Hunt - Inventing human rights : a history

1. "TORRENTS OF EMOTION"
Reading Novels and Imagining Equality

2. "BONE OF THEIR BONE"
Abolishing Torture

3. "THEY HAVE SET A GREAT EXAMPLE"
Declaring Rights

4. "THERE WILL BE NO END OF IT"
The Consequences of Declaring

5. "THE SOFT POWER OF HUMANITY"
Why Human Rights Failed, Only to Succeed in the Long Run

While writing this book I benefited from countless suggestions offered by friends, colleagues, and participants in various seminars and lectures. No expression of gratitude on my part could possibly repay the debts that I have been fortunate enough to incur, and I only hope that some will recognize their input in certain passages or footnotes. Giving the Patten Lectures at Indiana University, the Merle Curti Lectures at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the James W. Richard Lectures at the University of Virginia provided invaluable opportunities to try out my preliminary notions. Excellent insights came as well from audiences at Camino College; Carleton College; Centro de Investigacin y Docencia Econmicas, Mexico City; Fordham University; Institute of Historical Research, University of London, Lewis & Clark College; Pomona College; Stanford University; Texas A&M University; the University of Paris; the University of Ulster, Coleraine; the University of Washington, Seattle; and my home institution, UCLA. Funding for most of my research came from the Eugen Weber Chair in Modern European History at UCLA, and the research was greatly facilitated by the truly exceptional riches of the UCLA libraries.

Most people think that teaching follows behind research in the list of priorities for university professors, but the idea for this book came originally from a document collection that I edited and translated for the purpose of teaching undergraduates: The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1996). A fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities helped me complete that project. Before writing this book, I published a brief sketch, "The Paradoxical Origins of Human Rights," in Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Lynn Hunt, and Marilyn B. Young, eds., Human Rights and Revolutions (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000). Some of the arguments in chapter 2 were first developed in a different way in "Le Corps au XVIIIe sicle: les origines des droits de l'homme," Diogne , 203 (JulySeptember 2003): 4967.

From idea to final execution, the road, at least in my case, is long and sometimes arduous, but made passable by help from those near and dear. Joyce Appleby and Suzanne Desan read early drafts of my first three chapters and made marvelous suggestions for improvement. My editor at W. W. Norton, Amy Cherry, provided the kind of close attention to writing and argument that most authors only dream of. Without Margaret Jacob, I would not have written this book. She kept me going with her own excitement about research and writing, her braveness about venturing into new and controversial domains, and not least, her ability to put it all aside in favor of preparing an exquisite dinner. She knows how much I owe to her. My father died while I was writing this book, but I can still hear his words of encouragement and support. I dedicate this book to my sisters Lee and Jane in recognition, however inadequate, of all we have shared over many years. They taught me my first lessons about rights, resolution of conflict, and love.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident"

GREAT THINGS sometimes come from rewriting under pressure. In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, prepared in mid-June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant [sic], that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness." Largely thanks to his own revisions, Jefferson's sentence soon shook off its hiccups to speak in clearer, more ringing tones: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." With this one sentence Jefferson turned a typical eighteenth-century document about political grievances into a lasting proclamation of human rights.