Human Rights and Revolutions - Hardcover

This is an exemplary collection of essays by a wonderfully diverse (both in their disciplines and their opinions) group of scholars and intellectuals. They demonstrate, above all, that strenuous historical analysis can light up the contemporary political world.--Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University

This original and important book examines the paradoxical yet fundamental relationship between revolutions and the discourse of human rights as it has developed over the last four centuries. In a multidisciplinary collection of essays, activists and scholars compare times and places as remote from each other as seventeenth-century England and contemporary Kosovo, bringing to bear ideas and methodologies associated with disciplines ranging from cultural history to political philosophy. In doing so, they seek to shed light on a crucial conundrum: on the one hand, revolutionary regimes often have been responsible for horrific human rights abuses, and yet on the other, revolutionary struggles often serve as a crucible to elevate appreciation for the importance of human rights. This work will be invaluable for anyone seeking a nuanced understanding of what it means to be human and those rights to which we should be able to lay claim as a result.