Human Rights as a Compound Term: The Nature of a Human vis-à-vis Human Rights
In order to further illustrate how important it is to understand a basis for human rights, the phrase “human rights” itself shall be analyzed as a compound term. The perception that one has of the terms “human” and “right” affects the overall perception of the concept. As Orend noted, “Usually, in moral and political debate, these premises will involve some conception of human nature and some understanding of a foremost requirement of morality and justice.”

For the sake of brevity, only the first term, “human,” shall be discussed here. (The latter term, “right,”is a legal term that probably has corresponding realities throughout different societies.)

One’s conception of a “human” has many ramifications for one’s overall view of human rights. It also will have great ramifications for whether or not others should even accept the concept of human rights or not.

Peoples throughout the world have varying views of what humans are.In fact, this question regarding the nature of humans was something that was debated in the lead up to the UHDR.


As Ishay notes,
Illustrative of such intrinsic ideological and philosophical differences was the first major argument during the first session of the human rights commission, in which the definition of human nature was discussed. Malik’s provocative questions—“Is man merely a social being? Is he merely an animal? Is he merely an economic being?”—generated a heated debate between advocates of individual and collective rights. Warning against the danger of collectivism that ultimately absorbed “the human person in his individuality and ultimately inviolability,” Malik asserted the centrality of a person’s mind and consciousness, the sanctity of individual property rights, and individual protection against religious, state, and other forms of external coercion. His position prompted reactions from communist representatives like Yugoslav Vladislav Ribnikar (1900-1955) and the Russian representative Valentin Tepliakov. In the words of Ribnikar, “ITlhe psychology of individualism has been used by the ruling class in most countries to preserve its own privileges; a modern declaration of rights should not only consider the rights favored by the ruling class.” How can one understand individual rights and obligations apart from those of one’s own community, asked Tepliakov.

Beyond the question of animal or not, societal or not, religion, obviously, influences a person’s view of what it means to be “human.”  Some people view their own particular people as God’s chosen people, putting all others in a category of subhuman. Furthermore, due to their conception of God and the relationship between God and humans, they are some Christians who are diametrically opposed to the concept of “human rights,” considering it blasphemous that humans would possess any rights independent of God along bestowing those rights upon them.  Concerning Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Guroian states explicitly, “Human rights thinking is alien to Orthodoxy.”  Some non-Eastern Orthodox Christians also definitely held the view that Christianity has nothing to do with human rights.


For example, Guroian quotes the famed Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote,
The Church's word to the world can be no other than God's word to the world. This word is Jesus Christ and salvation in His name. It is in Jesus Christ that God's relation to the world is defined.... In other words, the proper relation of the Church to the world cannot be deduced from natural law or rational law or from universal human rights, but only from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Others see religion as one of the main driving forces behind the implementation and respect for human rights in the first place.  One could argue that by sidestepping any religious aspect, it actually makes it difficult to claim human rights because what is there then about humans that make them deserving of such grand and important rights.This point, in itself, has led theorists such as Max Stackhouse and Michael Perry to argue that the idea of human rights is “grounded in the idea of God” or “ineliminably religious.” Perry argues that the very idea of human rights is based on the idea that every human is “sacred,” that is, “each and every human being is ‘inviolable,’ has ‘inherent dignity and worth’” and so on. In comparing between Dworkin (who claimed that one could have a secular belief about the sacredness of humans) and Tawney (who claimed that such a belief has to be a religious one),


Perry wrote,
For reasons I develop in this chapter, I conclude that Tawney is right and Dworkin, wrong: There is no intelligible (much less persuasive) secular version of the conviction that every human being is sacred; the only intelligible versions are religious.

Many see one of the goals of the human rights movement as restraining humans in their behavior towards others—or making humans treat other humans as they deserved to be treated. On this point, as well, some have argued that this facet demands “religion.”


Ignatieff notes,
It is unsurprising, therefore, that in the wake of the Holocaust human rights should face an enduring intellectual challenge from a range of religious sources, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish, all of whom make the same essential point: that if the purpose of human rights is to restrain the human use of power, then the only authority capable of doing so must lie beyond humanity itself, in some religious source of authority.

Ignatieff, who is writing from a humanist’s perspective, recognizes the perplexity of “human rights” simply for the sake of “human rights,” without believing something special about humans.


He wrote,
If idolatry consists in elevating any purely human principle into an unquestioned absolute, surely human rights looks like an idolatry. To be sure, humanists do not literally worship human rights, but we use the language to say that there is something inviolate about the dignity of each human being. This is a worshipful attitude. What is implied in the metaphor of worship is a cult-like credulity, an inability to subject humanist premises to the same critical inquiry to which humanist rationalism subjects religious belief. The core of the charge is that humanism is simply inconsistent. It criticizes all forms of worship, except its own.

The only possible reply that humanists may give is historical: This is the language that humans created as a form of defense against oppression.

However, many of the most vocal human rights proponents approach the question of human rights from a purely secular perspective, attempting to take God or religion out of the picture. Orend, for example, argues that religious justifications for human rights are “too controversial and exclusionary.”  There is definitely some truth to what he is saying but avoiding a difficult issue does not necessarily solve anything.

Frankly, leaving God/religion out of the picture may not necessarily be the best approach for a foundation of human rights. “Secular” thinking in the past the present does not paint a rosy picture for the treatment of humans. For example, Darwinian thinking, wherein humans are simply evolved animals, certainly did not or should not lead to any sense of human dignity or human rights.


Mamdani highlighted some of the past points of this way of thinking:
Herbert Spencer wrote in Social Statics (1850), “The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental suffering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way.” This is a train of thought Charles Lyell had pursued twenty years earlier in Principles of Geology: if “the most significant and diminutive of species ... have each slaughtered their thousands, why should not we, the lords of creation, do the same?” His student, Charles Darwin, confirmed in The Descent of Man (1871) that “at some future period not very distant as measured in centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.” “After Darwin,” comments Sven Lindqvist in his survey of European thought on genocide, “it became accepted to shrug your shoulders at genocide. If you were upset, you were just showing your lack of education.”

Max Stackhouse is adamant in his view that secular human rights is not going to be a reality.


He wrote,
From the recent explosion of literature on this topic, I would like to draw attention to the current “Special Communications” of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In a series of articles it shows that “the most advanced centers of medical and legal research (all working on post- or anti-theological bases) were among the most energetic legitimators of the most grotesque travesties.” They drew from Hume, Rousseau, Darwin, and Ploetz, all of whom developed the idea of “racial hygiene” and fostered the notion of “eugenics.” The lead article also points to a Dr. Leo Alexander, who offered in the Nuremberg Doctors Trial the testimony that a combination of Hegelian theories of historicist development and notions of “rational utility” were the guiding principles of the recent dictatorships, and that these had displaced “moral, ethical, and religious” values. All the decisive theorists thought that one or another form of post-theological theory could supply the foundations for modem thought, politics, law, and morality without the need for anything beyond “nature” and “history,” “culture” and ‘human creativity,” anything such as “God.”’


Gustafson and Juviler also note, in the introduction to the provocatively entitled Religion and Human Rights: Competing Claims,
The authors of the essays in this collection are fully aware that our experience of our neighbors in this twentieth century, especially in our politics, has left us anything but confident in the moral status of human being. Where was the “moral law within” when the trench warfare of 1914 I began? When the university-trained Nazis devised the concentration camps? When the annihilation of whole cities became standard strategy for victory in war from 1939 to 1945? When at the end of this century, as a world “community,” we had compiled a record for organized killing in the range of 150 million? The pre-Enlightenment French philosopher Blaise Pascal spoke of the “grandeur and misery” of human nature. We know about the grandeur in our moon walks, our computers, and our Declarations of Human Rights. But on some deep levels, we are haunted by the misery.

More recent developments among some scientists and engineers do not bode well for the idea that there is anything “sacred” about humans. In “The Mystery of Consciousness” by Steven Pinker, the author speaks about scientists eventually locating consciousness somewhere within the brain. About this development, Pinker wrote, “Not only does it strangle the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies, but it also seems to undermine the notion that we are free agents responsible for our choices--not just in this lifetime but also in a life to come.” In June 2008, the internationally renowned IEEE’s journal Spectrumcame out with a special report on “the singularity.”The conclusion that many—but not all—of the participants provided is that humans are nothing more than machines in essence. Some predicted that computers may shortly be able to reproduce “human consciousness” while others spoke about downloading one’s consciousness to a computer, such that one will live on after one’s physical’s death—that is, if nobody deletes the person.

Given that there is such a discussion and debate about what a “human” is, what does this mean for the concept of human rights? When it comes to human rights, there is no question that some definitions of “human” will be more helpful than others. However, who can force upon everyone else the one understanding of human thathuman rights advocates may conclude with?


How can one possibly overcome the types of differences that Donnelly describes in the following passage,
But if human nature were infinitely variable, or if all moral values were determined solely by culture (as radical cultural relativism holds), there could be no human rights (rights that one has “simply as a human being”) because the concept “human being” would have no specificity or moral significance. As we saw in the case of Hindu India (§5.5), some societies have not even recognized “human being” as a descriptive category. The very names of many cultures mean simply “the people” (e.g., Hopi, Arapahoe), and their origin myths define them as separate from outsiders, who are somehow “not-human.”

Ignoring the fact that even the concept of “human” and what may be special about a “human” is neither truly defined or agreed upon by human rights advocates, one can now move on to some of the various justifications used to support the contemporary human rights paradigm. The concept of “natural law,” which is tied into a specific view of humanity, shall be discussed first.