The Architecture of Concepts: The Historical Formation of Human Rights

Abstract: How do concepts come to be? And, in particular, how current conceptions of international human rights are built upon a particular conceptual architecture? Peter de Bolla, author of The Architecture of Concepts: The Historical Formation of Human Rights, addresses these questions in incremental steps, building on what scholars currently understand when it comes to concepts more generally. The methodology is based on the use of the Eighteenth Century Collection Online (ECCO) digital archives predominantly, with the aim of constructing data-dependent descriptions of conceptual architectures. The author, thus, looks at conceptual networks and the extensive relationships found within them so as to direct researchers in conducting future plotting of connectivities within networks. The opening chapter looks at concepts as a way of thinking. Concepts are treated as a metaphorical "subway or tube maps project into multiple dimensions." The author then focuses on the eighteenth century and its printed materials. The use of large data allows the author to extrapolate matters of language spanning large communities. The following chapters combine the issue of creating conceptual dispositions with poignant debates about rights that pervaded the First Continental Congress during the 1770s, while repositioning the items of inquiry, mentioned previously, by challenging the assumption of the origin(s) of human rights.Keywords: conceptualisation, conceptual networks, human rightsThe Architecture of Concepts: The Historical Formation of Human Rights, by Peter de Bolla, New York: Fordham University Press, 2013, 298 pp., $35.00 paperback, ISBN: 9780823254392"Where do ideas come from?" The question inherently possesses the ability to offshoot a massive range of follow-up questions and inquiries delving into a deep abyss of formulation and conceptualisation. The three distinct aims of Peter de Bolla's The Architecture of Concepts are cultivated by this very basic question. De Bolla addresses this spacious question through a very well defined and applied methodology based on the use of the Eighteenth Century Collection Online (ECCO) digital archives predominantly but among others with the aim of "constructing data-dependent descriptions of conceptual architectures" (p. 7). Frequencies of word usage as "singular terms" and as "concatenations in phrases" are yielded from what was surely a tedious process of measuring the dispersion of concepts "across the culture at large" (pp. 7-8). De Bolla's study is not only concerned with the formation of concepts; he also assesses how conceptual forms come to be. Thus de Bolla looks at conceptual networks and the extensive relationships found within them so as to direct researchers in conducting future plotting of connectivities within networks. The study design, as quickly becomes apparent, provides distinct vantage points from which subsequent studies may be undertaken.The book's five chapters represent incremental steps in building on what scholars currently understand when it comes to concepts more generally. Its primary aims (including the construction of a useful methodology to facilitate future research) are guided by the author's interest in human rights. "My argument outlines," as stated by de Bolla, "how current conceptions of international human rights are built upon a particular conceptual architecture that has deep roots in the Enlightenment" (p. 2). Initially, the idea of this study would probably suggest that de Bolla engages specifically with discourse. This is not the case. Lending itself to a Foucauldian culture, exploration is undertaken beneath the level of discourse. By theorizing words, phrases, sentences, and statements, de Bolla introduces readers to the "conceptual turn" considered overlooked for too long.The first chapter looks at concepts as a way of thinking. Concepts are treated as a metaphorical "subway or tube maps project into multiple dimensions" (p. …