Does rhetoric have a place in the discourse of human rights? Without certain reply, as the dilemmas of defining, claiming, and promoting human rights appear both to include and exclude the rhetorical gesture, this question invites inquiry into the preface of the contemporary human rights regime, the moment of the aftermath that provokes a struggle with language. Grasped partly through Richard McKeon's extended thought on human rights and conflict resolution, including his collaboration with a committee of philosophers charged by UNESCO to assess the grounds for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this preface opens the work of discovery, an inquiry that recognizes how the hypocrisy of "acting words" constitutes a potential for expression which beckons being toward its human rights. (Contains 1 figure and 102 notes.)