Human Rights and Sources

I begin by thanking Michael P., Rob, Eduardo, and Michael S. for their stimulating posts on the question of religion (God’s existence and belief in Him) and human rights. My take on the matter is somewhat different from what has been discussed so far.

The subject of human rights is one of vital interest to the law. While many students of the law might focus on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its drafting negotiations as a defining moment, their recognition is much earlier origin. While the language they chose may differ from ours in the twenty first century, the Schoolmen Suárez and de Vitoria acknowledged in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the existence of human rights. Their recognition, however, does not make them the authors of human rights anymore than the drafters of the Universal Declaration.

It is precisely a question of authorship that brings the discussion which has taken place on this website over the past several days to a head. For the atheist who denies God’s being, there can be only one other source, origin, or author of human rights: the human being—or more precisely, the mind of the human being. The idea of human rights for the nonbeliever begins and ends in the human mind. This makes the human being the source of human rights and what is constitutive of them. But, what the human mind can fashion, the human mind can undo. What is constitutive of human rights begins and ends with what the brain can devise. The atheist’s view, his theory, her approach to human rights is seasoned by the subjectivity of the human person, individually and collectively. What is recognized as a human right one day can be abandoned the next day. Why? The answer to this question resides in the fact that there is nothing beyond human nature that defines human rights.

But, if there is an acceptance of God’s existence, there is a different understanding of human nature and, therefore, a very different conception of human rights and what is constitutive of them. The human mind no longer is their author, their source, or their origin. The basis for human rights is the author of human life itself. The subjectivity that flaws the atheist’s conception of human rights is substituted with the objectivity that surrounds God’s existence. The human mind cannot modify, amend, or revoke that which it has not created.

On a related point, the atheist’s morality and moral code of which Rob spoke may be sincere and have a carefully thought theory and intellectual basis, but it is still subject to the caprice of human subjectivity.      RJA sj