Hello, a couple of days ago I was at uni class (History) and I wondered if you guys knew some precedents to the so called human rights in earlier times or similar right to collectives or individuals, because human rights seemed to pop out of nowhere (aside from the typical like in the case of the French Revolution)
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Depends on what you define as "human rights". There has always been some tradeoff between the rights of the ruling or strongest individual versus the rights of the rest of the tribe or at least the tribal elders or warriors. The ancient Epic of Gilgamesh involves getting approval from the council of warriors or elders before beginning a war to secure Cedar for a new construction project. The rights of Tyrants versus citizens was at the core of several wars and internal revolts in classical Greece, sometimes involving disagreements between a ruling king versus a ruling council or voting polis, with the kings or councils of nearby city-states backing their respective equivalents.
I see it as an integral part of human society from the start, where an individual attempts to gather absolute power (which is generally more "efficient" in a crisis), and others try to distribute that authority over a larger group (which is generally more "fair" to the average member of the society) in order to avoid such individual arbitrary exercise of power over others. Attempts to codify a resolution to that inherent dichotomy appear in Hammurabi's laws and various other documents throughout history, so I don't think there's a single point where one can say that it "appears". The Magna Carta and a few similar documents during the Middle Ages are a more recent attempt to define the rights and limits of power.
I believe it was the late science fiction author Frank Herbert who wrote something along the lines of: "The myth is that absolute power corrupts. The truth is that absolute power is a magnet to the corruptible." Nobody seeks absolute power unless they intend to abuse it.
I see it as an integral part of human society from the start, where an individual attempts to gather absolute power (which is generally more "efficient" in a crisis), and others try to distribute that authority over a larger group (which is generally more "fair" to the average member of the society) in order to avoid such individual arbitrary exercise of power over others. Attempts to codify a resolution to that inherent dichotomy appear in Hammurabi's laws and various other documents throughout history, so I don't think there's a single point where one can say that it "appears". The Magna Carta and a few similar documents during the Middle Ages are a more recent attempt to define the rights and limits of power.
I believe it was the late science fiction author Frank Herbert who wrote something along the lines of: "The myth is that absolute power corrupts. The truth is that absolute power is a magnet to the corruptible." Nobody seeks absolute power unless they intend to abuse it.
The idea that individual humans have a set of rights owing to them, exclusive of their relationship to their state, has its origins, as far as I know, in the 18th century. The person with the greatest claim to these ideals is probably Rousseau. Prior to this most 'human rights' concepts had been based in civil rights, that is to say limits on the state as to how it can act based on the rights of its citizens.
The idea that individuals have rights simply for being born human was not generally accepted except in the most limited sense prior to this - hence murder is crime regardless of the status of the individual murdered, and even this feeble right (to not be killed) was often not protected. Ultimately the concept that individuals have rights is a significant cornerstone of the abolition of slavery, and while slavery is accepted the concept of absolute human rights could not be accepted.
If you are looking for the origins of human rights as we now understand them I would look at The Social Contract where Rousseau discussed the idea of natural right.
If you are looking at civil rights then records of this idea begin with the first writings as Kovax has pointed out.
The idea that individuals have rights simply for being born human was not generally accepted except in the most limited sense prior to this - hence murder is crime regardless of the status of the individual murdered, and even this feeble right (to not be killed) was often not protected. Ultimately the concept that individuals have rights is a significant cornerstone of the abolition of slavery, and while slavery is accepted the concept of absolute human rights could not be accepted.
If you are looking for the origins of human rights as we now understand them I would look at The Social Contract where Rousseau discussed the idea of natural right.
If you are looking at civil rights then records of this idea begin with the first writings as Kovax has pointed out.
They're the self declared rights of the bourgeoisie, they didn't pop up from nowhere but during the bourgeoisie's rise to power (French revolution, English civil war, American revolution, 1848). If you look at things like the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen they are essentially a list of grievances the bourgeoisie had with the nobility. Social distinctions 'based on common good', rather than by heritage. Right of private property rather than it belonging mostly to the church and state. And so on. Of course these things are inspired by liberal philosophers from decades or centuries before
Examples of the opposite are easier to find. "Fridslagarna" for examples stipulate conditions under which men and women are free from unjust interference and as many other premodern laws often infer the peculiar punishment: "fredlöshet" lawlessness, the culprit no longer being subject to the laws of the land. On the other hand there are recurring mentions of social norms and social practices throughout written history which are deemed just and interference with which are deemed unjust. Hammurabi codified laws as did rulers after him yet for most time, with the exception of "fridslagarna" laws have been written as "You may not do X but if you do, you'll be punished.". Leaving it to society to uphold norms and practises, With that I don't think it is very meaninful to go at the subject from the perspective of "precedents to what came into existennce at a given point in time", because evidently they didn't exist. But rather approach the subject from why did the law expand in such a way as it did during the enlightenment, was the process brought on by the desire to codify the world around us?
It definitely doesen't just pop out in the 18th century, although it arguably coalesces into something like what we recognize as "human rights" (at least in theory) during the period.
The entire thing is long and complicated, but consider the Stoics and Natural Law, christian (and islamic!) notions of equality before God, Grotius and the concept of international law... There are a bunch of concepts that gets grafted together to create our modern notion of "universal human rights" that come from different places and times.
The entire thing is long and complicated, but consider the Stoics and Natural Law, christian (and islamic!) notions of equality before God, Grotius and the concept of international law... There are a bunch of concepts that gets grafted together to create our modern notion of "universal human rights" that come from different places and times.
Rights to freedom and to live freely also pop up in every 'debauched' philosophy since the dawn of time. Libertinism was only the one which helped inspire the later more civic minded movements.
Most 'civic rights' rebel claims also rested on the conception of 'human' rights on which ancient civic privileges were grafted. As in, not only did the prince violate our rights, but the rights we all had were right and proper rights that all deserve.
I would limit this slightly by pointing out that the rebels in this situation often did not assume universal rights but rather specific rights. So they will rebel if they are not treated according to their civil position, but there is generally no conception that all humans possess certain unalienable rights on the basis of being human. So a lords powers over his subjects are very different from his powers over his slaves. That is to say, there are accepted classes of humans that have no rights, hence the rights are not universal.
The idea that criminals, slaves and people who have defended fortified places all have rights that they have retained in spite of their actions is fairly modern, although the ideas certainly have ancient roots. Most polities that have banned the death penalty have partly done so because life is believed to be a right that is absolute and inalienable and hence the state never has a right to remove it. Those states that maintain it do not, in fact, accept that humans have absolute rights.
I would tend to draw a distinction between those polities that consider the right to life as absolute and unalienable, and those that consider it only legal to take away in order to preserve the lives (and/or liberty, in some cases) of other people. In other words, you MAY stop a killer by killing them, but not shoot a jaywalker or a surrendered killer.
Of course, most of those "universal rights" countries will fight back if invaded, and their soldiers are not exactly instructed on how best to avoid killing the enemy. If they're not willing to kill an invader, they most likely don't have a country anymore, and the first invader who occupies the place will either change the laws, or simply ignore them.
In general the cases you have mentioned would be framed as a necessary violation of rights. If you (either as a private citizen or an armed representative of a polity) are threatening to remove the life of another it may be justified to stop you by any means (including lethal force). This is a conflict of rights issue, rather than a strict rights issue. Even so, in most nations with the rule of law police and the army need to demonstrate that lethal force was the only option when employed, this even includes (at least theoretically) the military of western nations in places like Afghanistan.
Total war, where such considerations are not taken into account, have thankfully been absent from the experience of western democracies for at least the last 50 years. Atrocity and massacre still occur in western armies but they are not policy and when caught the perpetrators are generally punished (although I would argue often far too lightly).
Total war, where such considerations are not taken into account, have thankfully been absent from the experience of western democracies for at least the last 50 years. Atrocity and massacre still occur in western armies but they are not policy and when caught the perpetrators are generally punished (although I would argue often far too lightly).
Should be pointed out that there is cross pollination, eg. assuming the specific rights of some ancestor/state of nature and thus generalizing to all of humanity ("When Adam Delv'd and Eve span...")