For Hannah Arendt the declaration of human rights is a sign of the emancipation of man. The human equality was not sure before God anymore. In the past people were sure of their social and human rights because they were protected by “social, spiritual and religious forces” (291). In addition to that the human rights did not need to be established by a government since because all other laws were supposed to be based on human rights. Arendt gives the example that if a tribal doesn’t respect human rights it didn’t reach the “stage of civilization” (291) yet, and must live under suppression of foreigners. Only an emancipated population is able to follow and respect the rights of a human being. A certain number of people started to realize that their rights were not protected by any government and wanted to establish human rights. Minorities were convinced that losing your national right (as it often happened in European countries) is the same as losing your human right.
Hannah Arendt states that the authors of the human rights were mostly international jurists, lacking political experience, and “professional philanthropists”. These authors made it that no politician believed in the declaration of human rights or incorporated it into their program. In the nineteenth century protectors used the human rights to defend the “unprivileged” (293), suffering because of the industrial revolution. Every being was protected by the civil law of their country and incorporated the human rights into their system by legislations or revolutions. In Arendts’ view it was hard to establish a new bill of human rights since no person knows what their human rights are, they don’t know the difference from rights of the citizen.
Arendt uses minorities as an example and shows that the first loss of their human rights was to lose their homes and not being able to settle down in other countries without restrictions. Arendt continues explaining that when the human rights were first declared they were based on history and later on nature. This would not be valid for the modern times anymore since “the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself” (298). Arendt adds that even a “word government” (298) which protects human rights cannot be efficient because totalitarian like Hitler justify not respecting human rights of certain groups, by doing the best in the populations interest. The author Burke is cited by Arendt explaining that no divine authority or natural law are needed to establish human rights, it is all established through man. Burke uses survivors of concentration camps as examples to show that human beings need to hold on to their nationalities, since this is the sign of being civilized and part of a community. In a community human rights make every person equal, since we are not born equal , but “become equal as member of a group” (301). Arendt also defines a person who loses his human rights as a person losing all his significance. The major danger for Arendt is that a rising amount of people lose their human rights, which threatens “our political life” (302) and bring people into the situation of savage.
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I find Arendt’s analyzation of the victim’s of the final solution critical to understanding the universal aspect of rights. Under the Nazis, when not recognized by law, but merely as something that should not exist, it would be better for a Jew to be seen as an enemy. Enemies of the state were subject to protection under international law, and had to be held as prisoners (294). Since those persecuted under the Nazis lost all rights, it became easier “to pay less attention to the deeds of the persecuting governments than to the status of the persecuted,” obviously what happened in Germany with so many bystanders (294). The declaration addresses this issue because rights are unconditionally guaranteed by international law, maintaining that all humans have legal status, regardless of residence (294).
The issue raised by Hannah Arendt can be related to what Bauer and Marx discussed about, namely the Jewish issue. It seems like the Jews (in Germany) wanted political rights (civil rights for Arendt) to affirm their human rights. If we look at what happened during World War II then the Jews were excluded from the German people, stripped of the civil rights that Germans enjoyed and thus stripped of their human rights. At least the way they were treated could be said to be inhumane.
The slavery issue presented by Arendt is also a very interesting point. The freedom lost by the slaves was thought to be of natural cause, while in fact they just did not possess any civil rights, thus possessed no human rights at the same time.
We concluded in class that human rights are the basis of law and that these rights precede civil rights. Human rights are defined as rights that are believed to belong to everybody, whereas civil rights are defined as the rights of citizens of a nation to political and social equality. This leads to my dilemma. Because most nations have different forms of government and laws, etc. there really is no clear set of human rights. If civil rights are valued over these human rights then there are no distinct rights because they differ among nations. Therefore because of the increasing influences of government in the world, I believe civil rights actually depict the "image of man."
After reading and trying to understand all of the points made by these philosophers it is hard to come up with a conclusion. I definitely agree with Colin when he says that civl rights "actually depict the image of man." Ones culture and religion which most of the time are written are what give us our human rights. Although when we talked in class that our human rights are the rights that can be maintained, so on the other hand civil rights cannot. People are the basis of individual rights, we are the ones who claim self government. But one must belong to the people who have self government to have rights. So what is written to have our civil rights must bring us to our human and individual rights which we live and grow by. Its always connected, once you loose your civil rights you loose your human rights. This leads me to my question how is it that our human rights protect us regardless of law? It seems as though everything eventually comes from civil rights and the law.
I think Arendt is arguing that human rights are a facade and that they are inextricable at this point from legal civil rights because being a human entails being in a civil system. Human rights cannot really protect individuals' freedoms because without community or a nation, they cannot be inforced. I found the end of the article very interesting when she was talking about how there are growing numbers of marginilized people, who have no validity recognized by any laws, that have nowhere to go anymore because the whole world is civilized and claimed in a sense. I wonder if those individuals who are outside of the law of a nation will develop a common identity as a nation of outsiders. Does physical geography define what a community is or does identifying with a group provide a system in which you can be a human?
What is fascinating about this account is that Hannah Arendt explains how a person outside of the law is deprived of their rights. It is heartbreaking that the Jews lost their rights and had no state or organization to protect them. They were stripped of their national rights and because of that they lost their rights of man. Hannah also explained how historical rights were replaced by natural rights, and nature took the place of history, so it is sort of reversed course of coming back to the origins.
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