Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights

Conclusion

215 Conclusion u Contemporary philosophers have been preoccupied with a rather narrow range of issues, which people often refer to today as “morality,” in contrast to “ethics.” The “moral” concentrates on issues of justice and inter-personal fairness, issues about rights or what is right in our treatment of others, over and against questions of the “good life,” of what is a worthwhile way to live, what is fulfilling, valuable to be, and the like. —Charles Taylor ChArles tAylor holds thAt the contemporAry philosophical preoccupation with issues of rights and justice reflects a narrow concern with “morality” in contrast with broader “ethical” questions about the “good life” and human flourishing.1 In an argument akin to that of the “new traditionalists,” rights are juxtaposed with eudaimonia and addressing the latter is proposed as a more worthy pursuit for philosophers and theologians. Two major aims of this book have been to respond to that juxtaposition of rights and flourishing and to challenge the assumption that a concern about human rights is a “preoccupation ” with a narrow range of issues. This book has not attempted to construct a theological foundation for human rights nor to present the superiority of theological justifications for human rights over other justifications but, rather, toexploretheologicalengagementwithhumanrightsdiscourseandtoshowthat such engagement should not be characterized as a “narrow preoccupation.” There were a number of reasons—biographical and intellectual—that motivated my tackling the themes addressed in this book. I was brought to reflection on the relationship between rights and eudaimonia through the work of my community, the Holy Faith Sisters, with children living and working on the streets of Port of Spain, Trinidad. Engagement in the suffering and the struggle of their lives taught me the importance of maintaining a commitment to human rights and a commitment to the exploration of what constitutes human flourishing. These children, one of the most vulnerable human groups, conclusion 216 have been the touchstone of my academic research. Many of these are very gifted children who ran away from poverty and abuse; others are visibly marked by the physical and psychological signs of deprivation. But the capabilities of all these children have been, in some way, damaged by poverty and exploitation. When children are denied food, shelter, safety, or education, it is not only a violation of human rights. The far deeper violation is that their capacity to flourish as human beings is impaired. When accompanied by the kinds of exploitation that the most vulnerable children experience, their ability to trust and give of themselves in relationships is profoundly, often irreparably, damaged. The correlation between the denial of basic rights and the flourishing of human persons and communities is not acknowledged by theologians who remain removed from the discourse of human rights. The response to children in need is not primarily a response to them as “rights-bearers” but comes from the recognition of their inherent human dignity on which those rights are based. From a Christian perspective, it is a response to the disfigurement of Imago Dei in the lives of children whose potential is damaged by poverty, exploitation, and violence. The experience of working in Credo Centre, the exposure to the harsh realities of the lives of these children, and the realization of the impact of deprivation and violation on their capacity as human beings to flourish all led me to reflect on the following: the importance of upholding the significance of human rights and of challenging any disdain—political or academic—about their worth; the necessity of articulating a position in which human rights discourse could be located within ethics, a position that takes account of both the strengths and the weaknesses of this discourse while keeping its connection with the teleological dimensions of ethics expressed in terms of eudaimonia and beatitudo; and the need to ask how theology can engage with this complex and contested discourse. These biographical and intellectual reasons are located in the larger context of human rights discourse at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Images ofhandcuffed“unlawfulcombatants”wearingorangejumpsuitsinGuantánamo and humiliated naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the visible signs of a more invidious and invisible rehabilitation of torture by the administration of George W. Bush, haunt human rights discourse as examples of derogations from the protective function of rights, derogations built on a shortsighted juxtaposition of liberty and security. These derogations were part of a web of human rights violations that linked perpetrators of terrorist atrocities with illegal belligerent responses to that terror by nation states...