Читать книгу Human Rights - Michael Freeman - Страница 12

The ancient Greeks are credited with the invention of several concepts that will later play a crucial role in the concept of human rights: the human individual with a mind and a soul; universal truth; the fundamental value of human beings (humanism) (Snell 1953). Whether or not the ancient Greeks had a concept of ‘rights’, they certainly had the concepts of power and its abuse. This was expressed in the concept of tyranny, which was a form of arbitrary (lawless) government, in which the ruler governed in his own interest and treated his people unjustly. It was possible, however, for the Greeks to think about tyranny without talking about rights. In Sophocles’ play Antigone, the king forbids Antigone to bury her dead brother because he had been a rebel. Antigone defies the king’s order, but on the ground that she has a religious duty to bury her brother, not on the ground that she has a right to do so. We might see Sophocles’ play as a human-rights drama about the right to freedom of religion, but Sophocles did not express it this way.

Aristotle believed that constitutions could assign rights, such as the rights to property and participation in public affairs, to citizens. When these rights were violated, the laws determined compensation or punishment. Aristotle had no conception of human rights, however, as he believed that rights derived from constitutions, and that some men were slaves by nature (Miller, F. 1995).