The Age of the Enlightenment

The real moment of birth for the idea of human rights, however, is the Age of the Enlightenment. Between the 16th and the 18th Centuries, the legitimization of political rule underwent fundamental changes:
• Humanity becomes individualized as a result of the Renaissance and Humanism.
• Religion becomes personalized and privatized in the wake of the division of Christianity through the Reformation and Counterreformation.
• The decline of feudalism and the rise of royal absolutism gave birth to a new appreciation of the state as a polity organized by estates, i.e. nobility, clergy and commoners.
• The former primacy of theology is replaced by natural and human sciences.

This radically changed understanding of legitimate rule gave rise to revolutionary movements in Europe and North America, which claim legitimization through ideas deriving from Christianity and ancient philosophy.

The human rights, as we know them today, thus arose in a period of political upheaval, revolution and social re-orientation. The do not mark the end of an organic process of development, but rather they mark a sharp break within the history of Europe.