Letters to the Contrary: A Curated History of the UNESCO Human Rights Survey (Stanford Studies in Human Rights)

This remarkable collection of letters reveals the debate over universal human rights. Prominent mid-twentieth-century intellectuals and leaders—including Gandhi, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Arnold Schoenberg—engaged with the question of universal human rights. Letters to the Contrary presents the foundation of the intellectual struggles and ideological doubts still present in today's human rights debates. Since its adoption in 1948, historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was influenced by UNESCO's 1947–48 global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders, that supposedly demonstrated a truly universal consensus on human rights. Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary provides a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universality of human rights. In collecting, annotating, and analyzing these responses, including letters and responses that were omitted and polite refusals to respond, Mark Goodale shows that the UNESCO human rights survey was much less than supposed, but also much more. In many ways, the intellectual struggles, moral questions, and ideological doubts among the different participants who both organized and responded to the survey reveal a strikingly critical and contemporary orientation, raising similar questions at the center of current debates surrounding human rights scholarship and practice. This volume contains letters and survey responses from Jacques Havet, Jacques Maritain, Arnold J. Lien, Richard P. Mckeon, Quincy Wright, Levi Carneiro, Arthur H. Compton, Charles E. Merriam, Lewis Mumford, E. H. Carr, John Lewis, Harold J. Laski, Serge Hessen, John Somerville, Boris Tchechko, Luc Somerhausen, Hyman Levy, Ture Nerman, R. Palme Dutt, Maurice Dobb, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Marcel De Corte, Pedro Troncoso Sánchez, Mahatma Gandhi, Chung-Shu Lo, Kurt Riezler, Inocenc Arnošt Bláha, Hubert Frère, M. Nicolay, W. Albert Noyes, Jr., Aldous Huxley, Ralph W. Gerard, Johannes M. Burgers, Humayun Kabir, A. P. Elkin, S. V. Puntambekar, Leonard Barnes, Benedetto Croce, Jean Haesart, F. S. C. Northrop, Peter Skov, Emmanuel Mounier, Maurice Webb, John Macmurray, Julius Moór, L. Horváth, Alfred Weber, Don Salvador De Madariaga, Frank R. Scott, Jawaharlal Nehru, Margery Fry, Isaac Leon Kandel, René Maheu, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Morris L. Ernst, Arnold Schoenberg, W. H. Auden, Melville Herskovits, Theodore Johannes Haarhoff, Ernest Henry Burgmann, Herbert Read, and T. S. Eliot. Cover Contents Foreword A Technical Note on the Text PART I: READING HUMAN RIGHTS HISTORY WITH A PERIOD EYE Introduction History: UNESCO in the Paradigmatic Transition Interpretations: From a "Hollow Sham" to a "Plurality of Cultural Values" PART II: KEY DOCUMENTS Memorandum and Questionnaire Circulated by UNESCO on the Theoretical Bases of the Rights of Man The Grounds of an International Declaration of Human Rights Foreword and Introduction to Human Rights, Comments and Interpretations, UNESCO 1949 Foreword Introduction PART III: THE UNESCO HUMAN RIGHTS SURVEY: RESPONSES, REFUSALS, CORRESPONDENCE LIBERALISM FROM THE ASHES A Fragment of Thoughts Concerning the Nature and the Fulfilment of Human Rights The Philosophic Bases and Material Circumstances of the Rights of Man Relationship Between Different Categories of Human Rights On the Draft Convention and "Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man" Comments on the Basic Human Rights A World Bill of Rights Memorandum on the Rights of Man for the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations BEYOND EGOTISTIC MAN: COMMUNIST, SOCIALIST, AND SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC CHALLENGES The Rights of Man On Human Rights Towards a Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Rights of Man in Liberalism, Socialism and Communism Comparison of Soviet and Western Democratic Principles, with Special Reference to Human Rights The Conception of the Rights of Man in the U.S.S.R. Based on Official Documents Human Rights in the World Today Declaration on the Rights of Man Untitled Contribution to Discussion on Declaration of Human Rights Economic and Social Rights of Man RIGHTS IN A SACRED UNIVERSE Philosophical Examination of Human Rights Some Reflections on the Rights of Man Grammatical Analysis of the Rights of Man Some Fundamental Ideas for the United Nations' Declaration of the Rights of Man THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN DUTIES A Letter Addressed to the Director-General of UNESCO Human Rights in the Chinese Tradition Reflections on Human Rights Reply to the Questionnaire on the Rights of Man Memorandum on the Rights of Man Untitled THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF THE FUTURE Science and the Rights of Man The Rights of Man and the Facts of the Human Situation The Rights of Man: A Biological Approach Rights and Duties Concerning Creative Expression, in Particular in Science UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS IN A COLONIAL WORLD The Rights of Man and the Islamic Tradition The Rights of Primitive Peoples Human Freedoms and Hindu Thinking The Rights of Dependent Peoples HUMAN RIGHTS AS HISTORY AND PRACTICE The Future of Liberalism Reflections on Some Declarations of the Rights of Man Toward a Bill of Rights for the United Nations The Rights of Man Amended Project for a Declaration of the Rights of Persons and Collectivities Note Regarding the Proposed "Declaration of the Rights of Man" The Rights of Man Untitled Untitled Response to the Questionnaire and Memorandum about the Rights of Man Material Security and Spiritual Liberty The Rights of Man Just to Write Some Pious Sentiments Will Serve Little Purpose SPECIFIC FREEDOMS Human Rights and the Prisoner Education and Human Rights The Right to Information and the Right to the Expression of Opinion Freedom of Thought for Children FROM REPUDIATION TO THE PLAY OF FANCY We Are Finished with the Era of Passing General Resolutions in Regard to Liberty and Freedom The Rights of Man Reflections on Freedom and Art Statement on Human Rights Untitled On Human Rights Cultural Changes Can Never Be Brought About by Any Process of Intellectualist Assent At Present We Are, in a Collective Sense, Savages, and Not Entitled to Any Human Rights A Statement of the Rights Of Man, Unless It Was a Tissue of Ambiguities, Could Never, I Think, Be Framed in Such a Way as to Command the Assent of All Intelligent Men I Feel That It Is Very Late in the Day to Make a Declaration on the Assumptions of the Later Part of the Eighteenth Century Appendix: Notes on Sources and Guide for Further Research Acknowledgments Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W This remarkable collection of letters reveals the debate over universal human rights. Prominent mid-twentieth-century intellectuals and leaders--including Gandhi, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Arnold Schoenberg--engaged with the question of universal human rights. Letters to the Contrary presents the foundation of the intellectual struggles and ideological doubts still present in today's human rights debates. Since its adoption in 1948, historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was influenced by UNESCO's 1947-48 global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders, that supposedly demonstrated a truly universal consensus on human rights. Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary provides a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universality of human rights. In collecting, annotating, and analyzing these responses, including letters and responses that were omitted and polite refusals to respond, Mark Goodale shows that the UNESCO human rights survey was much less than supposed, but also much more. In many ways, the intellectual struggles, moral questions, and ideological doubts among the different participants who both organized and responded to the survey reveal a strikingly critical and contemporary orientation, raising similar questions at the center of current debates surrounding human rights scholarship and practice. This volume contains letters and survey responses from Jacques Havet, Jacques Maritain, Arnold J. Lien, Richard P. Mckeon, Quincy Wright, Levi Carneiro, Arthur H. Compton, Charles E. Merriam, Lewis Mumford, E. H. Carr, John Lewis, Harold J. Laski, Serge Hessen, John Somerville, Boris Tchechko, Luc Somerhausen, Hyman Levy, Ture Nerman, R. Palme Dutt, Maurice Dobb, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Marcel De Corte, Pedro Troncoso Snchez, Mahatma Gandhi, Chung-Shu Lo, Kurt Riezler, Inocenc Arnost Blha, Hubert Frre, M. Nicolay, W. Albert Noyes, Jr., Aldous Huxley, Ralph W. Gerard, Johannes M. Burgers, Humayun Kabir, A. P. Elkin, S. V. Puntambekar, Leonard Barnes, Benedetto Croce, Jean Haesart, F. S. C. Northrop, Peter Skov, Emmanuel Mounier, Maurice Webb, John Macmurray, Julius Mor, L. Horvth, Alfred Weber, Don Salvador De Madariaga, Frank R. Scott, Jawaharlal Nehru, Margery Fry, Isaac Leon Kandel, Ren Maheu, Albert Szent-Gyrgyi, Morris L. Ernst, Arnold Schoenberg, W. H. Auden, Melville Herskovits, Theodore Johannes Haarhoff, Ernest Henry Burgmann, Herbert Read, and T. S. Eliot. “Clever and timely . . . Goodale complicates the presumed universality of human rights, providing an alternative history of the UNESCO process.” —Lynn Meskell, Stanford University This remarkable collection of letters reveals the debate over universal human rights. Prominent mid-twentieth-century intellectuals and leaders—including Gandhi, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Arnold Schoenberg—engaged with the question of universal human rights. Letters to the Contrary presents the foundation of the intellectual struggles and ideological doubts still present in today’s human rights debates. Since its adoption in 1948, historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was influenced by UNESCO’s 1947–48 global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders, that supposedly demonstrated a truly universal consensus on human rights. Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary provides a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universality of human rights. In collecting, annotating, and analyzing these responses, including letters and responses that were omitted and polite refusals to respond, Mark Goodale shows that the UNESCO human rights survey was much less than supposed, but also much more. In many ways, the intellectual struggles, moral questions, and ideological doubts among the different participants who both organized and responded to the survey reveal a strikingly critical and contemporary orientation, raising similar questions at the center of current debates surrounding human rights scholarship and practice. "This remarkable collection of letters reveals the debate over universal human rights. Prominent mid-twentieth-century intellectuals and leaders--including Gandhi, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Arnold Schoenberg--engaged with the question of universal human rights. Letters to the Contrary presents the foundation of the intellectual struggles and ideological doubts still present in today's human rights debates. Since its adoption in 1948, historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was influenced by UNESCO's 1947-48 global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders, that supposedly demonstrated a truly universal consensus on human rights. Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary provides a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universality of human rights. In collecting, annotating, and analyzing these responses, including letters and responses that were omitted and polite refusals to respond, Mark Goodale shows that the UNESCO human rights survey was much less than supposed, but also much more. In many ways, the intellectual struggles, moral questions, and ideological doubts among the different participants who both organized and responded to the survey reveal a strikingly critical and contemporary orientation, raising similar questions at the center of current debates surrounding human rights scholarship and practice"--Publisher's description "This ... collection of letters reveals the debate over universal human rights. Prominent mid-twentieth-century intellectuals and leaders--including Gandhi, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Arnold Schoenberg--engaged with the question of universal human rights. [This book] presents the foundation of the intellectual struggles and ideological doubts still present in today's human rights debates."-- Publisher's website