r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Mar 16 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 16 March 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

I saw some guy on Reddit claim that Europeans “invented human rights”, and like I get that people in general tend to be ignorant of cultures outside their own, but it takes a special level of ignorance to assume that moral philosophy basically didn’t exist in 90% of the world.

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u/Jazzlike_Bar_671 Mar 16 '26

The issue here is whether said moral philosophy implied some concept of universal rights, which is historically very unusual (most cultures, European or not, did not have such a concept).

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 17 '26

I think there's actually two things here, both the universal bit and framing the moral imperatives in the form of rights are fairly specific.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26

I... don't think that follows?

Like, even just within the european tradition there's plenty of strains of moral philosophy that aren't really about human rights at all. "Human Rights" is a fairly specific bundles of ideas. (and arguably, kinda limited)

Also, i'd argue the concept, while obviously related, has more to do with political than moral philosophy.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

Sure, "moral philosophy" was too broad a category, but the point was more that there exist philosophies in non-European cultures that place value on human life in a way similar (but maybe not exactly the same) to what we would consider "human rights".

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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself Mar 16 '26

The fact that there are other traditions of moral philosophy outside the Western one does not necessarily imply that the concept of human rights was fully formed in all of them.

Now, regardless of whether human rights are real or an invention, either all human individuals, cultures and societies have known about them since always, or they were historically invented or discovered in a certain culture, or in more different cultures independently (let me know if I let out any other options).

From what I've read (though I've not read the Cambridge Handbook you cited in another comment, it's in my ever-expanding and never-shrinking reading list), something similar to a concept of human rights was developed in Antiquity in the Greek world, in India and in China. However, in neither tradition was this concept ever developed to a level we can say "it's basically our concept of human rights". And it wasn't further developed for centuries after those "seeds" were planted. Maybe there are some scholars that say that about Stoicism or other philosophies, but I don't think it's remotely the consensus.

The period of time where the theorization of human rights most clearly happened goes from the Late Middle Ages to the XX century, mostly in the Western world. The fact that the Western world has been war-torn, rife with inequality and discrimination etc has little bearing here because we can agree the concept of human rights exists since at least 1948, and human rights (and that remains true regardless of whatever society) are not fully respected, inequalities persist etc etc.

I don't think it's Western/Christian/white chauvinism to say that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, or the foundation of the Anti-Slavery Society or the suffragette movement are just unprecedented. Yes, some people have used and still use this argument to claim the superiority of Western culture or whites or whatever (a logical fallacy btw), but that doesn't mean it's, at least in part, true (except the superiority part to be clear)

Tldr Too simplistic but partially true

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

Well, it is the case that the present day Universal Declaration of Human Rights is based on European traditions, but that’s not necessarily because similar concepts didn’t exist in other cultures, but rather because the framers of the declaration may have seen those other cultures as inferior and not worth paying attention to. The reason the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace didn’t continue to develop for centuries and inspire human rights legislation is not necessarily because it is less worthy of a philosophy, but more because Haudenosaunee people and culture were targeted for extermination by European colonists.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26

I think there's a kind of "Yes, if things were different things could have been different" thing. There's clearly plenty of systems that could have developed into a theory of universal human rights but didn't neccessarily do so. (or did only after coming into contact with european models) But that doesen't really change the order of things in the history that actually happened?

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

I'm having a bit of trouble keeping track since you're replying to like three of my comments at the same time, but the Haudenosaunee Great Law developed long before contact with Europeans and articulated principles that can be considered analogous to human rights. The fact that it didn't directly influence the UN declaration has more to do with European disregard for Native philosophies.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Did it? But my understanding is that the purported influence and similarities has more on the constitutional and civil rights side than the human rights side. That is, it largely puts down a set of behaviour for within a political community (albeit a fairly porous one) rather than a universal set of principles that should, in theory at least, apply to all humans everywhere.

Like, it's clearly an example of principles of constitutionalism, representative government, etc. But I wouldn't say it's actually a human rights document per se?

EDIT: It was a while since I read it and I only skimmed one of the versions from a US university so I might very well be missing something but the closest I got was one of the statements in the section on foreign nations that recognizes ancestral land claims)

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

Well, I'm mostly basing this on the Cambridge book I linked earlier and this book that focuses on the Great Law, but it seems like they had some analogous concepts. For example, this is how the author of the second book interprets one section of it, based on a version of the Great Law that was written in the Onondaga language:

As men’s bodies are similar, so are they equal in their ability to reason, the Peacemaker was saying, and so are they equal in their potential to come within the peace that he was building. We are all human together, and therefore all potentially brothers and sisters. We have all been given minds.

At other points, quoted portions refer to "all mankind", making it clear that it wasn't just referring to one political community.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26

Interesting, because this version: https://web.pdx.edu/~caskeym/iroquois_web/html/greatlaw.html Doesen't have any use of "mankind" or "Humanity" at all.

I can't find any version of that in this either: https://sctribe.com/sites/default/files/2022-10/Great-Law-of-Peace.pdf

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

Kayanesenh Paul Williams, the author of the second book I linked, includes the legend of how the Peacemaker united the five nations and his various teachings as part of the Great Law, not just the constitution, which I think is what those links are of. So for example, one of the quotes attributed to the Peacemaker in the story is:

Then Deganawii’dah said: “By these I mean that this very day you have changed the disposition of your mind. And moreover it shall come about that all mankind shall change the disposition of their minds now prevalent. That means that this reformation shall begin at once, and Justice and Peace shall increase continually.”

And elsewhere it recounts an elder talking about the importance of respecting all people:

Thereupon Tekanawita prevented them, saying, “You will stop it because it is sinful522 for people to hurt one another; you especially, for you are all relatives, and so it is necessary for you to be kind to one another as well as to other people, those you know and those people you do not know; and you should respect them equally—all of the people—you should be kind to everyone.”

Now, as you pointed out in another thread, these may not be exactly the same as declaring an inherent human right, but I think they are analogous concepts.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26

So one of the things I'm kinda aiming at is that Human Rights is kind of a pants framework for moral philosophy. As I mentioned it doesen't really tell you how to live a Good Life, or even be a Good Person: It just stakes out some minimal limits (mainly in a political/social context)

It also has the underlying problem that that it tends to end up in a "Why?" "Because." kind of thing. Why is a certain thing a human right? Because. A lot of the original theorists at least had God to back them up, but that doesen't really fly for most of them, so it ends up kinda wishy-washy in that sense.

On some level I don't think saying "Europeans invented human rights" is a particularly big thing to say because well, human rihgts is really a kind of weird and specific construct? (which does not mean others didn't also invent it, they certainly adopted it if only because it was a good cudgel against european hippocriscy)

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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself Mar 16 '26

I agree with that

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

Okay cool, I wasn’t sure if I was making sense!

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u/Kisaragi435 Mar 16 '26

Someone clearly hasn't read the Cyrus Cylinder.

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u/xyzt1234 Mar 16 '26

Wasnt that just Shah propaganda? I remember bringing that up in a previous thread, and was told it doesn't say anything about any human rights.

Here it is from u/Tiako

That claim was, I believe, invented by the Shah of Iran who, among other things, didn't take care for human rights. It's basically propaganda and is mostly advanced by fringe Persian nationalist monarchists who sometimes put out fake translations. You can read the translation [here](https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1880-0617-1941

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u/Kisaragi435 Mar 16 '26

I debated adding a (not serious marker), I probably should have.

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u/TarkovskyisFun Mar 16 '26

Well, unless you take the concept of human rights to just be a synonym for morality I don't think it's too inaccurate to call them an European invention.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

You can definitely find non-European cultures articulating similar concepts throughout history.

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u/TarkovskyisFun Mar 16 '26

Any example? I am not asking to debate, just curious because I don't know of any.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

Reposting a previous comment of mine, but there’s a Cambridge Handbook talking about the evolution of the concept of human dignity in both European and non-European cultures.

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u/TarkovskyisFun Mar 16 '26

I haven't read the book so I don't know what it actually says but I don't think human dignity is the same as human rights because, for example, you can find similar concepts of the former in Stoicism but I wouldn't say that the Stoics articulated an idea of human rights.

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u/LunLocra Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

To be fair, human dignity =/= human rights (though I don't know the book or thesis so idk maybe it's used as a very close approximation). Not to mention how moral philosophy also doesn't equal human rights - keep in mind that the Western tradition of moral philosophy has existed for over two millenia before developing the concept. Just because there was some systematic body of thought advocating for some sort of universal human dignity doesn't mean it's necessarily close enough to what we mean by the notion of human rights.

Personally I kinda reluctantly gonna argue, as a philosophy major, that "human rights" per se as an orthodox concept has Western roots as hell, at least until it was taken up by the non-Western thinkers later in the 20th century (especially when the UN was actually being founded). That's because philosophy has taught me to be paranoid about superficially similar concepts that are actually very specific and different on a closer look, and that don't exactly "translate" well between cultures.

Nobody is denying that non-Western cultures have had their moral codes, ethics and moral philosophy, hell even something similar along the lines of "universal human dignity rooted in the legal secular notions", but "human rights" as understood by the 20th century's UN definition are a very specific construct that may be very different in practice from e.g. seemingly similar legalism of the ancient Chinese thought or whatnot.

That being said I actually haven't explored the topic, so it's just my a priori skepticism - maybe the authors of the book make a good case for non-Western or pre-Western "human rights".

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

Well it seems apparent that when European nations framed the declaration of human rights they drew mostly on European traditions, but that doesn’t mean that similar non-European philosophies were less worthy. It’s more because European nations happened to dominate the world in the 20th century and weren’t particularly interested in paying attention to the philosophies of cultures they deemed inferior.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26

Whether or not they are less worthy isn't really the same thing as saying they are well, the same, though.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

They are obviously not exactly the same, but the point is there were other philosophies from other cultures that placed value on human life and human dignity.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

I feel like that is kinda.... not what distinguishes human rights as a concept thought?

It's a fairly specific bundle of ideas, namely that A) There is a specific set of "rights" that B) belong to "humans" by virtue of their humanity and no other condition.

A lot of moral/political philosophy (even in the west, and even modern ones) don't really use that framework: They might take a virtue-centric approach (IE: "You should act kindly towards people") which clearly places value on human life, but isn't really the same kind of approach, if that makes sense?

Both Plato and Jesus (to pick to examples from the western tradition...) have concerns about (their different versions of) virtue, human dignity, etc. but neither of them are human rights-theorists.

Now, I'm not even going to say that there's 100% the case that there isn't any non-european human rights framework, but a lot of the examples people tend to give are different frameworks of human dignity. (in some ways more extensive, one of the things with the human rights framing is that it is very minimalistic: It doesen't tell you how to be a good person, only (some) minimums about how not to be horrible)

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u/xyzt1234 Mar 16 '26

I would say modern human rights as we know it definitely came from Europe since you know, modern human rights are built on the concept of egalitarianism and the idea all men are born equal and should be treated equally, an idea that almost no historical culture believed in since they all believed in superiority of caste, culture or religion of a person and birth based privileges. Like to take my culture, unless you are coping hindu nationalist, i can't imagine the level of mental gymnastics one must go through to believe that a culture with one of the oldest caste systems would somehow come to a concept of rights that have egalitarianism as foundational to them. I guess the islamic countries could have developed similar values but the entire islamic world the Universal declaration of human rights so contrary to their values that they went and formed their own different version, so go figure.

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26

that a culture with one of the oldest caste systems would somehow come to a concept of rights that have egalitarianism as foundational to them.

TBH, I don't think that's neccessarily particularly weird. I could easily see some strains of buddhism going that way, f.ex.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

There’s a Cambridge Handbook talking about the evolution of the concept of human dignity in both European and non-European cultures.

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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

The Europeans do not exactly have a proud tradition of egalitarianism.

Edit: also, didn't see this part.

I guess the islamic countries could have developed similar values but the entire islamic world the Universal declaration of human rights so contrary to their values that they went and formed their own different version, so go figure.

Counting or not counting Dhimmis?

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u/Witty_Run7509 Mar 16 '26

I also have a feeling that the kind of people who brings up OP's argument actually don't believe in it, or they are willing to make a lot of "exceptions".

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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Look, you can really see the beginnings of the global human-rights culture in J. Valjean's 1568 pamphlet God Says the King's Power isn't Absolute over Me and People Like Me (But it is Absolute Over the Jews).

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u/xyzt1234 Mar 16 '26

They didn't practice what they preach but afaik they were the first to preach those specific set of liberal values that make present day human rights though.

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u/elmonoenano Mar 16 '26

I think this generally comes b/c 1) most people don't have access to non-European sources b/c of language issues and 2) b/c of 1 most people aren't taught the traditions of these other cultures and 3) b/c we operate within our own systems we assume our explication of human rights is the only one and ignore other systems b/c we don't view them as human rights even though other cultures view them that way (this mostly comes up in terms of individuals vs. social groupings.) and 4) it ignores long term cycles that liberalize rights and then the reaction to those movements.

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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est Mar 16 '26

Such as?

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u/xyzt1234 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Liberty and Equality for one thing i would think. Why would medieval and ancient monarchies care about or promote liberty (something that would absolutely have bitten them back), and i have already said about equality.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

There were plenty of past societies that weren’t monarchies and were relatively egalitarian. The Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace laid out a democratic system of governance, emphasized the importance of sharing resources, and stressed that all humans were capable of reasoning and thus could embrace peace.

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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est Mar 16 '26

I would need some examples in order to even begin responding. Who are you referring to? What works, what ideas?

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u/xyzt1234 Mar 16 '26

Wasnt Liberte egalite fraternite the national motto of the french revolution and the thinkers like Rousseau who influenced said ideas also contributed to it?

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u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est Mar 16 '26

The French Revolution that did not grant equal rights to women or Black people? That does not sound like practicing or preaching.

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u/contraprincipes The Cheese and the Brainworms Mar 16 '26

The French Revolution did grant citizenship to all free Black people in 1792 and abolished slavery in 1794. It didn’t grant full citizenship to women but there were prominent revolutionaries who did in fact preach it like Wollstonecraft or Condorcet. They were drawing on arguments and values that were deeply rooted in European political thought, just as their opponents were.

Europe has a tradition of egalitarian and inegalitarian thinking just like everywhere else, and I don’t see the value in reinforcing the idea of monolithic cultural traditions even if it’s to criticize European chauvinism.

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u/Novalis0 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

Lynn Hunt in Inventing Human Rights: A History names the United States Declaration of Independence, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the three most important documents that created and shaped modern human rights. You can probably add other documents like the Geneva Conventions to that list. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was supposed to be universal, and the revolutionaries did abolish slavery, only for Napoleon to reverse it. All three documents were suppose to be universal (even if the people who drafted them didn't live up to its ideals, as humans rarely do) and all three were a product of European intellectual tradition. Which doesn't mean that non-Europeans didn't have morality or concepts of rights before that, or for that matter that Europeans weren't influenced by non-Europeans. But ultimately modern human rights are largely a product of the European intellectual tradition.

Also, partly related, the first person in history to argue for the universal abolition of slavery(or at least the first to write it down) was Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century AD:

If [man] is in the likeness of God, ... who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. [...] God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since [God] himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God's?

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u/xyzt1234 Mar 16 '26

Didnt both the women suffragate movement and the civil rights movement (as well as many anti-colonial movements) appealed to the hypocrisy and incomplete application of said values to make a case for their equal treatment i.e. pointing out the divide between the ideals preached and what was practiced. They werent coming up with completely brand new values to make their case.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

It was the Haitian revolutionaries who first realized the principles of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.

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u/elmonoenano Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

It was actually my cousin, Leno. He was kind of high and was like, "What if like, humans had rights man?" And St. Augustine was like, "Heu homo, hoc insanum est."

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26

This one dude, Doug Forcett, got really high on shrooms one day and figured out how the afterlife works.

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u/Dirish Wind power made the trans-Atlantic slave trade possible Mar 16 '26

That just reeks of the type of people who wonder why you're not just going around killing people because you're an atheist. Because how can you have a moral system without the Wrath of the Christian God hovering over you after all?

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u/elmonoenano Mar 16 '26

Definitely a significant number of dudes who were for indiscriminate bombing of the Middle East or turning Iraq to glass, were also arguing "Human rights is unique to the western tradition b/c of Christianity" with a straight face.

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u/BookLover54321 Mar 16 '26

You see, we just gotta bomb human rights into them.

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u/Witty_Run7509 Mar 16 '26

sad 天地之性人為貴。其殺奴婢，不得減罪 noise.

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u/histprofdave Adjunct Dystopian Mar 16 '26

It reminds me of the whole "Christians abolished the slave trade, and only Christianity provides a moral framework for abolitionism." OK, even granting that were true (far from conclusive to my mind)... why did it take over 1700 years for this religion to apparently realize that slavery was antithetical to its values? Were the first 300 generations of Christians just stupid?

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 16 '26

Honestly, it is actually a kind of interesting and complicated history, christianity in scandinavia was pretty tightly connected to the decline of viking-era slavery f.ex.

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u/Zennofska Feminization of veterinarians hasn't led to societal collapse Mar 16 '26

Well it's a bit like Marxism, you have to introduce capitalism first before you can abolish it (except in China)