Human Rights and Revolutions Author:Lynn Hunt This original and important book examines the paradoxical yet fundamental relationship between revolutions and the discourse of human rights as it has developed over the last four centuries. In a multidisciplinary collection of essays, which includes pieces by activists as well as scholars, contributors compare times and places as remote from ea... more »ch other as seventeenth-century England and contemporary Kosovo, bringing to bear ideas and methodologies associated with disciplines ranging from cultural history to political philosophy. In doing so, they seek to shed light on a crucial conundrum: on the one hand, revolutionary regimes often have been responsible for horrific human rights abuses, and yet on the other, revolutionary struggles often serve as a crucible to elevate appreciation for the importance of human rights. Providing an unusually balanced analysis of the changes over time in conceptions of human rights in both Western and non-Western contexts, this work will be invaluable for anyone seeking a nuanced understanding of what it means to be human and those rights to which we should be able to lay claim as a result.« less