ABOUT THIS BOOK

When we think of human rights we assume that they are meant to protect people from serious social, legal, and political abuses and to advance global justice. In Human Rights and the Care of the Self Alexandre Lefebvre turns this assumption on its head, showing how the value of human rights also lies in enabling ethical practices of self-transformation. Drawing on Foucault's notion of "care of the self," Lefebvre turns to some of the most celebrated authors and activists in the history of human rights–such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Henri Bergson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Charles Malik–to discover a vision of human rights as a tool for individuals to work on, improve, and transform themselves for their own sake. This new perspective allows us to appreciate a crucial dimension of human rights, one that can help us to care for ourselves in light of pressing social and psychological problems, such as loneliness, fear, hatred, patriarchy, meaninglessness, boredom, and indignity.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Alexandre Lefebvre is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney; coeditor of Henri Bergson and Bergson, Politics, and Religion, both also published by Duke University Press; and author of Human Rights as a Way of Life: On Bergson's Political Philosophy and The Image of Law: Deleuze, Bergson, Spinoza.

REVIEWS

"Human Rights and the Care of the Self is a beautifully written, erudite and teacherly (in the best sense – not dry and didactic but gently thought-provoking) account of a range of thinkers and a powerful re-reading of the concept of human rights itself."

-- Ben Golder Contemporary Political Theory

"This very well written and provocative book is an important contribution to the history and philosophy of human rights, and several of the chapters could stand alone as insightful introductions to major human rights thinkers and controversies in the field."

-- William Paul Simmons Perspectives on Politics

“In a world full of causes and distractions, why do we care about international human rights? There are many explanations for the dramatic rise of human rights in the second half of the twentieth century. They range from the naïve to the cynical. Few theoretical accounts manage to be as shrewd and yet at the same time as stirring.”

-- James Loeffler Journal of Human Rights Practice

“Lefebvre's learned and original book creates a new itinerary within Western political and ethical thought.... Human Rights and the Care of the Self presents a valuable, thought-provoking argument that could enable educators and students to articulate their various commitments to human rights in complex and historically informed ways.”

-- Sarah Winter symploke

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Care of the Self 9
2. The Juridical Subject as Ethical Subject: Wollstonecraft on the Rights of Man 25
3. Critique of Human Rights and Care of the Self 47
4. Human Rights as Spiritual Exercises: Tocqueville in America 61
5. Human Rights as a Way of Life: Bergson on Love and Joy 85
6. On Human Rights Criticism 105
7. An Ethic of Resistance I: Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 119
8. An Ethic of Resistance II: Malik and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 141
9. Human Rights Education 165
Conclusion 185
Notes 195
Bibliography 225
Index 245

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