What Are Human Rights?

by Maurice Cranston, United Nations General Assembly Uni (Creator)

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128 pages, Hardcover

Published September 9, 2021

About the author

Maurice William Cranston was an English philosopher, professor, and author. He served for many years as Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics, and was also known for his popular publications. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was Professor of Political Theory at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy).

Cranston's major works include biographies of John Locke, for which he received the 1957 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and Rousseau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others addressing the history of liberty. He contributed to many publications in both Britain and the United States and wrote scripts for the BBC. In 1946 two of his detective novels were published by John Westhouse: Tomorrow We'll Be Sober and Philosopher's Hemlock.

Cranston's intellectual abilities were varied. His first academic book, Freedom: A New Analysis (1954), covered history (the history of liberalism), politics (a precursive discussion of what Sir Isaiah Berlin would later analyse as negative and positive liberty) and a philosophical attempt to resolve or at least elucidate freedom of the will. The philosophical section was the least successful; and Cranston never again attempted pure philosophy. His main academic strengths were as a biographer and as an intellectual historian.

In his later years, Cranston moved to the political right, and expressed admiration for Margaret Thatcher. Cranston also contributed to The American Spectator magazine.

He died of a heart attack while taping a television production in London for the BBC.

(excerpted from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Ian Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am a specialist on Jean-Jacques Rousseau so am familiar with much of Cranston's writing, since he is an expert on Rousseau. But I came to this book from Jack Donnelly's Universal Human Rights, since Donnelly is critical of Cranston's prioritisation of civil and political rights. I assumed (wrongly) that this was because Cranston was a liberal. (Cranston may still be a liberal with his apparent love of natural rights.) However, I was (very) suprised to find myself agreeing with Cranston because economic, social and cultural rights, unlike civil and political rights, lack a sense of duty to secure them.

[Erik]

Recommended by James Schall in Another Sort of Learning, Chapter 13, as one of Nine Books on Natural Law.