Morality and tradition in postcommunist Orthodox lands: on the universality of human rights, with special reference to Romania*

Abstract

All international documents related to human rights postulate the universal character of their statements. This claim to universality, however, is rooted in a particular perspective on the human being. It is a perspective originating within the Judeo-Christian tradition, with its unprecedented affirmation of the inherent value of every human individual, by virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God. I Moreover, the idea of human rights is a result of the western, Latin interpretation of the Christian tradition. It is a predominantly juridical interpretation, with a strong emphasis on the individual human being, which eventually led to an individualistic and secular understanding of human nature and human rights. Human rights are therefore centred on and hence most suitable for a free, independent rational agent (Descartes, Kant), capable of building and maintaining social structures based on free contracts between supposedly equal rational subjects/agents endowed with similar rational capacity and common sense (Rousseau). Along similar lines of argument, Rawls identifies three major specific historical developments accounting for the nature of the modem western discourse on agency and morality, and therefore human rights: the Reformation and its consequent pluralism; the development of the modem state with its central administration; and the development of modem science beginning in the seventeenth century (Rawls, 2000, p. 5f). The concept of human rights can thus be seen as the result of a certain world-view, with a certain history and with a specific trajectory. At the same time, however, as a result of contemporary social, political and economic conditions, it also seems to have a universalistic appeal. The questions I would like to raise here are related to the implications of such a claim as to the universality of human rights if one comes to this issue from within the framework of a different discourse on anthropology, one made out of a different fabric from the one that originated it. In other words, is it possible, and if so how easy is it, to implement this kind of system of human rights within societies that not only come from a different interpretation of the same Judeo-Christian tradition, but also have recently been through the unprecedented trauma of the political totalitarianism of communist regimes?' In this respect, methodologically, my work falls within the area of conceptual analysis rather than