Journey Toward Justice 20

This chapter is titled 'Human Right'. In this chapter, Nick develops his concept of human right. When we talk about Human Right, one is reminded of the UN Declaration on human right. The UN document gives a list of human right, but it does not explain the concept of human right. One way to arrive at the concept of human right, therefore, is to take UN list and derive a concept out of it; another way is to take the theoretical formulation of philosopher, political theorist, legal scholar etc and arrive at a concept. Being a philosopher, Nick takes the second approach. 

Many accounts of human dignity and therefore human right are grounded on the idea that human have certain capacity; for example, the capacity to reason. This viewpoint has been criticized because it seems to undermine the dignity of those who are unable to reason, say, due to certain sort of deformity. It's just that if my dignity is based on my capacity to reason, then what happens to the dignity of those who are in permanent coma. This viewpoint is therefore problematic. Because of such problem, there are those who don't want to go beyond the point that human persons have dignity and therefore right. 

Nick goes further. In the previous chapter, Nick mentions about the difference between his concept of justice and that of the right order conception of justice. The difference needs to be born in mind if we want to examine whether he is successful in development an account for grounding human right in a consistent manner. Nick says in the previous chapter that a right order theorist holds that "there has to be an external standard of some sort that directly or indirectly bestows rights on them" whereas inherent rights theorist holds that "there does not have to be anything outside them that somehow confers those rights on them". With regard to human right that all human persons possess, Nick writes that God's desire for fellowship upon human persons (and not animals or birds) is that which bestows worth upon human persons. " ...every human being has the honor of being chosen by God as someone with whom God desires to be a friend, and that this desire endures. Then every human being has the equal and ineradicable worth that being so honored bestows on him or her". I understand Nick as saying that it's God's desire for fellowship that bestows human's dignity  or worth that gives rise to human right. Quite fine! 

But the issue when Nick says that I wonder how he is saying that his concept is an inherent right based conception of justice. Because human worth/dignity is not then inherent; it rather is bestowed upon by an external agent i.e God. With regard to right order conception of dignity, he uses the phrase 'external standard', and not 'external agent'. But if one is a right order theorist of justice and a Christian, then it cannot be an abstract standard (remember Plato's Euthyphro) that bestows the worth; the one who bestows the worth has to a person i.e God. Given this leading, I wonder if Nick can consistently claims if his conception of justice is an inherent right based conception of justice. It seems to me that his is also a right order account, at least by this way reasoning about human right. 

There is another point that I find problematic in Nick's account of human right. But I am not dealing with that point here!