Contemporary debates about the concept of human rights are characterized, at their core, by difficulty negotiating the tension between the universal and the particular. One of the central challenges of an increasingly global society is to determine how we can affirm universal human rights while respecting the distinctive traditions of individual cultures.
To address this challenge, Clinton Timoth Curle turns to John Humphrey, an oft-ignored Canadian who is chiefly responsible for the United Naitons' Declaration of Human Rights. Using Humphry's journals as a starting point, Curle illustrates how Humphry was profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Henry Bergson, and in fact regarded the Declaration as a kind of legal transliteration of Bergson's philosophy of the open society. Curle goes on to provide a careful analysis of Bergon's philosophy, and to establish an affinity between Humphry's vision of the contemporary human rights project and the Greek Patristic tradition.
Curle concludes that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, understood in a Bergsonian context, provides us with a way to affirm in the modern context that there is a ground to human fellowship which is transcendent and which offers a basis to establish a universal ethics without a radical homogenization of cultures.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 323/.01
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 22
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 9781442684447 9780802092618
- LCCN
- JC571
- LCCN Item number
- C87 2007eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (xi, 212 p.)
- Published in
- Canada
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)slc00222086 (OCoLC)753358832 (CaOOCEL)418991
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- Contents 8
- Preface 10
- Introduction 16
- 1 Universality, Particularity, and International Human Rights 24
- Universality as a Problem 25
- A Compelling Solution 30
- A Better Way? 40
- 2 John Humphrey and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 42
- Early Works 43
- Humphrey and the United Nations 45
- The Drafting of the Declaration 48
- Humphrey and the Problem of the Universality of Rights 51
- Humphrey and Bergson 57
- Conclusion 63
- 3 The Greek Patristic Tradition 65
- An Apology 66
- Gregory Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian 67
- The Greek Fathers: Five Thematic Distinctives 72
- Conclusion 88
- 4 John Humphrey and Henri Bergson 91
- Henri Bergson 93
- Bergson’s Philosophy 95
- Bergson and the Greek Patristic Tradition 112
- Conclusion: MacIntyre Revisited 113
- 5 Jacques Maritain and the Neo-Thomist Critique of Bergson 115
- Maritain’s Acceptance of Neo-Thomism 117
- Maritain’s Early Criticisms of Bergson 120
- Maritain’s Later Criticisms of Bergson 130
- Maritain’s Final Assessment of Bergson 132
- A Summary of Maritain’s Critique of Bergson 137
- Conclusion 139
- 6 Two Versions of Human Rights 142
- Maritain, Natural Law, and the Open Society 142
- Maritain and the Contemporary Human Rights Project 145
- Maritain and the Universality of Human Rights 154
- Bergson and the Universality of Human Rights 158
- A Rapprochement between Bergson and Maritain? 159
- Conclusion 161
- Conclusion 163
- Notes 170
- Bibliography 210
- Index 222
- A 222
- B 222
- C 223
- D 223
- F 223
- G 223
- H 223
- I 223
- J 223
- K 223
- L 224
- M 224
- N 224
- O 224
- P 224
- R 224
- S 224
- T 225
- U 225
- V 225
- W 225
- Z 225
