Wolterstorff on Rights Grounded in Respect of Worth 3.2.6

Picking up with my last comments (3.2.5), let’s follow Wolterstorff’s parallel discussion of love. What sort of love is God’s toward humanity? Love as attraction, love as attachment, or love as benevolence? What’s the difference between the three and of what significance might it be?

Love as attraction means that the lover is attracted by the worth of some aspect of the beloved; the lover anticipates being better off by virtue of the relationship. Hardly plausible with respect to a holy God’s love for sinful people. Love as benevolence comes closer to God’s for love humanity but, according to Wolterstorff, love as benevolence usually follows upon love as attraction or love as attachment (one wants to improve that to which one is attracted or attached as the case may be). Love as benevolence thus seems to occupy a secondary place in the order of loves.

The third love, love as attachment, however, is frequently associated with bestowed worth. We cannot account for love as attachment in terms of another form of love (such as love as benevolence) or the lover’s needs (in the case of love as attraction). I think Wolterstorff’s homey example makes this clear. Imagine a stuffed animal that is ugly, “so ugly that it would be hard to find a stuffed animal more ugly.” (359) Yet a child loves it. Why? Simply because this is the one he has bonded with. This is the one to which he is attached. Whatever desires of the child this ugly stuffed animal satisfies it satisfies because of the primary attachment. Similarly, whatever benevolences the child pours upon his stuffed animal arise by virtue of the preexisting attachment. Love as attachment is the affective perspective on the economic principle of bestowed worth.

What is upshot of Wolterstorff’s lengthy analysis? What is the significance of worth and love for human rights? “I conclude that if God loves a human being with the love of attachment, that love bestows great worth on that human being. . . . And I conclude that if God loves, in the mode of attachment, each and every human being equally and permanently, then natural human rights inhere in the worth bestowed on human beings by that love. Natural human rights are what respect for that worth requires.” (360)

Wolterstorff’s two important caveats remain to be considered.