Introduction

In this chapter I discuss the philosophical justifications which underlie human rights and dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other international human rights instruments. I write because of concern that the erosion of religious authority in the West may threaten the utilitarian value of the human rights project. While I identify some of the religious premises that can justify human rights and dignity, my purpose is not to highlight those foundations, but to challenge modern legal theorists and political philosophers to explain or justify human rights and dignity in other ways so the power of human rights and dignity is not diminished if the West's retreat from religion continues.

I begin by identifying the existence of natural rights ideas in Greek and Roman philosophy and then discuss the renaissance of those ideas as part of the Enlightenment and their retreat during the age of positivism when Bentham and others assaulted them as ‘nonsense upon stilts’. Following the excesses of the Nazis, I note the birth of modern human rights in the middle of the twentieth century and then a reformation of sorts as they morphed into a multiplicity of anti-discrimination and diversity-affirming norms. I suggest this reformation may threaten the original human rights and dignity ideas by splintering them into irreconcilable fragments with no unifying moral power.

I then discuss theory to make sense of human rights and dignity in their twenty-first century context. I ask whether the idea of human dignity underlying the 1948 UDHR project was a postcolonial Western or Christian Trojan horse, or whether it resonated with something deeper and universal in the nature of man as Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Ann Glendon have argued. And I ask if the idea was always universal, whether the traditional theological and utilitarian supporting arguments can continue to bear its weight in the face of modern challenges.

I conclude that we must find convincing ways to defend human rights in the twenty-first century because they remain a necessary foundation to any peace that protects human dignity. I do not want to accept that the theological justifications of the past have lost their convincing power, but I suggest that an unemotional utilitarian calculus may not be enough to sustain them in the future.