Editor's Introduction

• Published date: 01 January 2015
• Date: 01 January 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12089

The AMERICAN JOURNAL of

ECONOMICS and SOCIOLOGY

Published QUARTERLY in the interest of constructive

synthesis in the social sciences, under grants from the FRANCIS

NEILSON Fund and the ROBERT SCHALKENBACH FOUNDATION.

Founded in 1941

Volume 74 January 2015 Number 1

Editor’s Introduction

Is There a Universal Basis for Human Rights?

At the end of World War II, the world discovered the horrors of the

Holocaust, the genocidal destruction of entire categories of human

beings in death camps. This occurred under the control of Europeans

(not only Germans) who had introduced two centuries earlier the

Enlightenment philosophy that reason could govern human relations.

How could it have happened? Rationality was supposed to lead to

perpetual progress, not a descent into barbarism. Historians, lawyers,

philosophers, and humanitarians sought to find a way to formalize a

system of ideas and laws that would prevent the recurrence of such

an event.

The collapse of the implicit code of civilized behavior during World

War II was the backdrop to the first meeting of the United Nations in

San Francisco in 1945. The world leaders who signed the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 were even more aware of the

need for some bulwark against the destruction of innocent lives. The

principle that every human being has inalienable rights that exist

independently of the state became a core element of international

dialogue from that point forward.

Where did that principle come from? On what basis can one claim

that rights exist prior to, and independent of, government? That

question had been asked and answered three centuries earlier, at the

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 1 (January, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12089

© 2015 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

end of another European conflagration—the Thirty Years War—in

which one-third of Central Europeans and a large number of other

Europeans had perished. That war had been fought in part over

whether Roman Catholic or Protestant monarchs would control Euro-

pean territories. After more than a generation of nightmarish slaughter,

the answer at the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 was that Catholics and

Protestants would have to learn to live in peace with each other, since

neither could destroy the other.

One effect of that truce was the realization that rights of sovereignty

and property, as well as personal rights that were to emerge, now

needed a new intellectual basis that was not grounded in either

Catholic or Protestant doctrines. The nonpartisan doctrine that

emerged from the writings of Grotius, Pufendorf, Locke, and many

others from 1648 to 1700 was the concept of “natural rights.” Instead

of claiming that legitimacy, authority, and rights derive from revelation

(the Bible), the new basis of governance and citizenship became

reason. Thus, the philosophers of this period, also reflecting on the

horrors of human behavior in the absence of universally accepted

rules, developed a set of ideas that was supposed to accommodate

both Protestant and Catholic monarchs. In fact, the claim that individ-

uals had “natural rights” was an argument that conformed much more

closely to Protestant than to Catholic sensibilities, but that was not a

major hindrance at the time. The invention of “natural rights” did not

usher in an age of peace, but at least it made peace possible.

Exactly 300 years after the Treaty of Westphalia had launched a

period of nation building and the formulation of “natural rights,” the

United Nations adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that

was largely based on the principles established in Europe in the 17th

century. When the vote was taken, eight nations abstained, but none

voted against the Declaration. “Natural rights,” it seemed, could serve

as the basis of a global consensus.

The consensus that emerged after World War II was fragile and thin

because it ignored several important considerations.

First, in 1948, the world was under European domination, both

economically and legally. None of the colonized people of the world

represented themselves at the United Nations. That year, the Dutch

were still fighting to maintain their hold on Indonesia, and even

4The American Journal of Economics and Sociology