Not Enough

No one has written with more penetrating skepticism about the history of human rights than Samuel Moyn…In Not Enough, Moyn asks whether human-rights theorists and advocates, in the quest to make the world better for all, have actually helped to make things worse…This book, like the author’s last, is the rare academic study that is sure to provoke a wider discussion about important political and economic questions. -- Adam Kirsch * Wall Street Journal *
[Moyn] effectively provincializes an ineffectual and obsolete Western model of human rights…Moyn’s book is part of a renewed attention to the political and intellectual ferment of decolonialisation, and joins a sharpening interrogation of the liberal order and the institutions of global governance created by, and arguably for, Pax Americana…[The book’s] critical—and self-critical—energy is consistently bracing, and is surely a condition of restoring the pursuit of equality and justice as an indispensable modern tradition. -- Pankaj Mishra * London Review of Books *
No one has done more than Samuel Moyn to unsettle the story of human rights as a triumphal march of upgrades from Magna Carta to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…Not Enough asks us to rethink what human rights might accomplish if they were deployed not simply to set limits on state power, but to harness that power for the purpose of fostering economic equality. -- Benjamin Nathans * New York Review of Books *
[S]peaks to the urgency of our contemporary politics… In Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, Moyn suggests that our current vocabularies of global justice—above all our belief in the emancipatory potential of human rights—need to be discarded if we are work to make our vastly unequal world more equal… Best read as a companion history to Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Not Enough explains how—across the fields of development, moral advocacy, philosophy, and governmental policy—the ideal of sufficiency gradually supplanted what was once an ideal of equality for all… The apparent paradox exposed in Not Enough is what makes the book another tour de force: what are we to make of the fact that our age of human rights was coterminous with the age of neoliberalism? …Moyn implores us to consider: what is the value content of justice in our age of human rights, and how do we try to rectify inequality, if the social and economic rights enumerated in international human rights law put no ceiling on wealth creation? -- Patrick William Kelly * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Why do the grimmest obscenities of economic inequality barely register on the human rights agenda? What is the historical explanation for this? Moyn’s book offers fresh and nuanced insight into these questions, surveying a dizzying array of protagonists, from eighteenth-century Jacobin revolutionaries to late twentieth-century Princeton postgrads. -- Adam Etinson * Times Literary Supplement *
Not Enough makes it impossible to conceive of the current status of human rights in the same way again…[It] leads the critical and ethical heart to beat much faster. -- Mark Goodale * Boston Review *
An engaging and illuminating intellectual history of the rivalry between those focused on rights and those who have insisted on a more substantively egalitarian approach to emancipation…Intended to help everyone, from policymakers to political theorists, avoid the mistakes of the past in order to shape the future more fairly. * Commonweal *
Samuel Moyn breaks new ground in examining the relationship between human rights and economic fairness. If we don’t address the growing global phenomenon of economic inequality, the human rights movement as we know it cannot survive or flourish. -- George Soros
Promises to cement [Moyn’s] reputation as one of the most trenchant critics of ‘liberal humanitarian’ foreign policy. -- Jon Baskin * Chronicle of Higher Education *
[A] marvelous book. -- Nils Gilman * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Human rights do not seem to be enough in our era of unshared affluence. Samuel Moyn’s fascinating and highly timely book explores how we ended up here despite the higher hopes for humanity pursued by multiple political and philosophical movements over the last two hundred years. This is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the present age with its overwhelming challenges and breathtaking possibilities. -- Mathias Risse, author of On Global Justice
A brilliantly conceived and much-needed book on human rights and inequality. Moyn has a genius for writing history that is intelligent, surprising, and disciplined by fine judgment. -- Jedediah Purdy, author of After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene
Moyn provides important insights into how international and domestic inequalities have increased in recent decades…[His] trenchant critique of classical liberal economic and political thought questions many long-standing human rights assumptions. An important addition to the literature. -- C. E. Welch * Choice *