Declaration of the Rights of Human Beings: On the Sovereignty of Life as Surpassing the Rights of Man

“A declaration of rights is indispensable in order to halt the ravages of despotism.” So wrote the revolutionary Antoine Barnave in support of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). Over two centuries after the Great French Revolution, Raoul Vaneigem writes that today, “in a situation comparable to the condition of France on the eve of its Revolution,” we cannot limit ourselves to demanding liberties—the so-called bourgeois freedoms—that came into being with free tr...