difficult to follow all of the arguments in the book if you haven't read the papers/books Moyn references.

[Yukinosita Yukino · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's better & more readable than the last utopia for sure

[aberamentho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Moyn’s 'Human Rights and the Uses of History' is a thought-provoking collection of essays that critically examines the history and political function of human rights. Building on arguments from his previous works, Moyn challenges conventional narratives that present human rights as a timeless moral ideal, instead emphasizing their recent emergence and their often-contingent role in global politics.

One of the book’s key strengths is its ability to provoke reflection on how history is employed to serve different ideological agendas. Moyn warns against the tendency to romanticize human rights as an inevitable moral progress, arguing that such narratives can obscure their political instrumentalization. He also critiques the neoliberal appropriation of human rights, suggesting that their focus on individual dignity often fails to address structural inequalities.

The book is accessible yet deeply insightful, making complex historical debates engaging for both scholars and general readers. However, while Moyn’s critique is sharp and well-articulated, at times it feels overly skeptical. His argument against the transformative power of human rights movements, for instance, may understate the role they have played in resisting oppression.

Overall, 'Human Rights and the Uses of History' is a compelling and important read for anyone interested in human rights, history, and political theory. While it does not provide definitive solutions, it offers a crucial corrective to simplistic narratives, encouraging a more nuanced and historically grounded understanding of human rights.

[José Pereira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book, with solid argumentation. Moyn does a very good job in debunking mainstream genealogies of human rights that portray them as naturalistic and individualistic abstractions latent since times unknown. He constructs, in opposition, a History of human rights starting in the 1970s - the beginning of universal depoliticization that issued a shift from political conflict to the religious following of unambiguous moral norms.
As Moyn asserts, these depoliticized non-material rights cozied just perfectly with the neoliberal agenda and the demise of the welfare state, offering, as well, backup for "humanitarian" intervention in the global south.
Moyn then argues for a re-connection of rights with reality and programatic political conflict - something that requires understanding rights as contigent social constructs, that can and must build-upon and extended. In a very thought-provoking chapter, Moyn also urges the rebirth of "talk of duties". Duties are inevitably interdependent and always come with an understanding of a common good. They are, therefore, much more conducive to actually battling structural injustices and long-term problems.
My biggest problem with the book relates to the idea of universal human rights as such - the problem of universality is never really approached by Moyn. It's unclear how rights are supposed to be re-politicized at a global scale. The material, close-to reality politics that Moyn seems to defend can only be practiced at a relatively local (national at most) level. We thus return to the post-WWII struggle for generous welfare "states". This is a battle worth pursuing, but, as shown then, is better fought nationally.

[Chelsea]

~20% of this was too enmeshed in its field for me to get, but I'm still glad I read it. Human rights have always been a self-evident specter I feel vaguely guilty about, so it was interesting to see the idea of human rights treated like any other idea by looking at its history, implications, etc. I think Moyn's other book would have been a better one to read first, since the essays in this collection read like a collection of postscripts intended for his academic peers.

[Maxy.kai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well worth a read. It's more of a collection of essays and reviews than one coherent book- though there is an overall thesis. But it does mean you can pick and choose chapters to read rather than reading the whole thing- so my recommendations- chapters one, five, six and seven. And the epilogue where Moyn outlines some ideas for the future of 'Human rights'.

[Jon Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoughtful and pointed, though far from comprehensive, dive into the critique of 'human rights'. The largest part of the book consists of refutations of various upholders of 'human rights talk' - although this covers a great deal of ground in this debate, the text does a good job of making the discussion accessible. I am interested in reading Moyn's Last Utopia for a more detailed discussion.

[Paige]

http://www.popmatters.com/column/1844...