Summary
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The circumstances under which the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written during the 1940s are described, focusing on efforts to negotiate differences among democratic and communist states, and among different religions. Topics include the moral impact of World War II, the competing interests of defending the individual and the state, and the contributions of philosopher Jacques Maritain.See the full content of this document
Extract
Human Dignity, Human Rights.
Fifty years ago, a tangle of intellectual and diplomatic puzzles blocked the world from agreeing on a universal code of human rights. In the years 1945-1948 the world was emerging only slowly from the devastation of the war that had burned through Asia and Europe. The largest nation of all, China, was in the midst of a bitter civil war, and Communists both there and in the Soviet Union harbored worldwide ambitions. Although consciences on all sides had been shocked by the bloodshed, the newly discovered death camps, and the tens of millions of displaced persons and refugees, no one way of thinking about moral issues commanded consensus. People seemed more divided about right and wrong after the war than they had seemed before it. How, then, could they come to agreement on a short list of the rights of all men? That was the first puzzle. It might be called the conundrum of pluralism.
The second conundrum had a different origin. One side in the great war claimed to be...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
