Browsing by Subject "Human rights."
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Item Kurt Vonnegut in the U.S.S.R.(2012-08) Skorobogatov, Yana; Neuberger, Joan, 1953-; Lawrence, Mark ASince the mid-twentieth century, Kurt Vonnegut has enjoyed a permanent spot on the list of history’s most widely read and beloved American authors. Science fiction classics like Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) turned Vonnegut into a domestic counter-cultural literary sensation in the United States at mid-century. The presence of a loyal Vonnegut fan base in America, and in the west more broadly, is a well-documented fact. What is less well known among scholars and those familiar with Vonnegut’s work is his popularity in a far more distant place: the Soviet Union. Beginning in the late 1960s, Soviet citizens developed a voracious appetite for Vonnegut’s. Translations of his novels appeared regularly in daily newspapers and highbrow literary journals alike; a play adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five enjoyed a multi-season run in the Moscow Army Theater; average citizens competed for membership in Vonnegut’s karass. These examples are suggestive of the ways that Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction literature can serve as a gateway for scholars seeking to understand the Soviet Union during the 1970s. This report contends that Soviet interest in Vonnegut’s dystopian science fiction reflected larger shifts in Soviet attitudes towards pacifism, technology, individual wellbeing, human rights, and past and present wars. It situates these ideas in the context of domestic and global events to illustrate how the peculiar political conditions of the 1970s made this ideological convergence possible. It employs original American and Russian language sources, including Russian newspapers and journals, letters written by Vonnegut’s Russian translator, and Kurt Vonnegut’s own fan mail. At its core, this report challenges the assumption that political and ideological differences precluded Soviet and American citizens from identifying the conditions necessary for ensuring social and technological progress and a future without war.Item Toward a richer account of human rights in Christian moral theory : from Wolterstorff and Hauerwas to Wojtyla.(2012-08-08) Schwartz, Joel Aric.; Kruschwitz, Robert B.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.The role of human rights is disputed in Christian moral theory. When human rights are discussed, it is common to find that a problematic understanding of the human agent is assumed in those discussions, one that understands the agent motivated strictly by belief and accompanying desires. This connection is reflected in the work of Christian thinkers Nicholas Wolterstorff and Stanley Hauerwas. While they take opposing views of the value of human rights in Christian moral theory, both see a connection between this understanding of the human agent and human rights. An alternate understanding of the human agent focuses on developing perceptions and proper valuation of the good. Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II, expresses an understanding of human dignity and perfectionism in his personalism that results in this alternate understanding of the human agent. When using this different understanding of the human agent, we can discover a richer account of human rights, an account that encourages us not only to do actions that typically reflect a respect for the dignity of human persons, but to actually cultivate appreciation for that dignity. Two oft-‐neglect characteristics of human rights are highlighted in the final chapter: a Wojtylian principle of correlatives and a commitment to completion of the human person, which are suggested by the perfectionism in Wojtyla’s personalism. Both of these characteristics of human rights reflect this alternate understanding of human agency, moving us toward both perceiving and valuing the human dignity in ourselves and one another in a meaningful way.