HUMAN RIGHTS IN HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT

Academic Year 2022/2023 - Teacher: GIORGIA AGATA COSTANZO

Expected Learning Outcomes

Within the framework of globalization processes, the course will examine the affirmation of political doctrines concerning natural law and natural rights through the study of articles and essays written by important modern and contemporary philosophers. Students will be able to better understand the origins of what we now call "human rights" in a perspective that is based on the tradition of predominantly Western thinking. The course focuses on the historical path that marked the transition from natural law and natural rights to human rights, identifying continuity and changes related to human rights debates and claims during this long-lasting period of time, in order to explore how these rights have been historically affirmed, denied, justified and violated. The course aims to provide students with a thorough understanding of the history of fundamental claims that have certainly influenced the human rights documents drawn up in the contemporary age.

Course Structure

The course will be held by frontal lectures but also interactive seminars, training workships, simulations and role playing games.

Required Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of the western history of political thought

Attendance of Lessons

compulsory attendance

Detailed Course Content

From Natural Law to Human Rights: the course, which consists of 3 parts (9 ECTS) begins with the history of western natural law and natural rights traditions, with some references also to ancient times, and ends with the recent human rights debates, passing through the historical declarations and focusing on the UDHR which celebrated its 70th anniversary a few years ago. Although human rights issues continue to be debated and discussed, the longer history of human rights is often unexamined and even forgotten. Rather than being a twentieth-century phenomenon, HR mark both a culmination of and a transition from the western natural law and natural rights traditions. The course is structured in regular lectures, seminars held by foreign professors, discussion papers, PPT presentations and simulations that will help students to better understand changes and continuities of the debates and claims about rights throughout the early modern and contemporary age

Textbook Information

Micheline Ishay, The History of Human Rights from ancient times to the globalization era, University of California Press, 2008

Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia - Human Rights in History, Harward University Press, 2012 (paperback edition)

Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights - A History, W W Norton &Co, 2008.

Lynn Hunt, The French Revolution and Human Rights, Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.

ESSAYES AND PAPERS

Leonard Krieger, Kant and the Crisis of Natural law, Journal of the History of Ideas, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965.

Stephen P. Marks, From the "single confused page" to the "Decalogue for six billion persons": The Roots of the UDHR in the French Revolution, Human Rights Quarterly,1998.

Maurice Cranston, Are there any Human Rights? Daedalus, vol. 112, n.4, Human Rights, 1983.

John B. Noone, Rousseau's Theory of Natural Law as a Conditional, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1972.

Brian Tierney, Natural Law and Natural Rights: Old problems and recent Approaches, pubblished on line by Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories : Their Origin and Development, Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Mark Tunik, John Locke and the Right to bear arms, History of Political Thought, 2014.

Course Planning

	Subjects	Text References
1	History of Human Rights or Human Rights in History?	S. Moyne,The last Utopia. M. Ishay, The History of Human Rights
2	Natural Law and Natural Rights	M. Ishay The History of Human Rights
3	Human Rights and the Enlightment:	L. Hunt Inventing Human Rights
4	Declaring Rights in America: The U.S Bill of Rights	L. Hunt Inventing Human Rights
5	The French Revolution and Human Rights	L. Hunt, The French Revolution and Human Rights
6	The UDHR- Human Rights as the last utopia?	S. Moyne The last Utopia

Learning Assessment

Learning Assessment Procedures

Ongoing evaluation - written test - final oral exam. The assessement is divided into three parts: two ongoing tests and a final one. The average mark obtained by the students in the three tests constitutes the final grade achieved for this subject. As for the first test, the students are asked to present an essay with PPT support on a topic chosen from those proposed by the professor. The students who select the same author or the same topic will alternate in the roles of speaker and debater simulating international conference work thus stimulating class debates. The second assessment deals with a written test with open-ended questions on topics chosen by the professor and delved into during the lectures. The third and last test consists in a brief interview based on the final part of the course. The students who do not fit these two previous tests, will have to produce a 4,000-word essay on a topic chosen from those proposed by the professor. They will also have to answer oral questions regarding the entire course syllabus.

Examples of frequently asked questions and / or exercises

Are Human Rights an inheritance to preserve or an invetion to remake?

Which is the relationship between Natural Law and Natural Rights?

Are Human Rights a western idea?

VERSIONE IN ITALIANO

Degree Course in

Global Politics and Euro-Mediterranean Relations