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Promise-Making and the History of Human Rights: Reading Arendt with Danto

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Mackinnon, ES 

Abstract

Implicit in recent debates among historians of human rights is the question of whether and how early rights promises, particularly eighteenth-century rights declarations, enabled later rights claims. Can promises, initially unrealized, create the conditions for their own fulfillment? Reading Hannah Arendt with Arthur Danto, this article offers an account of human rights politics as a practice of repeated promise-making – one characterized not by reliance on the past as a stable foundation, but by uncertainty about, and contestation of, history. Using archival sources, it also reconstructs Arendt’s and Danto’s involvement in human rights politics, including Danto’s early role in Amnesty International USA.

Description

Keywords

4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology

Journal Title

Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2151-4364
2151-4372

Volume Title

9

Publisher

Project MUSE