-
11. From Love to Human Rights
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
11. FROM LOVE TO HUMAN RIGHTS t , especially as regards Wojtyla’s personalistic principle, offers the elements needed to determine the fundamental content of the “special regard” to which human persons are entitled by reason of their dignity. Human dignity gives rise to a primordial right from which other rights flow.1 Each and every human being is to be treated as a person, that is, loved as an end and never merely used as a means. In this sense, love—to be treated as an acting subject with a transcendental purpose and never as a mere means—constitutes the content of the regard due to human dignity. The fundamental right, the “Ur-right,” of the human person is the right to be loved. Christians are accustomed to hearing that love is at the heart of morality . To love God and neighbor is, after all, Jesus’ summary of the moral law. It forms the essence of his teaching and of the Gospel message itself. Yet man’s duty to love does not issue arbitrarily from God’s commandment ; God commands it because man’s personal nature demands it. Love is the only ethical option when dealing with persons. This bold assertion requires justification. Is love the “new commandment” or a requirement of natural law? Or are two different sorts of love in play? In Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla makes an audacious proposal. He puts forward the personalistic priciple as a justification for the New Testament commandment to love persons—God and others.2 So, while . “Moreover, does not the spiritual subject possess a dignity .l.l. which immediately demands that it be respected? Does it not constitute a radical and innate ‘right’?” (de Finance, An Ethical Inquiry, § , p. ). . “The personalist norm does, as we have seen, provide a justification for the New Testa- the commandment to love “does not put in so many words the principle on the basis of which love between persons is to be practised,” such a basis is implicitly contained in the command.3 Thus “if the commandment to love, and the love which is the object of this commandment, are to have any meaning,4 we must find a basis for them.l.l.l. This can only be the personalist principle and the personalist norm.”5 Wojtyla here posits a necessary link between the personalistic principle and the commandment to love. He later wrote that essentially the personalistic principle “is an attempt to translate the commandment of love into the language of philosophical ethics” and that, conversely, the command to love is “an embodiment of the personalistic norm.”6 The commandment to love, therefore, while not identical with the personalistic principle or norm, “derives from this norm,” and the norm in turn provides “an appropriate foundation for the commandment to love.”7 The command becomes an imperative restatement of the foundation, since “the commandment says: ‘Love persons ,’ and the personalistic norm says: ‘A person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love.’” In other words, the personalistic norm makes a statement about the human person that necessarily gives rise to an imperative in dealing with human beings. The idea of “justifying” the commandment to love would seem to imply that this commandment, like the Decalogue,8 forms a part of natural law and is therefore comprehensible by human reason. Biblical revelation of the commandment to love would thus remind and confirm, but not unveil as something otherwise unknowable, how man is to treat his fel- ment commandment” (Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, ). Here Wojtyla refers explicitly to the commandment to love God and neighbor. When asked which of the commandments is the greatest, Jesus replied, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matt :–; Mark :–; Luke :–). These two commandments are taken from the Old Testament injunctions found in Deut. : and Lev. :, and thus can be distinguished from Jesus’ “new commandment” (John :), where Jesus adds the phrase “as I have loved you.” . Ibid., . . Wojtyla obviously does not mean to impugn the authority of the Gospel as sufficient basis for the meaning and force of the commandment to love but rather seeks to discover the...
