WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Western Civilization

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Discussion2

History of Human Right2

History of Liberalism2

The Significant History2

French Revolution3

Conclusion3

Western Civilization

Introduction

It is by no means, easy to see civilization itself in a proper perspective. There are three obvious means to this end: travel, history and anthropology, but none of them is so great aid to the objectivity as they seem. The traveler sees only what interests him, for example, Marco Polo never noticed the small feet of Chinese women. The civilization history is very old and has developed over centuries. The Europe heritage of civilization and the Colonialism is very diverse and vast.

To speak of the 'European heritage' is to refer to both a historical tradition and at the same time a consciousness of a tradition that is relevant to the self-understanding of the present. History considered in terms of what happened in the past and the knowledge of that history constitutes the ground of heritage and memory (Glazer, 1975). It is where a political community defines itself. That there is something called European history in the sense of the history of Europe is a point on which some agreement can be found, but to invoke the notion of a European heritage is a different and more contentious matter. In this book, that is been reviewed, Western Civilization is discussed and the European heritage.

Discussion

History of Human Right

The term human rights came into existence at the beginning of the 19th century. However, as mentioned above, it was not until 1948 that human rights were generally proclaimed, by what was then a newly formed United Nations. The declaration was primarily motivated by the cruelties of World War II. Article I of this declaration states a close connection between the concept of dignity and that of rights. As a result of this declaration, both concepts, that of human rights and that of human dignity, became highly significant for many countries' constitutions and the post-1945 world (Chakrabarty, 2000).

History of Liberalism

The terms liberal and liberalism acquired their modern meanings gradually throughout Europe  over the first few decades of the nineteenth century, beginning with Napoleon Bonaparte's use of the phrase ides liberals in his Proclamation of the 18th Brumaire 1799. In 1810, a faction in the Spanish Cortes that opposed royal absolutism adopted the label as its own, and within a decade, liberalism had entered the English lexicon to signify the holding of liberal opinions in politics or theology. In the early years of the century, English writers often adopted the Spanish form liberals to give the label a pejorative connotation—ironically, because the Spanish advocates of liberalism had from the beginning invoked John Locke and other Anglophone authorities in support of their cause (Brotton, 2002). Only in the 1860s did the radical wing of the whigs in British politics begin to call themselves the Liberal Party, about the same time as the Liberal Republicans began to use the label in the United States and a half-century before it was deployed consistently in American political ...