Human Rights Across Cultures

Welcome to Philosophy 270 / East Asian Studies 270: Human Rights Across Cultures, a course taught at Wesleyan University by Stephen C. Angle. This page serves to introduce the course; links to course materials are found at the top of this page.

Introduction

Are human rights universal? Do cultural differences matter to judgements about human rights? This course will seek answers to such questions in two stages. First we will explore the histories of various human rights discourses, focusing primarily on Europe, the United States, and China. Then we will examine different contemporary reactions to the possibility of plural conceptions of human rights. We will look primarily at philosophical materials, but will also pay some attention to the premises of international legal documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the assumptions behind activist organizations like Amnesty International.