A Response to Professor Walsh

Professor Walsh and I have entered into a conversation vis-a-vis his claim that the language of human rights is “an epiphany of the person” and performs this task in a far superior manner to the clarification of what is a person that arises in the philosophical project of “personalism.” The latter seeks to understand the full meaning and value of the person through philosophical or theological anthropology, combined with a methodology in many cases identified as phenomenololgical. First I must write that I do feel privileged to be asked to take part in this conversation. Secondly, I do not believe that what I have to say is any way definitive; I am really questioning, and hope that a larger conversation will take root in the back and forth exchange based upon Professor Walsh insightful book, Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being.

To begin: I would suggest there is a fundamental inadequacy in the language of human rights that cannot “evoke the inexhaustibility that cannot be exhausted.” The rights language is one that is intended to reveal the person to the state, a political language then, in a manner that put limits on the state in its governance of citizens who are persons. It is a language in the realm of human power and authority which sets the perimeters of that exercise of state control over its citizens. Thus the rights language is exercised in that aspect of human existence governed by justice, a moral value and cardinal virtue. But there are so many more dimensions to human personhood, and the paradigm of justice offers only one revealing aspect of personhood. Personhood is revealed in all the values incarnated in the cardinal virtues I would suggest, so through the values of courage, temperance and prudence, as well as in faith, hope and love. The full epiphany of the person I believe must happen in the transcendental realm—of truth, beauty, goodness, and especially as Professor Walsh has written, of being. This was the wonderful thesis I read in Professor Walsh’s book; “being is personal” and it is in the realm of being itself that philosophically we must learn the real character of the personal as a defining character of human beings.

Secondly, I wish to address the corruption that has (I believe) destroyed the language of human rights as means to uphold the dignity of persons in our contemporary era. There is an old saying: “corruptio optimo est pessima” or “the corruption of the best has become the worst.” Professor Walsh acknowledges the “notorious distortions currently imposed on the notion of rights,” and thus this corruption. So we disagree if this corruption is fatal for the role of a rights language in upholding the “mutuality of rights epitomizes the mutuality of persons that is the only viable form of human community.” I think that when we think back on the Utilitarian innovation of the rights language, as opposed to the rights language of the ancien regime, this corruption already reveals itself. John Stuart Mills who writes about human rights is also with Jeremy Betham the generator of this ethical theory which subordinates the interests of the few to those of the greater number. Yes, all have almost absolute rights according to Mill, but rights end when up against this greater number.

Today, given that every asserted right also asserts a claim, we must acknowledge that these multiplying claims are making rights meaningless as a language. Who is to satisfy this claim is unanswerable. I will provide an example in the writings of Ezekiel Emmanuel on the state’s role in meeting every human’s right to adequate health care. Dr. Emmanuel was one of the leading adviser’s in our current health care law. He follows a modern utilitarian ‘cost/benefits’ ethics. He writes that the “claim” to health care cannot be adequately met, and hence a communitarian perspective must be introduce in allocating health care. This means that “the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the must substantial chance”, whereas “covering services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic, and should not be guaranteed.” The notion of a human right to health care is revealed as a meaningless platitude by Emmanuel. This is the case vis-s-vis many “rights” given the current multiplication of human rights as claims on society and its government. The language is not serving human dignity in any practical senses as it should, even it reveals a moral claim that theoretically falls on society itself. Thus the rights/claims become utopian, fantastic or at least completely impractical.

A second corruption of the language of human rights is that it is actually not a moral language anymore. Professor Walsh writes of “the moral advance marked by the modern idea of rights”, but modern rights talk is power talk today. Even in the 20^th century UN Declaration of human rights, the language was not about a moral but rather a juridical notion of justice—the foundation for world human rights arises in this statement on the “juridical conscience of humanity.” And today, the language of rights in our society is a language of absolute autonomy, individual primacy and/or privacy, assertion of claims to one’s interests or desires, in short of freedom as understood as unrestrained license. When we consider the pivotal moral virtue of religion, that formerly empowered the discover of human rights, the power language of today’s rights speech reveals a godlessness at work in our public lives, despite the fact of many religious person’s private lives. Rights language speaks to a new truth: “humans can be good and justice can be rendered in society without God.” Actually, rights language in some cases goes further; Ellis Sandoz wrote about this in his study of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. The character Ivan, revolts against the failure of God to defend human rights. Here a rights language becomes the vehicle of those who believe they can make a better, more just world than God. It is the language of Eric Voegelin’s libido dominandi politically organized. I do believe this corruption of rights language must be taken seriously, and its possible consequences for corrupting society itself, injurious of its basic political character, should be looked at seriously as a prolegomenon before adapting a “rights language.”

In conclusion,  I have raised just a few objections to the “rights language, and have done so in a response to Professor Walsh, not in a research venue. And I too would want to be in conversation rather than dispute. I would add that this discussion of “a language” brings to mind the Voegelin theory of experience and symbolization—the first commonly shared among human beings, but the second, open to endless human diversity. I do believe that there is a shared human experience of personhood, and it can be symbolized in more than one way. So perhaps a better way is called for, given the problem of a corrupted rights language. Also, one must add that the paradigmatic symbolization of personhood, in my opinion, was the epiphany of the person revealed in Jesus’ words, “Our Father,” that privileges every human person. The United States Declaration of “the Human Creator” meshes with these words. At least for Christian citizens, the “Our Father” carries the invitation to investigate the meaning of person illuminated in this primary prayer that is relevant for all human beings. It speaks to a shared humanity and the incommensurable individual as the basis of life together. All humans are citizens in the kingdom of the Father and the working system of God’s providence and human co-providence—carried on in subsidiarity, that is by individuals, families, neighbors in neighborhoods, in private, public and government institutions—has a better chance to achieve what politically we ask the rights language to do.

Our review of the book is available here as is David Walsh’s response. An excerpt of Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being is available here; also see Brendan Purcell’s review here and a conversation with David Walsh here.

Print