Wolterstorff on Rights Grounded in Respect of Worth 3.2.1

Some analytic distinctions and review: “inherent rights and human rights are not the same.” (317) E.g., certain rights inhere in being a parent (a status) but (the status of) being a parent does not belong to or inhere in being human. Moreover, “natural rights and human rights do not necessarily coincide.” (317) E.g., human rights that do not arise from the nature of being human may be conferred by international convention; conversely, the natural rights of parents are not human rights (because not all humans are or even can be parents).

So: What accounts for attaching certain rights to the status of being human? If a right is what is required from another to show due respect for the worth of another human, it must be on account of (i) some property, (ii) some capacity, (iii) some activity, or (iv) some relationship. (319) Two and three suffer the defect noted in the discussion of Kant, Dworkin, and Gewirth: some folks have them (or can do them), some folks don’t (or can’t). One and four hold out some promise so Wolterstorff starts with (i).

Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6 — the image of God in man — are the standard starting places for Christian theistic accounting for human rights. But just what is the image of God? Wolterstorff rightly notes that much ink has been spilled elucidating this rather cryptic expression. Drawing from Psalm 8 and Ben Sira 17:3ff, Wolterstorff ties the image of God to the dominion mandate (or blessing). (See my upcoming piece in the McGeorge Law Review again for more on the meaning of “dominion” in this context.) In other words, of all the ways in which human beings might be said to reflect or image God, that set that is “necessary for receiving and exercising the blessing or mandate of dominion” ties together those that are in fact used by ancient Hebrew writers when they expound on the idea of the image of God in man. (347, citing Jeremy Waldron’s God, Locke, and Equality)

But wait: Aren’t we back in the “capacities” conundrum? If the “image of God” is biblical shorthand for a certain, limited set of ways of being in which human beings are like God, what about those humans who simply cannot exercise those ways (e.g., the profoundly mentally handicapped, those in a persistent vegetative state, and those suffering late-term dementia)? Do they lack the image of God? Have they no human rights? Indeed we are again stuck says Wolterstorff, which means he's off to another, slightly different, interpretation of what it means to be in the image of God to see if it offers better prospects for accounting for human rights.