人权起源的国际政治学——评《最后的乌托邦:历史中的人权》

The International Politics of Emergence of the Idea of “Human Rights”:A Review on Samuel Moyn’s The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History

作为可从外部批驳主权民族国家之权利的'人权',与作为本土公民身份之政治观念的'人的权利'存在本质差别。人权既不是对几个世纪以前的西方资产阶级人道精神的传承,也不是对第二次世界大战大屠杀的回应,它在20世纪70年代能够实现颠覆性逆袭只是因为,其他乌托邦幻想在'冷战'中的破灭以及这些幻想向人权乌托邦的转型为这一突围提供了最强有力的机会。正确理解当代人权理想的历史起源是思考人权这一乌托邦理想和运动所要继续面对的深层次困境的唯一出路。晚近以来,美国新保守主义者的民主促进运动,几乎完全政治化了人权,正因如此,作为最后乌托邦的人权未来可能为新的乌托邦所取代。未来我国人权话语的建构路径,应是在对欧美中心主义进行健康祛魅之同时,谋求一种文明相容的具有更高正统性的人权观。

Samuel Moyn’s argument in The Last Utopia suggests that the idea of individual'human rights',as a'utopian program'to transcend national boundaries,far from being an ancient tradition dating back to the French Revolution,or even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,is a phenomenon of much more recent vintage,specifically of the mid-1970 s,and that the reason it arose when it did was that it filled a void left by the collapse of alternative,collective notions of human emancipation such as communism,fascism,and socialism.This language of'last utopia',while noble in conception,has revealed itself as all too readily hijacked by rights-negating militarists like George W.Bush and too limited in its effectiveness,and may indeed require a renewal of more collective notions of utopia in order to realize its ideal promises.This book tell us to how to theoretically construct the future discourse system of Chinese human rights,that is,we should seek for a new conception of inter-civilization human rights with greater legitimacy and inclusiveness after disenchanting the deeplyrooted American-European centered human right thoughts.