Theology and the Boundary Discourse of Human Rights

Introduction

1 Introduction u The discourse of humAn rights hAs emerged asthedominantmoral discourse of our time. Reflecting on this often contentious discourse, with both its enthusiasts and detractors, led me to consider the following questions: What constitutes an intelligible definition of human rights? What place should this discourse occupy within ethics? Can theology acknowledge human rights discourse? How is theological engagement with human rights justified? What are the implications of the convergence of what are two potentially universalizable discourses? I came to this research with a worldview that has been profoundly enriched by living and working in the Caribbean and in Samoa, learning something of cultural differences and what I will refer to as “situated universalism.” Involvement in the campaign against the death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago raised important questions about justice, punishment, the rights of victims and of perpetrators, and the brutalizing effect of capital punishment on society as a whole. The campaign also pointed to complex religious-secular allegiances leading to intellectual and practical solidarity in the saeculum where Augustine’s two cities, the Civitas Dei and the Civitas terrene, overlap.1 But if there is one experience that has been the touchstone of this book, it is involvement in the work of Credo Centre with children who live and work on the streets of Port of Spain. The “street children” of our world are one of our most vulnerable human groups. Working with them taught me that the denial of basic rights to food, shelter, safety, and education, and the various kinds of exploitation that this denial exposes children to, both undermines their human dignity and damages their capacity to develop their potential. The resulting impoverishment both diminishes their flourishing as human beings anddenies thehuman community the gifts of those who never reach their potential. 2 Introduction This book defines human rights as a “dialectical boundary discourse” of human flourishing, attributing to rights the position of protective marginality in ethics; rights are necessarily “marginal” in that they are not ends in themselves , but in this marginal position they play a crucial protective role. Rights do not simply guard the limits below which we should not fall in terms of ethical conduct but are protective of the conditions in which the “more” of ethics—love, virtue, community—can flourish. I do not hold with the view that rights “trump” all other considerations in ethics or with what could be described as “inverse trumping,” which invokes a more “authentic” tradition of virtue and community to triumph over the fiction of human rights. Human rights discourse has an intrinsic communitarian dimension, and there must also be concern for the conditions in which the capacity to be virtuous flourishes. Although the concept of eudaimonia, human flourishing, is implicit in this work, a positive exposition of such flourishing is not outlined in detail. Instead it is approached by way of absence, negation, and darkness: a via negativa exposition of that which prevents, distorts, and damages the capacity to flourish as individuals and as communities. However, this via negativa also makes implicit claims about what is necessary for human flourishing and challenges a simple juxtaposition of eudaimonia and human rights. This book does not attempt to construct a theology of human rights, nor a theological foundation for human rights but to justify and explore theological engagement with the discourse of human rights. A broad understanding of theological engagement with human rights discourse is proposed that includes (a) explicit engagement with rights discourse in terms of both foundational questions and historical implementation; and (b) implicit engagement in areas of shared concern for both discourses, concerns about the human person and community, about human dignity and freedom, about justice and politics. It highlights where the themes and concerns of key modern theologians converge with the themes and concerns of those committed to the advancement of human rights. It also aims to counter some of the “disdain” for rights discourse that is found in postliberal theological and philosophical currents. In the light of some common objections to human rights discourse, chapter 1 briefly explores two examples of its use in public discourse: in the foundational documents of the United Nations and, in more detail, in modern Roman Catholic social teaching, just one example of religious use of human rights discourse. It is argued that, despite their apparent “groundlessness,” the foundational documents of the United Nations—seminal for subsequent human 3 Introduction rights documents worldwide...