Letters to the contrary : a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey / edited and introduced by Mark Goodale.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Foreword / Samuel Moyn -- History : UNESCO in the paradigmatic transition -- Interpretations : From a "hollow sham" to a "plurality of cultural values" -- Memorandum and questionnaire circulated by UNESCO on the theoretical bases of the rights of man -- The grounds of an international declaration of human rights -- Foreword and introduction to Human rights, comments and interpretations, UNESCO 1949 -- Foreword / Jacques Havet -- Introduction / Jacques Maritain -- Liberalism from the ashes -- Beyond egotistic man : communist, socialist, and social democratic challenges -- Rights in a sacred universe -- The Universal declaration of human duties -- The technological society of the future -- Universal human rights in a colonial world -- Human rights as history and practice -- Specific freedoms -- From repudiation to the play of fancy.

"This remarkable collection of letters reveals the debate over universal human rights. Prominent mid-twentieth-century intellectuals and leaders--including Gandhi, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Arnold Schoenberg--engaged with the question of universal human rights. Letters to the Contrary presents the foundation of the intellectual struggles and ideological doubts still present in today's human rights debates. Since its adoption in 1948, historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was influenced by UNESCO's 1947-48 global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders, that supposedly demonstrated a truly universal consensus on human rights. Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary provides a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universality of human rights. In collecting, annotating, and analyzing these responses, including letters and responses that were omitted and polite refusals to respond, Mark Goodale shows that the UNESCO human rights survey was much less than supposed, but also much more. In many ways, the intellectual struggles, moral questions, and ideological doubts among the different participants who both organized and responded to the survey reveal a strikingly critical and contemporary orientation, raising similar questions at the center of current debates surrounding human rights scholarship and practice"--Publisher's description.

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