PSCI 3802 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Cultural Relativism, French Revolution

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: PSCI 3802
• Professor: Sophie Marcotte-Chenard

Document Summary

Implementation of rights as deeply political: human rights discourse is seen as a way to challenge existing power structure, the main idea is that human rights are not just ideas. The nobles and clergy were exempted from paying taxes, leaving these payments to all the poor. Due to this set up, the country experienced a financial crisis. The king then realized that they were losing money and decided to have the people (clergy, nobles, and the poor) vote on whether the nobles and clergy should be taxed. The king made it so that each estate had one vote making it unfair. These series of events led to the poor revolting and ended in the french revolution: the french declaration was largely influenced by the american declaration which came before. The american declaration of independence was the first to have a confirmation of human rights and was then followed by the french declaration.