Canada and the World

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19 November 2010

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Historical Struggle

for Human Rights

 

The people of the Western world enjoy a level of human rights that has never been known before; getting to this state of freedom has been a long, tough struggle

 

Anthony Grayling documents the expansion of human rights in his 2008 book Towards the Light.

 

Professor Grayling (he studies philosophy) sees the struggle for freedom passing through several stages. The first step was taken in the 16th century in the effort to gain the right to practice one’s religion of choice. That was started by Martin Luther and much blood was shed before it became a reality.

 

Freedom from Religious Control

The 17th century saw the drive to separate thought and science from the control of religious doctrine.

 

The Italian physicist Galileo Galilei put forward the notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun. At the time, the Roman Catholic Church taught that the Sun revolved around the Earth. In 1633, Galileo was brought to trial, found guilty of heresy, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

 

But, the idea that scientific enquiry and independent thought can be freed from religious dogma began then.

 

Equality of People

During the 18th and 19th centuries, philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Paine started to write about the need for equality among people and an end to the absolute rule of hereditary monarchs. More blood was spilled in the American and French Revolutions that were fought to advance these ideas.

 

Later, human rights were extended to wider numbers with the abolition of slavery and the extending of the right to vote to workers and women.

 

It is only in the past few hundred years that any human beyond a tiny, privileged, ruling class had any material, political, or cultural expectations.

 

Prof. Grayling writes “…it remains true that today’s ordinary Western citizen is, in 16th-century terms, a lord: a possessor of rights, entitlements, opportunities, and resources that only an aristocrat of that earlier period could hope for.”

 

He states the liberties that we take for granted today “were very, very hard won…Many died in furthering these processes - in fire at the church’s stake, in chains in royal dungeons, on the battlefield.”

 

Liberties under Threat Today

Anthony Grayling says he wrote his book, in part, because of what he sees as the erosion of those “hard won” liberties.

 

Under the defence of protecting our security, governments in most Western countries are watching everyone more closely, bringing in identity cards, and restricting civil liberties. Anthony Grayling says that in doing this we are ignoring the warnings of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

 

Archbishop Tutu was one of the leaders of the fight against South Africa’s hated apartheid system. This segregated people by colour, with the whites getting the best of everything and the blacks getting a few scraps.

 

Desmond Tutu wrote: “We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. We cannot afford to use methods of which we will be ashamed when we look back, when we say, ‘...we shouldn’t have done that.’ We must remember, my friends, that we have been given a wonderful cause. The cause of freedom! And you and I must be those who will walk with heads held high. We will say, ‘We used methods that can stand the harsh scrutiny of history.’ ”

 

© Canada and the World, May 2009

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In 1992, Pope John Paul II said that errors were made in the way Galileo (above) was treated. In March 2008, the Catholic Church said it would completely rehabilitate the scientist and erect a statue of him inside the Vatican.

 

“Freedom is not a gift from heaven. We must fight for it every day.”

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal