7 - William Ernest Hocking and the Liberal Protestant Origins of Human Rights

Summary

This chapter focuses on the author of the first formal philosophical study of human rights in the United States: William Ernest Hocking. This philosophical giant of the twentieth century shaped how Americans understood human rights through his writings and through his work with liberal Protestant institutions. By tracing his philosophical formation, his spats with philosopher John Dewey, his theories of the state, and his influence on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this chapter puts forward two arguments. First, Hocking’s trajectory shows us that American formulations of human rights were intertwined with debates about religious liberty. Second, liberal Protestants like Hocking disassociated human rights from specific references to Christian theology, which constituted a form of secularization. Hocking’s career offers a view onto the meaning of human rights in the twentieth-century United States.