ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the origins of explicit attention to human rights issues, as part of cultural and political changes in the West during the 18th century. The goal is to establish what changed—always in relationship to the previous patterns discussed in Chapter 2—and also to explore the causes of change. This was a vital moment in human rights history, and we need to locate the reasons as well as the content. Various new philosophical commitments emerged, but also new declarations and political efforts and, as a first global extension of the movement, an unprecedented surge of outrage against the enslavement of other human beings.
