Philosophy and Human Rights (part 1)

In this write-up, I’m not going to answer the question, “What is the philosophy of human rights?”  As much as possible I will try to avoid this question lest I will search in vain such thing as “philosophy of human rights.”  Perhaps, the right question to answer is “What are the philosophical ideals underpinning human rights movement and advocacy?”  Thus, my choice of title is not “philosophy of human rights” but “philosophy and human rights.”  Philosophy is an oldest discipline, which can be traced back from Thales in the 600 BC.  The concept of human rights is credited to the works of some Enlightenment Philosophers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Locke and Immanuel Kant in 17^th and 18^th centuries.  It found its way to be embodied in laws in the English Bill of Rights in 1689, in Scottish Claim of Rights in the same year, United States Declaration of Independence in 1776[1], and so on and on.

Enlightenment philosophers are called to be such not because they were the “enlightened ones” like Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, but because they were born in the Enlightenment period –a period shortly right after the Dark Ages in Western History.  There are significant themes why they are considered as Enlightenment thinkers.  First, unlike Buddha who claimed that he was awakened by the four noble truths in life, enlightenment thinkers made a radical claim that every human person is an individual endowed with rational faculty.  During Dark ages in Europe, the Catholic Church had the influence and power.  This privilege of having influence and power was embedded in the belief that Christ instituted the Church to be the vessel of the salvation of man.  As an agency of man’s salvation, the Church claimed to have sole authority in matters of personal, social, religious, and political life of the people.  Since she is infallible in all these matters, the faithful have to conform to laws, doctrines, and tenets of the Church.  To defy her power is like disobeying God’s will and commands.  Second, because of the idea of conformity of the faithful to Church’s power and influence, every faithful was denied of individual initiatives and creativity –thus, that period of history is considered Dark.  Though it’s not literally dark, but the idea is that no event was worth writing in history books.  When concept of individuality was given emphasis, there were four significant consequences: (1) the idea of conformity was challenged, (2) there was affirmation of man’s capacity to gain individual salvation as propounded by Lutheran movement, (3) there was reaffirmation of man’s ability to gain self-realization without the agency of the Church, and (4) the reaffirmation of man’s rational faculty. 

I’d like to focus my analysis on the last theme, “reaffirmation of man’s rational faculty.”  It was only a reaffirmation by the Enlightenment thinkers in that in the classical Greece, Plato and Aristotle were clear of their affirmation of it.  Both philosophers claimed “man is essentially rational.”  This theme, however, faded and was clouded over when the pendulum of authority and power swung to the side of the Church during the Dark Ages.  In the later part of Dark Ages, there was a gradual revival of the classics –referring to the remnants of ancient Greek civilization.  Then, Enlightenment period came.

Kant on Human Rights

I’d like to discuss the idea of human rights in the Kantian and Lockean perspectives.  Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, is not specifically talking about human rights.  But his discussion on the question, “What is Enlightenment?” gives us a clearer picture of a thread underpinning philosophical ideals and human rights.  Kant reaffirms that man is rational.  His claim, however, is entirely different from those of Plato and Aristotle because Kant adds some Cartesian[2] elements of his claim.  Cartesian philosophy is characterized as anthropocentric –a philosophical belief emphasizing the fact that man is the center in the scheme of things.  Ancient philosophy like those of Plato and Aristotle, on the other hand, is characterized as cosmocentric in that nature/cosmos is at the center of the scheme of things.  The motto of the Enlightenment is “Have courage to use your own reason.”[3]  Based on this, we can infer that the project of enlightenment is for humanity to see once more the glitters of hope in man’s thinking power, which was once subdued by the influence of the Church.  I’m not going to dwell more on this topic.  I rather take Kant’s idea of man’s rationality, which hopefully I’m able to connect it with the idea of human rights.  

In his two major works, Critiques of Pure Reason and Practical Reason, Kant laid out the foundation of science and morality in man’s faculty of reason.  Man’s reason is the source of any scientific and moral knowledge.  It’s like a fountain of “a priori” ideas –existing prior to experience, which will readily arise once infringed upon by experience.  Yet, for Kant, these a priori ideas are not coming from experience; they arise with experience instead. 

Let me zero in my analysis on Kant’s morality.  Kant notes that since our moral knowledge is a priori, we always intend to do what is good in any given situation.  We “ought” to do good because we are all persons of good will.  “Good will is the most equally distributed in the world and it’s the only thing which is good without qualification,” he added.  On this basis, I find the logical connection between Kant’s claim of man’s rationality and his claim of self-legislating subject.  As rational beings, we legislate our own laws.  We formulate laws of what is true and of what is good for us.  If we’re self-legislating subjects, then we’re all free individuals.  As free individuals, we’re all beings afforded with all forms of human rights.  Human rights are an embodiment of our freedom, which is somehow an embodiment of our reason. 

I oblige myself to write a second part of this article, which will be devoted to Lockean perspective on human rights.

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[1] Internet source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights

[2] Cartesian refers to the philosophy of Rene Descartes, who is considered as the Father of Modern Philosophy.  His philosophy is characterized as anthropocentric. 

[3] Immanuel Kant, 1784, What is Enlightenment?

Illegal Drug as Anaesthetic to Poverty

Despite calls from ICC, EU, US and International Human Rights advocates to heed human rights violations, Duterte Administration stands firm on its campaign on illegal drugs to the grim of the law.  Duterte's campaign against drug menace causes divisions between human rights advocates and Duterte's supporters, not only in the country but also among countries worldwide.  At the brim, arguments are stoned against each other to soften the edifice of each camp’s position.  At the outset, there are points raised either from each camp that cause us to reflect of their explicit and implicit meanings, like this line uttered from one supporter of Duterte, "illegal drug is anaesthetic to poverty."  Aside from its explicit meaning, this line does contain some implicit meaning, which somehow gives no clearer picture of drug menace in the country, but gives us a negative impression towards the poor instead.

It is in this context that I’d like to make some analysis of that statement to highlight what is hidden in it.  In philosophy, there is a science of interpretation known as hermeneutics.  This movement has been much talked about in the later part of the 19^th and early 20^th century.  However, its grip in the academe comes loose because of the influence of post-modernism such as deconstructionism fathered by Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher.  Hermeneutics is a discipline that makes the hidden meaning in a word, a phrase, a statement explicit.  Meanings are entangled by the written symbols.  Thus, one has to clean up any entanglement found in reading a text to free any meaning hidden behind those entanglements.  To know the real meaning of the text read is very important to avoid misunderstanding.  Moreover, meaning is contextual.  It is also necessary to put it in its historical and socio-cultural contexts.  Thus, there’s a need for interpretation and re-interpretation, if necessary.

What is obviously meant in the statement, “illegal drug is anaesthetic to poverty,” is the fact that Philippines is plagued with poverty.  We witness it sprawling in shams in major cities all over the islands.  Poor communities in cities are sores to the eyes.  They are known havens of drug addicts, pushers, and drug lords.  Poor people are most vulnerable to any form of abuses like this drug menace.  Powerlessness may be the main reason of their vulnerability.  Our hunch, however, would tell us that because of lack of money or resources, the poor are tempted to resort to use, abuse, push illegal drugs.  This is, I think, the context where we can understand the meaning of the statement, “illegal drug is anaesthetic to poverty.” 

There is, moreover, another sense I’d like to interpret on the statement.  By this time, the word, “anaesthetic” will be the focus of my analysis.  In medical sense, anaesthesia is a medical substance that if applied to a part of the body, a person may experience a loss of sensation on that part of the body like pain, but not necessarily losing his/her consciousness.  Figuratively, illegal drugs like cocaine or marijuana, if taken by the poor people, they will temporarily lose their feeling of being poor.  Karl Marx noted it in the lives of Christians who were suffering from social injustices from bourgeois system in saying, “religion is the opium of the poor.”  Our logical sense would tell us that using illegal drugs will help poor people escape “in abeyance” from the shackles of poverty.  I agree, poverty makes the poor people suffer –not so much from emotional pain but from forced hunger and thirst.  But I disagree with the point that the poor resort to drugs as a way to escape “temporarily” from poverty.  This sort of argument is “sweeping generality,” which is fallacious.  It’s not true that only poor people are doomed to illegal drugs.  There are also rich people suffered from drug addiction, involved in illegal drug, and mostly they’re the ones benefitting from drug trade.

A drug addict coming from affluent family confessed that he’s addicted to drugs because he felt something void in the family.  Although financially he has enough, but his family lacks emotional support for him, which is necessary for grown-ups.  So, his addiction is like also an escape from the void plaguing modern families.  Maybe, this guy has an absent father or mother since his parent or parents are working abroad.  Or, maybe his parents are both busy in work.  Parents’ absence creates this void in the family.  Parents’ role is not only to support financially but also to give guidance to grown-ups.  Gabriel Marcel remarked if the sense of belongingness is lost in the family, one member is tempted to long for it from outside.  The easiest way for these young grown-ups to find this sense of belongingness is in their peer-group.  Peer-group influences one to take drugs, which in a way helps him escape from family reality.

In deeper analysis, the above-mentioned remarked contains a certain bias, which I call “social class bias.”  It turns out that the poor become the “easiest scapegoats” of one who tries to diagnose these social ills.  When something bad is happening, the poor Juan becomes the easy target for blame.  Of course, it’s an obvious fact.  The poor are the powerless, the defenseless.  It’s a kind of cultural bias against the poor.

In conclusion, as emotions get intense brought by the controversy on Duterte’s campaign on drugs, one has to avoid giving comments that may “poison” the real matter of the issue.