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“The inhuman character of human rights”
(synopsis)
based on the homonymous book of Prof. Christos Yannaras
The
same terms of “claim-requirement-power” of interest signify
that the rights refer to private or collective fortifications
(safeguarding). The self-existent, self-interest unit (that is an
individual or a group of individuals) fortifies their claims
through the Law. And, on the other side, it’s the same Law that
restricts their innumerable claims and defines their obligations.
In
any case, rights and obligations, fortification and restriction
of interest, aim to bring a balance in peoples’ relationships,
but following an individualisticlogic. The logic of the rights of
Law, although refers to relationships, is not the logic of
relation – communion of needs; But it is the logic of the
self-centering priority of interest. The rights provide an
equalizing and unclassified power of interest to undifferentiated
units. A wealthy man and a broke man have in principle the same
financial liberties or rights. An analphabet citizen and an owner
of a media company have the same legal right of the freedom of
expression, no matter how differently weights the power of their
word.
The
anthropologic basis for the logic of rights is the person
before the law, which means the abstract vehicle of rights
that has nothing to do with the actual human existence. The
existential otherness of every human being —the unique,
distinct and unrepeatable mode of every single
existence— is refuted (discredited) by the logic of the
rights’ enactment.
This
refutation of the existential otherness of persons is enacted
through a convention: The Law as the “source” of rights in
modernity is a “social contract” (a form of pactum
subjectionis[1]). The communion
of persons is interpreted as a corporate association of
individuals (societas) who, step down their existential otherness
in favour of the total; accept equation of their interests as
well as equation of the hierarchy of their interests; and agree
that they all have an equalizing enactment of their private
claims. In that way, through this institutional equation, the
term “communion” has declined to an arithmetic sum total, an
abstract interpretation of a total of undifferentiated units[2]. The abstract person before
the law defines the criterion and aim of society: the
equation functions as a reassurance and self-confirmation for the
individual.
The
logic of the social contract is by default utilitarian; it
excludes any ontological (existential) interpretation of the
social event. It skates over the indefinable dynamic of the
communal relations of persons and reduces to a phenomenology (a
visible reality): The social contract attributes persons with
objective roles they have to play in the frame of a structural
co-habitation. The roles are those of the civilian, the citizen
and the member of society. The same roles are those who define
the fortification of the respective rights: the civil rights, the
political rights and the social rights[3].
The
fortification of individual’s rights appeared to be the
beginning -and the pursuit- of the political life. In fact, it is
a pre-political achievement (it goes before politics), because it
distorts the initial definition of politics. It does not aim in
principle to the city (“polis”) neither to the formation of
communal relations; but it aims to the fortification of
individual autonomy and to the collective co-habitation as a
numeral co-existence of undifferentiated units, who have secured
the conditions of their self-dependence and self-management of
their interests. The secureness is accomplished by gathering the
individual rights from the Law that is enacted by the central
government. But then, this is about the administrative balancing
of interests —it is not politics.
The
same logic of individual rights presupposes anything collective,
as opponent to what is private: the society and the State power
(the government) is a threat for the individual. In the
collective co-habitation the individual is threatened by the
savageness of power of those who are powerful and also the
arbitrarity of the governors. The fortification of rights by the
Law is an important defense against such threatening. We should
not forget that the enactment of the individual rights determines
the boundaries of the European modernity: it marks the end of the
“dark ages” experience, ages of torture and insecurity for
the western people. The notion of right has been known in the
West since the dark ages, however then, the rights concerned
specific individuals or specific social classes. The radical
innovation of Modernity lies in the fact that Modernity made
rights "human", i.e. common to all humans, without
discriminations.
However,
the political society, the communion of citizens, does not start
with the modern individualization of man. In reverse, the
individualization might be a progress with regard to the dark
ages, but it introduces a retrocession beside the historical fact
of ancient Greek politics and the priority of person (prosopo) of
the so called “Byzantine” anthropology. Let’s see why.
The
concept and requirement of individual rights is absent from the
ancient Greek world as well as from the Roman and “Byzantine”
tradition. However, it does not mean that Greeks and Romans used
to consider the Emperor’s arbitrarity in the use of power, or
the violation of the citizen’s freedom, credit or dignity as
acceptable. But, there was a totally different logic: it was a
political logic.
In
ancient democracy of Athens, at least, who defined the concept of
the terms “polis-politia-politiki” (city-city
state-politics), they used to conceive freedom, credit or dignity
of person not as a requirement of individuals’ fortification,
neither as a way of defense against the State power; they used to
understand them as an organic result of the participation of
citizen to the common achievement of the relations of community.
The
ancient Greek polis (city) and the politics founded on an
ontological (existential) request: it was the pursuit of the
“truth” of life, that is “the life to be according to the
truth”; and “truth” for the ancient Greeks is the
imitation-fulfillment of the logical harmony and order that
constitute the universe to cosmos (that in Greek means ornament).
The Greeks developed their first settlements into “polis”
(cities) from the time that their “common utilities” —the
servicing of the utilitarian needs of co-habitation — gave way
to the priority of “exercising the truth”; and this cannot be
an individual effort or aim; it is by definition a social event,
a “common exercise”. The “truth” for the ancient Greek
world was very different from that of the demand for
“objectivity”. From Heraclitus to the neo-Platonists,
knowledge of truth was verified as an event of communion: “everything
that we share, we know to be true; what we have that is peculiar
to us, we know to be false”[4].
Knowledge is proved true, only when it is verified by common
experience —only when by its announcement we share with others,
understand and are understood, are in tune with the common
experiential certitude[5].
Then,
Law and Justice define the conditions of the individuals’
participation to the common request for the life to be true, that
is to be according to the logical harmony and decency[6].
One can therefore understand that the safeguarding of
"individual rights" was entirely useless in the ancient
Greek world - the whole idea was incompatible with the Greek
version of politics. The honor of being a citizen provided much
more privileges than those conventionally provided (through the
civil code) by the protection of individual rights[7].
The civil code (political laws) just put the boundaries and
coordinates the communal struggle of citizens to achieve the aim
of truth and eudemonism.
[The
determinant between politics and individualization is this:
politics have an ontological content, and it aims to communal
relations that constitute the “real good”, the real existence
and life; while, individualization perpetuates the primary,
instinctive turn (recourse) to
self-confirmation—self-profit—self-utility. Politics always
presupposes an interpretation of the vehicle of needs— of the
individual human existence and collective coexistence— and this
is a clearly ontological consideration, a positive or a negative
answer to the metaphysical question. As long as politics express
communal requests, it presupposes a concept for life and
co-existence that is a practical confrontation with metaphysics.
The problems of politics have also an ontological basis and in
reverse, the problems of ontology are problems of politics too.]
The
ontological basis of politics is much clearly clarified by the
Christian experience. In Christian perspective the “real
existence” that constitutes the measurement of the true life,
is not an impersonal cosmic necessity or the uncaused logic of
harmony and decency of relations. The real existence and causal
origin of being for the Christian experience is God as a personal
existence (hypostasis).
God
is not in principle a given Essence, which exists in consequence
as a Person. Rather he is in principle a Person, who being
absolutely free from every necessity and every predetermination
hypostasizes (makes into hypostases-persons) his Being, his
Essence, giving birth eternally to the Son and sending forth the
Holy Spirit. God is not obliged by his Essence to be God; he is
not subject to the necessity of his existence. He exists, since
he loves and love is only an event of freedom. Free and out of
love, the Father hypostasizes his Being in a Triad of Persons,
constitutes the principle and mode of his Existence as a
community of personal freedom and love.
Holy
Scripture assures us that “God is love”. It does not tell us
that God has love, that love is an attribute, a property
of God. It assures us that God is is love, that God is as
love, that the mode by which God is is love. God is a
Trinity of Persons and this Trinity is a Monad (unit) of life,
because the life of the Person of God is not a simple survival
but an unbroken union of love. Each Person exists not for himself
but he exists offering himself in a community of love with the
other Persons. Their Existence is drawn from the actualization of
life as communion, from life which is identified with
self-offering love[8].
If,
then, God is the true existence and life, the cause and source
and starting point of being, then in every case being, existence
and life is inseparable from the dynamic of love. Since the mode
by which God is is love, and from this mode springs each
possibility and expression of life, then life must function as
love in order to be actualized. If it does not function as love,
then existence does not constitute life.
This
same mode of existence of God is also obtainable for man, as an
optional possibility, just because God assumes human nature and
makes it a participant of his own divine Nature; And he does so
in the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the only Son of the
Father “become flesh”: Jesus, the Christ of God. In the
historical person of Christ is confirmed the freedom of Uncreated
to be in the mode of created, but also the possibility of
created to exist in the mode of freedom of Uncreated. It is a
mode of existence that has been historically incarnated in the
event of Ecclesia (Church)[9].
Then,
perfection for man is the actualization of the mode of Divine
existence and life which is nothing but love; it has nothing to
do with the human “equitable justice” and
“justification”. The same notion of God’s justice, either
in the Old or the New Testament is founded on His mercy[10], on the faithfulness of
God’s love to His creation. And the Christian notion of justice
is formed according to this exemplar: It is not a conformation to
some commands that fix up behaviours and balance the utilitarian
relations. Justice is the faithfulness of man to the grace of
God, a self-abandonment to the gift of divine eros (love) for
man. God is just because He is faithful to what He is:
He is love and he calls man to the fulfillment of a personal
communion with Him. Only the response of man to the invitation of
God’s love judges him: either he becomes participant to what
constitutes his salvation-existential wholeness or he fails to
fulfill life —and this is the notion of sin (existential
failure).
The Christian
justice stands in the very opposite of the claims for
fortification of the individual. Participants to the
ecclesiastical event, even robbers, publicans, prostitutes, or
sinners, do no need to establish individual rights. Being a
participant and a member of the body of Church means that one
only exists in order to love and be loved —therefore, far from
any expectation of self-protection through a legislation which
would be "mandatory for all". Those who are first,
according to the conventional estimations, bear out to be last
and the last become first (Mark 10, 31, Luck. 13, 20). Criterion
of justification of man for the Christian experience is not the
individual achievements of consistency to ethics; it is not the
virtues which fortify the individual into an illusion of
self-sufficiency (autarky). The existence is justified only as an
event of community and relation, as freedom from any
predetermination of necessity, attrition and death —that is, as
love[11].
In
the Christian perspective, the Law matters only as a way to deter
the evil: It provides the necessary delimination (i.e.
protection) of relations in order not to be alienated or damaged;
law delimitates the self-centered/egocentric existence from
producing selfishness, utilization of the Other, oppression,
tyranny. Not because these are “objectively” unfair and
unjust deeds, but first because they work as factors that
“alter” the relation’s nature and conditions: they convert
them to conditions of subordination and dependency. Law directs
but not valuates, neither punishes: It’s just the indicator of
the way for the achievement of relation as self-transcendence.
The
new concept of politics in modernity is the substitution of the
aim of truth by the aim of utility. Politics
release from ontology and gather its Law and principles from the
Enlightment’s philosophy, which is characterized by a polemical
rejection of what European people knew as metaphysics from their
dark ages past[12]. In the
place of metaphysics we have an ultimate priority of human nature[13]: the logic of the nature; the intellectual capability (facultas
rationis) that the humans naturally have; the Law that
results from the consideration of human being as primarily a
natural (biological) existence; the natural pleasure and
happiness that a man can accomplish in the limited time of his
life.
This
“natural logic” of modernity is briefed, in acto, in the
ultimate priority of individual’s rights that summarizes the
system of Political Liberalism: Political Liberalism expresses
the priority of fortification and activation of individual’s
freedom. The freedom for this political system is understood as a
right: the right of the individual’s innumerable liberties. The
citizen may decide on his ideas, his political party, his
favourite newspaper, the means of his financial and business
activity, the unions or clubs he is interested in or protect his
interests[14]. Maybe
the most representative picture of political liberalism could be
a contemporary “shopping mall”. The client there may choose
among a huge diversity of things, he is totally free and easy and
also self-serviced; he is alone and responsible only for his own
choices and preferences, sealed in his isolation, but he tastes
the pleasure of satisfying his desires. He is an impersonal
consumer, unconcerned for the social event, without the
responsibilities and risks of the immediacy of relations of
community[15]; he
possibly seeks to overcome the impersonal neutralization and the
irresponsibility of his uncritical impulses by making some
peculiar or distinctive choices. But, alas, the managers
responsible for the operation of the shopping mall already know
this yearning and negate it through the psychological strategy of
the advertisement spots.
The
operation system of a shopping mall, as well as the institutions
of the Political Liberalism give us a representative picture of
what freedom is, as a right of individual’s innumerable
options. The citizen has an impressive option of freedoms, but
also a very limited capability and responsibility to actualize
communal relationships. Then we have the constitution of a
perfectly organized coexistence of unsocial individuals. The
responsibility of citizen is reduced to the passive right of
political vote, but this is also sabotaged by the usage of
marketing and advertisement in politics. Even the artistic
creation, the scientific research, the religious faith, is
understood under the perspective of rights: as “the right of
expression”, “the right of knowledge”, “the right of
religious liberty”. There is no concern for the man as an
existential being: the interpretation, concept and aims of his
existential uniqueness, the authenticity or alienation of his
existence before the phenomenology of his behaviour and beyond
any legal claim of individual rights. If the concept of freedom
is not exhausted in the right of individual’s choice, if
freedom is primarily the non-alienation of person, the
possibility to be he himself without subordination to necessities
that negate his existential otherness, then the system of
political liberalism is not adequate for the ensuring of human
freedom.
By
the end of the 20th century a massive bibliography
proclaims and denounces the historical end of the modernity
achievements: the end or bankruptcy of politics, the end of trust
to the “social contract”, the end of “civil state”, the
end of ideologies[16]. The
detection of the historical “end” is based on the empiric
conviction that these natives of modernity do no function any
more, have failed as principles, methods and ways of hierarchy of
needs. It is also demonstrated and analyzed the most dangerous
consequence of the alienation of politics in the modernity
“paradigm”: an anthropologic corruption, a gradual slip
towards a new type of human temper and psychism with primary
disabilities to communicate and refer to others, that is a
disability of logical composition[18]. However none of this analysis ever reached the basis
of the problem, the questioning of the basic logic which is the
ultimate priority of individuals’ rights.
It
is obvious that we cannot go back and just imitate a cultural
paradigm of the past. Neither can we ignore today the triumph of
individual’s rights and liberties. But we have to be brave
enough to face the dead ends of the utilitarian realism of
politics in modernity and post-modern era. Especially when it is
obvious that the positive triumphs are undermined by their same
keystone and foundation: the fortification of priority of
individual’s autonomy.
Any
common interpretation of existence and life, of world and
History, of love and death (any ontological concept of the daily
life of people, i.e. the question about the cause and purpose of
being) is imprinted on the comprehension of social event, on the
articulation and operation of institutions, on the composition of
Law. We have one model of society and Law system when we accept
man as a biological unit of an undifferentiated total and a
radically different one when we give priority to the existential otherness
of every single human being. Such variations actually constitute
the diversity of civilizations (“paradigms”) in the human
History.
Translated and edited by
Anastasia Byrou
[1] See also: John Rawls,
A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass (Harvard U.P.) 1971, p.
11-22, 118-192.
[2] I use the word
“communion” as a translation of the Greek word “kinonia”.
The official translation of the word “kinonia” is the English
word “society”. But, actually, society has nothing to do with
kinonia. Kinonia means an indefinable dynamic of relations
that give priority to the otherness of existence; means the unity
that results from an organic co-existence; have as a basis the
sharing of persons’ needs, and a loving bond. In ancient Greek
world it’s the organic participation in the common struggle of
city’s life. Later, the word “kinonia” is used to express
the love among the Persons of the Holy Trinity; also to signal
the communion of love between spouses. It has nothing to do with
the interest and the utilitarian relationships that characterize
a “society”.
[3] And here we have to make
another clarification in order to signal the difference between
the word “person-persona” and the Greek word “ðñüóùðï”
(prosopo). The word persona in ancient Rome used to signal the
theatrical role, and it probably came from the Greek word “ðñïóùðåßïí”
that is the mask the actors used to wear in ancient tragedies.
Later, the Roman “persona” started to be used among the
Jurists to signify the “role” someone plays in his social or
legal affairs, and again has nothing to do with the real
existence but it is an “application” of the existence. The
word “prosopo” in “Byzantine” era turned out to signal
the free existence and the ontological mode of existence. The
same being is identified with the “prosopo” (person) and not
with the essence. There is no essence without the “person”.
And there is no “person” without essence. But the ontological
reason or the source of the being is the “person” that is
free from the necessity of essence. (For a deeper analysis, see Christos
Yannaras, Person and Eros, Brookline Mass. H.C. Orth.
Press, 2006. Also, John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, N.Y.-SVS
Press, 1985.)
[4] Heraclitus, Frag. Diels-Kranz I, p.148, 29-30.
[5] The community that secures
the truth is not the one where the individual is adjusted or
subordinated to the word and opinion of majority. But the notion
of community has to do with the event of participation that
constitutes the logicality (rationality) of persons. We become
logical so far as we participate in common logic, and not because
we are naturally gifted with our own intellectual capability.
[6] The Aristotle’s adherence
on justice as the logicality of communal relations; on logicality
as analogy and proportion; on analogy and proportion as truth; on
truth as virtue; on virtue as eudemonism; on eudemonism as
existential perfection and wholeness, build up a concrete notion
of Justice, favour to its ontological realism.
[7] In
Modernity, "individual rights" protect an individual
from the arbitrary exercise of Power. But in Ancient Greece, the
Power meant all citizens together (the demos) -the
"State" (power) belonged to the demos (democracy).
Every citizen "has reason and power": from the moment
that he is a citizen, he or she is by definition capable of
holding any political office (this is why citizens were selected
randomly and not elected). Because a political function is
"sacred" (it serves the truth), a citizen's body is
sacred too. In Ancient Greece, any bodily punishment of harm was
unthinkable for a citizen (whipping, hitting, etc.); it was
unthinkable to insult a citizen's body. It was also unthinkable
to have an executioner: Socrates, who preferred death to exile,
drank hemlock by himself -there was no executioner to kill him.
[8] Think yourself to be in love,
but really in love. “To live unselfishly in order to receive
the self-offering of the Other. Not existing and then loving as
an afterthought, but existing because you love, and in the degree
in which you love.” (Christos Yannaras, Variations on
the Song of Songs, transl. by Norman Russel, Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, Massachusetts 2005).
[9] Similar to the ancient Greek
"assembly of the people", Greek citizens did not
assemble primarily to discuss, judge and take decisions, but
mainly to constitute, concretize and reveal the city (the way of
life "according to the truth") ; in the same way,
Christians would not assemble primarily to pray, worship, and be
catechized but mainly to constitute, concretize and reveal, in
the Eucharistic dinner, the way of life "according to the
truth", incorruptibility and immortality: not the imitation
of the secular "logic", but of the Trinitarian Society
of Persons, the society which constitutes the true existence and
life, because "He is Life" (1.John 4.16). The Church
does not call us to hold out some theoretical theses which must
be accepted in principle. She invites us to a personal
relationship, to a “mode” of life which constitutes a
relationship with God or leads progressively and experientially
to a relationship with Çim. In this way our entire life is
transformed from individual survival to an event of communion.
[10] “Mercy is opposed to
justice. Justice is the equality in the even scale, for it gives
to each as he deserves; and when it makes recompense, it does not
incline to one side or show respect of persons. Mercy, on the
other hand, is a sorrow and pity stirred up by goodness, and it
compassionately inclines a man in the direction of all; it
does not requite a man who is deserving of evil, and to him who
is deserving of good it gives a double portion. If, therefore, it
is evident that mercy belongs to the portion of righteousness,
then justice belongs to the portion of wickedness. As grass and
fire cannot coexist in one place, so justice and mercy cannot
abide in one soul.” St.Isaac the Syrian (5th
century), Homily NH’.
[11] And
here by relation we mean the achievement of freedom from
the egocentric self-defense; a continual struggle for
self-denial. “The strength of the Church is made perfect in
weakness mainly because only with the recognition of human
inadequacy can we transpose the possibility of life into the love
of God which “raises the dead”. Isolation in
self-sufficiency, satisfaction in our virtue, our efficiency,
results, sound judgment, do not leave room for the skip of
self-denial and self-transcendence which free the life-giving
possibility of love”. (Christos Yannaras, Elements of
Faith, transl. by Keith Schram, T&T Clark Edinbugh 1991).
[12]
People in the West actually rejected that form of metaphysics
that had transformed to an ideology and drove to some kind of
“theocracy”. However, the various forms of
"theocracy" have no relation at all to the ancient
Greek politics as an "exercise of truth", nor with the
ecclesiastical realization of the image of the Trinitarian
Communion. Theocracy is the use of metaphysics (as a supreme
authority) in order to impose normative principles of behaviour
or aims of power by force upon the collectivity. But any use of
metaphysics for secular aims transforms metaphysics into
ideology, into a psychological illusion.
In the cases of ancient Greek democracy and of the
(Eastern) Christian Church, the social event cannot become
subject to ideological rules or aims, as its dynamic realization
is an aim in itself. Relations that realize the communion of life
are in both cases the unique objective of collectiveness, as they
constitute the way of "that which truly exists" (even
if this way refers to two different models).
Metaphysics are subject to ideology when they evacuate
their ontological content (i.e. the question about
existence, about the cause and purpose of being). Metaphysics
without ontology serve individual psychology (the priority of
individual feelings, sentimental "certainties",
"convictions" which protect the ego). And metaphysics
borrow these psychological "certainties" and
"convictions" from ideologies.
[13] The denial of Metaphysics
encouraged the absolute affirmation of Nature (Physics). The idea
was that normative principles and rules of Justice should not be
deduced out of the hypothetical "Law of God", which was
arbitrarily handled by religious institutions, but by the logic
of the laws of nature which was objective and controllable.
However, the Enlightment seemed to ignore the fact that a natural
human collectiveness may extend from extreme unselfishness to the
most brutal self-centerness; from the co-suffering love and eros
to sadism, violence, blind lust for power.
[14] “We
might say, for example, that someone has a right to liberty if it
is in his interest to have liberty, that is, if he either wants
it or if it would be good for him to have it. In this sense, I
would be prepared to concede that citizens have a right to
liberty. But in this sense I would also have to concede that they
have a right, at least, generally, to vanilla ice cream.” (R.Dworkin,
Taking Rights seriously, Cambridge, Mass (Harvard U.P.)
1977, 4.4: Institutional Rights, p. 268).
[15] “Liberalism’s psychology posits a world of
autonomous individuals, each guided by his or her idiosyncratic
values and goals, none of which can be adjudged more or less
legitimate than those held by others. In such a world, people
exist as isolated islands of individuality who choose to enter
into relations can metaphorically be characterized as foreign
affairs.” (Mark Tushnet, Following the Rules Laid
Down: A Critique of Interpretivism and Neutral Principles, 96
Harvard Law Review, 1983, p. 781).
[16] Suggestively
only: Pierre Birnbaum, La Fin du politique, Paris
(Seuil) 1975. —Maurice Duverger, La democratie sans
le peuple, Paris (Seuil) 1967. — Joseph Barthelemy, La
crise de la democratie representative, RDP, 1928. — Charles
Doran, Systems in crisis : new imperatives of high
politics, N.Y. (Cambridge Univ. Press) 1991 — Alexandras
Shtromas (editor), End of isms? Reflections on the fate of
ideological politics after Communism’s collapse, Oxford
(Blackwell) 1994.
[18] “The
drive towards life passes through the Other. The presence of the
Other —the potentiality of relation, that is, of life— is the
“space” in which the first signifier, the word of desire, is
manifested. The word which constitutes the subject, the bearer of
desire. The appearance of the signifier, which is the
presupposition and starting-point of the relation, “gives
birth” to the subject. “The subject is born when the
signifier appears in the field of the Other” (Lacan)— the
power of responding to the desire... What we call a subject is an
erotic fact, and because it is an erotic fact it is also a
(logical) rational existent.” (C. Yannaras, Variation
on the Song of Songs, H.C. Press, Massachusetts, 2005).
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