Inventing Human Rights, by Lynn Hunt
Inventing Human Rights
by Lynn Hunt. Non-fiction.
Norton, 2007. 272 pages.
Lynn Hunt’s book Inventing Human Rights has an ambitious objective, to chart the birth of human rights from the eighteenth century onwards. What distinguishes this text from others – and makes it important for us – is that Hunt explores cultural trends as well. Human rights did not emerge from a political vacuum, but were accompanied by new developments in the arts. The ability of novels to induce responses in their readers may well have helped abolish torture and create human rights as we know them today.
This book explains, in fine prose, why FictionthatMatters.org exists in the first place. Books can change the way we think — and the way we act.
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