Human Rights and a Post-Secular Religion of Humanity

Abstract

This essay reconsiders anti-foundationalism, the majority position in human rights theory, not once more from a rationalist foundationalist perspective but from a post-secular perspective. Post-secularism offers a relatively new vantage point from which to consider anti-foundationalism in human rights theory. That vantage point leads this essay to its first claim, which is that anti-foundationalists provide no compelling motive for upholding human rights. Anti-foundationalists may reconstruct human rights regimes as the times demand, but they may also abandon these regimes when faced with difficult contingencies. The second claim is that, of the three distinct foundationalist alternatives to the anti-foundationalist consensus produced by post-secularism, only one is compelling in offering what amounts to a religion of humanity. The essay identifies the first of these other two post-secular theorizations of human rights as too sectarian, and the second as too wedded to the conviction that beliefs can be bracketed. The third and final claim of this essay is the most preliminary, which is that contemporary theorists of this religion of humanity should turn to the work of important post-secular predecessors; recommended here as a starting point is the religion of humanity proposed by John Stuart Mill.

Daniel S. Malachuk teaches literature at Western Illinois University—Quad Cities. His work on nineteenth-century English and American literature and political theory includes Perfection, the State, and Victorian Literature (Palgrave, 2005) and the forthcoming A Political Companion to Emerson (University Press of Kentucky), coedited with Alan M. Levine. He is currently completing a book project tentatively titled “A Higher Law: The Political Theory of American Transcendentalism.”

The author wishes to thank Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Eleni Coundouriotis, and Everett Hamner for their help with this essay.

Notes

1. Freeman associates philosophers as otherwise diverse as “Laclau and Mouffe, Rorty, Dworkin, MacIntyre, and Donnelly” with the anti-foundationalists. His single exemplary rationalist foundationalist is Alan Gewirth. Excellent summaries of the rationalist foundationalist arguments for human rights include Fields (2003, 53–67), Orend (2002, 97–98), and Churchill (2006, 28–32).

2. In remarks made on May 21, 2009, at the National Archives, President Barack Obama challenged those who support torture by appealing to the civic religion of the founding documents. “I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we … cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values,” which oppose rather than support torture. “The documents that we hold in this very hall—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights—these are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality, and dignity around the world” (Obama 2009).

3. Rorty also seems to have had second thoughts about religion. Malachuk compares this shift to a similar one in William James’ work (Malachuk 2000: 89–113).

4. Douzinas provides a sharp critique of this “Whig historiography” (Douzinas 2000: 1–21); Taylor describes subtraction stories as claiming “human beings hav[e] lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from certain earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge” (Taylor 2007: 22).

5. The only substantial studies of Mill's religious thought published in the last few decades, Raeder (2002) and Sell (2004) both helpfully challenge the myth of Mill's indifference to religion but generally uphold the related myth that he sought to eliminate supernaturalism from politics.

6. Compare to the “partial belief” developed by the literary critic John McClure; he draws on Gianni Vattimo's “weak religion” and Jacques Derrida's “strategy of perhaps” (McClure 2007: 12, 14).