아브라함계 종교와 세계인권선언: 인권관념 비교연구

Abstract

This article compares and analyzes the idea of human rights in Abrahamic religions. For this purpose, it reviews Abramamic religions’ contribution to the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), their theological interpretations of rights-claiming culture, and human dignity. The article identifies two components that have shaped their varied notion of human rights. The first is that the religions have regarded the universalist claim of human rights as a moral challenge against their religious doctrines, which was established to preserve their Divine revelations. The second is that their historical experiences - religious persecution for Judaism, the Enlightenment for Christianity, and the West European Colonialism for Islam - have respectively shaped their initial hostility towards the idea of human rights. The concept of human rights is commonly considered to be founded on the Judeo-Christian tradition and the Western experience of the Enlightenment. Judaism and Christianity, however, alongside Islam, have in actuality often repudiated the idea of universal human rights following the adoption of the UDHR. This paper demonstrates that this conceptual distance between religion and human rights has ultimately been narrowed due to an increase in shared dialogue. In short, the idea of human rights has earned its universality in Abrahamic religions through a set of debates and compromises.