Being Human and Having Rights

Abstract

46 See Green and Witte's (2013) explanation of the importance of the freedom of religion in the light of the Protestant Revolution, and how Calvinists democratic church polities were used as prototypes for democratic state polities with separation of powers, democratic election, term limits, town hall meetings and the right to petition. 47 See for a transcript of the original text of the 1688 Bill of Rights, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2/introduction 48 Linnaeus is most known for his division of human beings into different naturalized races, based on color in combination with assumed moral character. One of his divisions was: 'α: American: red, bilious, straight (…) is governed by customs. ß. European: white, sanguine, muscular (…) is governed by laws. γ. Asian: basan, melancholic, stiff (…) is governed by opinion. δ. African: black, phlegmatic, relaxed (…) is governed by chance. ε. Monstrous (…)' (Hoquet, 2014). Others who made similar taxonomies -even if different regarding for example monogenesis of polygenesis of different 'races ' -are Immanuel Kant, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Henry Home, Lord Kames (Bernasconi 2008;Hoquet 2014). Of course, like any hegemonic conceptualization, this was to was met internally and externally with counter-hegemony, as can be seen -for example -in the 1885 work by Haitian scholar Anténor Firmin's titled De l'égalité des races humaines. Remarkably in the context of this chapter is also that it is Linnaeus who is known for having coined 'homo sapiens' in Modern Latin, which is derived from the word homo which literally means man, and the word sapiens which is the present form of the verb sapere, meaning to be wise: https://www.etymonline.com/word/Homo%20sapiens