Eastern Orthodoxy and Human Rights

Abstract

The brutality of the holocaust in Europe during World War II precipitated international concern with human rights. Today all countries at least rhetorically attest to their adherence to the international standards of human rights developed by the United Nations and regional organizations beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948, even when they are in gross violation of these standards. Yet it is important to keep in mind that philosophical thought articulating a conception of individual rights emerged late in the history of humankind. Prior to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that is, before the Renaissance and the liberal political philosophers, a secular notion of individual human rights had not been conceptualized and hence had no meaning. By contrast, notions of the good or virtuous life and of justice suffused pre-modern thought. The moves toward the integration of Western Europe in recent decades presume a common intellectual heritage among Europeans. The notion of individual human rights, particularly as embodied in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, constitutes an important dimension of the emerging Europe. In so far as some East European countries aspire to become part of the new Europe an analysis of shared commonalities becomes essential. The extent to which individualism, individual rights, and pluralism can flourish in eastern Europe seems critical for their ability to become part of democratic Europe. This study scrutinizes one aspect of the broad problem of a shared value system between western and eastern Europe; namely, the extent to which the religious heritage of Eastern Orthodoxy, practiced in the Balkans, Russia, and other East European states, is compatible with the Western conception of individual rights. The analysis will focus on, but not be limited to, Greece, the one Eastern Orthodox state currently a member of the European Community and never under communist rule. The difficulties Greece has had and is contin-