Beyond Human Rights
| Beyond Human Rights | |
|---|---|
 Front Cover | |
| Author(s) | Alain de Benoist |
| Cover artist | Andreas Nilsson |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Political Philosophy |
| Publisher | Arktos |
| Publication year | 2011 |
| Pages | 122 |
| ISBN | 978-1-907166-20-4 |
Beyond Human Rights is a study of the historical manner in which an individual held rights and duties towards his community, how Christianity altered this relationship and the evolution of the concept of 'rights' being bestowed on man merely for being human up the the present day.
Back Cover Text
Beyond Human Rights is the second in an ongoing series of English translations of Alain de Benoist’s works to be published by Arktos. Alain de Benoist begins Beyond Human Rights with an examination of the origins of the concept of ‘human rights’ in European Antiquity, in which rights were defined in terms of the individual’s relationship to his community, and were understood as being exclusive to that community alone. This changed with the coming of Christianity to Europe, after which rights were redefined as a universal concept derived from the idea of each individual as the possessor of a soul that is transcendent and independent of any social identity. This culminated in the Enlightenment belief in ‘natural rights’, which found its practical expression in the doctrines emerging from the American and French revolutions, in which all individuals were said to possess rights simply by virtue of the fact of their being human. In turn, laws issued by the State came to be viewed as negative impositions upon the naturally independent individual. De Benoist deconstructs this idea and shows how the myth of a ‘natural man’ who possesses rights independent of his community is indefensible, and how this conception of rights has, in modern times, led to their use as a weapon by stronger nations to bludgeon those weaker states which do not conform to the Western liberal-democratic form of rights, as we have recently seen in action in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. As such, he presents us with a crucial critique of one of the major issues of our time
Books by the same author
- View from the Right, Volume III: Controversies and Viewpoints (2019)
- View from the Right, Volume II: Systems and Debates (2018)
- Runes and the Origins of Writing (2018)
- View from the Right, Volume I: Heritage and Foundations (2017)
- The Indo-Europeans: In Search of the Homeland (2016)
- On the Brink of the Abyss: The Imminent Bankruptcy of the Financial System (2015)
- Carl Schmitt Today: Terrorism, Just War, and the State of Emergency (2013)
- Manifesto for a European Renaissance (2012)
- The Problem of Democracy (2011)
About the Author
Alain de Benoist is the leading philosopher behind the European ‘New Right’ movement (a label which de Benoist himself rejects, perceiving himself to not fit into the usual Left/Right dichotomy), a metapolitical school of thought which he helped to found in France in 1968 with the establishment of GRECE (Research and Study Group for European Civilisation). He continues to write and give lectures and interviews. He lives in Paris.
