Introduction: From the Rights of Man to Human Rights?

Summary

In The Last Utopia (2010), Samuel Moyn claims that a/ the Rights of Man almost disappeared from European political thought in the nineteenth century and b/ what we call human rights today have (almost) nothing to do with the Rights of Man proclaimed at the end of the eighteenth century. Taking France as our case study, we demonstrate firstly that although the language of human rights unquestionably waned in the nineteenth century, Europeans nevertheless remained clearly aware of it. Secondly, we refute the idea of a rigid dichotomy between the ‘Rights of Man’ and today human rights. In addition, we show that Moyn’s argument echoes the works of some French political philosophers who also consider human rights today as a sort of antipolitical utopia carried along by purely moral aspirations.