The Enlightenment and the Concept of Human Rights

The concept of human rights is one of the most important and most influential contributions of the Enlightenment to modern thought. The basic idea that all human beings possess certain fundamental rights by virtue of their nature as human beings — rights that are universal, inalienable, and prior to any government — is an Enlightenment idea, and the modern international human rights regime is a direct descendant of the Enlightenment tradition. This article examines the Enlightenment contribution to the concept of human rights, from the natural rights tradition of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the modern international human rights regime.

The Origins of the Natural Rights Tradition

The natural rights tradition has a long history before the Enlightenment, but it was the Enlightenment that gave the concept its modern form. The ancient Stoics, the Roman jurists, the medieval canon lawyers, and the Spanish scholastics of the sixteenth century had all developed accounts of natural law and natural rights, but it was the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writers who gave the concept the systematic and rigorous formulation that has shaped modern thought.

The two most important contributors to the modern natural rights tradition were Hugo Grotius and John Locke. Grotius, in his De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), developed a comprehensive account of natural law that was grounded in the rational nature of human beings and that was valid even if God did not exist. Locke, in his Two Treatises of Government (1689), developed a comprehensive account of natural rights that was grounded in the natural rights of life, liberty, and property, and that was the basis of the American Revolution.

The natural rights tradition was developed further by the French philosophes, especially Voltaire, Rousseau, and the various other writers who contributed to the Encyclopédie. The natural rights tradition was the basis of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and it has been a basic feature of the modern human rights tradition ever since.

The Characteristics of Natural Rights

The natural rights tradition was based on several key characteristics that have shaped the modern understanding of human rights.

The first characteristic was the universality of the rights. The natural rights, in the view of the Enlightenment thinkers, applied to all human beings, regardless of their nationality, race, religion, or social position. The universal applicability of the rights was one of the most revolutionary aspects of the natural rights tradition, and it has been a basic feature of the modern human rights tradition.

The second characteristic was the inalienability of the rights. The natural rights, in the view of the Enlightenment thinkers, could not legitimately be surrendered or transferred to another. The inalienability of the rights was grounded in the naturalness of the rights — the rights inhere in the human person as such, and they cannot legitimately be waived or transferred, even by the holder of the rights.

The third characteristic was the priority of the rights to government. The natural rights, in the view of the Enlightenment thinkers, were anterior to any government, and no government could legitimately violate them. The proper function of government, in their view, was the protection of the natural rights of the citizens, and the government that violated the natural rights was acting illegitimately.

The fourth characteristic was the universality of the source. The natural rights, in the view of the Enlightenment thinkers, derived from the natural law, which was a principle of reason accessible to all human beings. The natural law, in their view, was not dependent on any particular religious or cultural tradition, and it could be known by the use of reason alone.

The Modern Human Rights Tradition

The modern human rights tradition is a direct descendant of the Enlightenment natural rights tradition. The basic principles of the modern tradition — the universality of the rights, the inalienability of the rights, the priority of the rights to government, the universality of the source — are all descendants of the principles that the Enlightenment thinkers established.

The most important document of the modern human rights tradition is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Declaration was drafted by a committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, and it drew directly on the language and the structure of the eighteenth-century natural rights documents.

The Universal Declaration enumerates a comprehensive catalogue of human rights that are supposed to apply to all human beings, regardless of their nationality, race, religion, or sex. The civil and political rights enumerated in the Declaration include the right to life, liberty, and security; the right to freedom from slavery and torture; the right to recognition as a person before the law; the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right to peaceful assembly and association; and the right to take part in the government of one’s country.

The economic, social, and cultural rights enumerated in the Declaration include the right to work; the right to equal pay for equal work; the right to just and favorable conditions of work; the right to rest and leisure; the right to an adequate standard of living; the right to education; the right to participate in the cultural life of the community; and the right to social security.

The Universal Declaration is not legally binding, but it has had an enormous moral and political influence. The various international covenants and conventions that have been developed since 1948 — the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and many others — are all descendants of the Universal Declaration, and they have established a comprehensive international human rights regime that did not exist before the twentieth century.

The Critiques of the Natural Rights Tradition

The natural rights tradition has been criticized from many directions, both in the eighteenth century and since.

The conservative critique, developed by Edmund Burke and the other counter-revolutionary writers, attacked the abstract rationalism of the natural rights tradition and defended a politics rooted in tradition, custom, and prescription. The conservatives argued that the appeal to abstract natural rights was a dangerous abstraction that ignored the actual conditions of political life.

The Marxist critique, developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, argued that the natural rights tradition was a bourgeois ideology that served to disguise the realities of class domination. The natural rights, in the view of the Marxists, were the rights of the propertied classes, and the appeal to universal rights was a way of disguising the particular interests of the bourgeoisie.

The feminist critique, developed in the late twentieth century, argued that the natural rights tradition was based on a false universalism that excluded women. The “man” of the natural rights tradition was, in the view of the feminists, the white male property owner, and the appeal to universal rights served to disguise the realities of gender domination.

The postcolonial critique, developed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, argued that the natural rights tradition was closely connected to the European colonial enterprise. The appeal to universal natural rights, in the view of the postcolonial critics, was a way of justifying the European domination of the non-European world.

The Continuing Significance

The natural rights tradition remains one of the central traditions of modern political thought, and the contemporary engagement with the tradition is part of the broader engagement with the political philosophy of the Enlightenment. The basic commitment of the tradition — to the principle that all human beings possess certain fundamental rights by virtue of their nature as human beings — has become a basic principle of contemporary international law and contemporary moral discourse.

The contemporary challenges to the natural rights tradition are different from those faced by the original theorists, but they are no less pressing. The contemporary challenges include the proper response to the cultural diversity of the modern world, the proper balance between the universal claims of the human rights tradition and the particular claims of the various cultural traditions, the proper response to the various inequalities that persist in the modern world, and the proper management of the new technologies that have transformed the conditions of human life.

Further Reading

• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu), relevant entry
• Mark Goldie & Robert Wokler, eds., The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (2006)
• Terence Ball, Reappraising Political Theory (1995)