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Human Rights and Utopia Human Rights and Utopia
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Human Rights in Utopia Human Rights in Utopia
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The Struggle for the Rule of Law The Struggle for the Rule of Law
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Freedom of Conscience Freedom of Conscience
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The Humanization of Criminal Law The Humanization of Criminal Law
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Property Property
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Resistance to Tyranny Resistance to Tyranny
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Conclusion Conclusion
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35 Human Rights and/in Utopia?
Get accessMiguel Angel Ramiro Avilés is Associate Professor (Profesor Titular) in the School of Law at the University of Alcalá, Madrid. His publications include Utopía y Derecho (Marcial Pons, 2002), and edited collections Anatomía de la utopía (Dykinson, 2008), Los derechos humanos: La utopía de los excluidos (Dykinson, 2010), and Utopian Moments (Bloomsbury, 2012).
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Published:18 December 2023
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Abstract
While exercising due caution because of the risk of treating and discussing human rights anachronistically and because utopian thought has an ambivalent relationship with democracy and politics, it is nevertheless possible to establish a link between Thomas More, his Utopia, utopian thought, and the vindication of rights and liberties. Thomas More collected in his work some of the central themes in the discussion on rights during the Enlightenment: the rule of law, freedom of conscience, the humanization of criminal law, property and resistance to tyranny. This link became stronger and more apparent from the Enlightenment onwards when authors like James Burgh, Thomas Nortmore, and William Hodgson incorporated the language of rights into descriptions of their imagined societies.
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