ABSTRACT
What was once perhaps a vague notion has become a powerful ideology. While the modern day human rights discourse reflects many of the historical experiences of the past century, some have argued that, in fact, various strains of human rights “philosophy” can in fact be traced back much further (Nino 1991). Some have suggested that “human rights” ideas, while perhaps not articulated as such, have been included within some of the most influential religious and political writings from centuries past (see generally Newman and Weissbrodt 1996a, chapter 1). This is in some ways true. For example, notions of human compassion and human duty have been elaborated within many religious texts, including Judaism’s Torah, Islam’s Qur’an, Christianity’s Bible, Hinduism’s Bhagavad Gita, and Buddhism’s Eight-Fold Path to Enlightenment. Rights notions have also developed through such political precursors as the Rights of Athenian Citizens, the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man (Newman and Weissbrodt 1996a; Nino 1991). As Howard and Donnelley (1986) have suggested, all societies seem to have a notion of human dignity, or an idea of human worth, at least within certain contexts.1
