J ohannes M orsink . The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Holocaust

For over two decades, the philosopher and political scientist Johannes Morsink has devoted himself to studying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). His most recent of several books on the subject, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Holocaust: An Endangered Connection, aims to reestablish the connection he considers endangered. Taking issue with recent works by historians and legal scholars, Morsink posits that human rights emerged as a response to the Holocaust, and that the UDHR specifically—a “moral mouse” often belittled by scholars—spawned the “legal elephant” that international human rights would become (163). The book’s first part deals with the “Historic Moment,” described both as the passing of the UDHR, in 1948, and as the 1940s more generally. Using a progressively modified flowchart, Morsink visualizes the rise of human rights as a political movement and as a system of codified international law—effects of the revelatory experience of the Holocaust and the revelatory text to which it is indivisibly connected: the UDHR. Taking issue with the so-called “new historians” of human rights, Morsink’s view contrasts starkly with recent works by historians who study how political movements—most prominently, decolonization or the many NGOs that have emerged since the 1960s and 1970s—have turned human rights into a tool for political claim-making, emphasizing historical agency.

Agency (philosophy) · Cicero · Declaration · Epistemology · Human rights · International human rights law · Political science · Politics · The Holocaust · Classics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies