A Prospective View of the Bill of Rights: Toward a New Constitutionalism
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Thomas Paine, pamphleteer of the American Revolution and defender of the French Revolution, captures in this phrase a central insight conveyed in the idea of human rights: we have it in our power to begin the world again. The sentime...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1996
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| In: |
Journal of law and religion
Year: 1996, Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Pages: 27-41 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Thomas Paine, pamphleteer of the American Revolution and defender of the French Revolution, captures in this phrase a central insight conveyed in the idea of human rights: we have it in our power to begin the world again. The sentiment is cast in simple declarative form. As such it may seem naive. We are, after all, constrained—are we not—by the inheritance of a world already accomplished, a world whose structures bind us in untold ways? But the intention of Paine's statement is more than aspirational. It affirms a vision of what is possible - and what is desirable - given the deepest character of who we are and what we might become. If we comprehend the full dialectic between self and world, then we have it in our power to begin the world again even as the world is the matrix—the source and the condition—of our power. That's a central insight conveyed in the idea of human rights which has stirred up such controversy, philosophical and political, since it emerged at the beginnings of the modern era. |
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| ISSN: | 2163-3088 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1051366 |