Hans Joas on Universal Human Rights, October 2009

Violence and the Origins of Human Rights
October 27, 2009 | 07:00PM
Bunn Intercultural Center (ICC) Auditorium
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Current debates about human rights obscure their origins in the experience of violence. The affirmation of the universal value of human dignity is not only part of the history of ideas. It links back to violent and traumatic collective experiences such as slavery and the Holocaust. In this first Berkley Center lecture, Hans Joas will detect traces of the history of violence in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and other important documents, and will discuss the conditions for the successful transformation of experiences of violence into universalist value commitments. The abolition of slavery will serve as an illustration.

Punishment, Rights, and the Sacredness of the Person
October 28, 2009 | 07:00PM
Bunn Intercultural Center (ICC) Auditorium
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The history of human rights runs parallel to the rise of the modern state and new forms of punishment. In that history some discern progress in the gradual constraints placed on state power with respect to its citizens. Others follow Michel Foucault, who saw the modern state developing more and more effective means of discipline over time. In his second Berkley Center lecture Hans Joas will present an alternative view of the origins of human rights. Drawing on the insights of Emile Durkheim he will examine the larger process of inclusion through which more and more people have come to be considered human persons. A focus on the sacredness of the person helps us to understand the ambiguity of punishment in the modern era - and the threats posed to human rights by certain contemporary states.

Human Rights and Universal Values
October 29, 2009 | 07:00PM
Bunn Intercultural Center (ICC) Auditorium
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Can there be agreement about universal human rights? Given the diversity of religious and philosophical value traditions in today's world, is consensus possible? In his third Berkley Center lecture, Hans Joas will argue that much depends on the way we talk about values with one another. We have to resist the notion that human rights controversies inevitably link to a "clash of civilizations," or that individuals and groups simply embrace and articulate the values that are right for them - without reasoning or communication with others. The example of the drafting of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights illustrates the importance and possibility of productive communication about universal human rights across value traditions.

About Hans Joas

Hans Joas is a leading social theorist and professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, where he also belongs to the Committee on Social Thought, and at the University of Erfurt, Germany, where he directs the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies. Joas has made many seminal contributions to the history and development of social theory and our understanding of pragmatism, democracy, religion, violence, and human values. Among his major books are The Creativity of Action (1996), The Genesis of Values (2000), War and Modernity (2003), Do We Need Religion? (2004), and Social Theory (with W. Knoebl) (2009). The recipient of many awards and fellowships, Joas serves as Vice-President of the International Sociological Association.

About the Berkley Center Lectures

The Berkley Center Lectures bring global thought leaders to campus for presentations on cutting-edge topics at the intersection of religion, culture and politics. The formal program is flanked by informal interaction with faculty and students. In April 2007 the Center sponsored satellite conversations with Tariq Ramadan, the Muslim reformer then barred from entry to the United States, on the topic was "Islam in the West." The October 2008 lectures featured the philosopher Charles Taylor under the heading "Narratives of Secularity."