Hans Joas Lecture: Violence and the Origins of Human Rights

For more on this event, visit: http://bit.ly/mYOslp For more on the Berkley Center, visit: http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu October 26, 2009 | Current debates about human rights obscure their origins in the experience of violence. The affirmation of the universal value of human dignity is not only part of the history of ideas, but it also links back to violent and traumatic collective experiences such as slavery and the Holocaust. In this first Berkley Center lecture, Hans Joas traced the history of violence in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and other important documents, and discussed the conditions for the successful transformation of experiences of violence into universalist value commitments. The abolition of slavery served as an illustration.