W 9/1 Encyclopedia Britannica Online, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”

Topic: Universalist conceptions of the human being

1. What do you think motivated the U.N. to write and approve the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

2. In what sense is this declaration ‘universal’?

3. Considering the context – 1948, a few years after World War II – do you notice any ideological tensions between the superpowers (the U.S. and the Soviet Union) in the declaration?