EDEH'S PHILOSOPHY AND HUMAN RIGHTS: LEADING TO WORLD PEACE

By Tobias Ozioko and Joseph Mbave

Abstract

An in-depth scrutiny makes apodictic the fact that the concept "human rights" is based on an understanding of the being: man. In his monumental work Towards An Igbo Metaphysics, Edeh espouses a philosophy of being that is not only akin to this understanding of man (at the base of human rights) but most importantly illuminates it. Being a doing philosophy, Edeh has not only theorized this concept of man but has set himself practicalising it. In the main, this work undertakes a study of Edeh's philosophy, its practical application in concrete human existence and its take on human rights.

Introduction

In recent times, there have been relentless efforts to propagate, uphold and protect human rights. This endeavour is not exclusive to the contemporary era. However, the intensity of the struggle in the recent past is exceptional. Cases of those who willingly underwent unspeakable torture and those who even sacrificed their lives to uphold the human rights for those who in some cases may not have met in person abound. These altruistic gestures accentuate the fact that human rights is of great importance. Regrettably, so many people still wallow in the pit of ignorance of these fundamental human rights. There is no gainsaying, to say the least, that a person who possesses an innumerable amount of treasure but is ignorant of it is as unfortunate and pitiable as a person who possesses nothing. Indeed, his case is more disheartening.

In like manner, a person who is ignorant of human rights cannot lay claim to them. Cognizant of the fact that many are not well-informed on this subject, an in-depth study of the aforementioned concept becomes pertinent. Edeh's Philosophy of Thought and Action (EPTAISM) enhances our understanding of these human rights. This is the case because the foundation on which human rights are built upon is akin to the foundation upon which Edeh's Philosophy of Thought and Action (EPTAISM) is built. Being a philosophy, EPTAISM has the advantage of possessing more clarified nuances. Being a doing philosophy, EPTAISM has been and continues to be realized in concrete human situations; its results speak for it. Using these added advantages of EPTAISM as instrumentum laboris, a succinct yet lucid elucidation of the human rights is arrived at. However, we shall first elucidate human rights and its foundation, after which we shall briefly discourse Edeh's philosophy and its foundation. Finally, we shall explore the links between the two.

Human Rights Defined

According to Beauchamp, T.L., "the expression 'human rights' is a recent label for what has traditionally been referred to as 'natural rights' or, in an older vernacular, 'rights of man'" (Beauchamp, T.L., 1982, p. 206). The nomenclature "human rights" preempts the meaning of the concept. They are rights that belong to the human species just because he is human. The rights emanate from the nature of man. In other words, the rights are inherent in human nature. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights defines human rights as "rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status" (OHCHR, 2013). For Tom Head, "the term 'human rights' refers to those rights that are considered universal to humanity, regardless of citizenship, residency status, ethnicity, gender, or other considerations" (Tom Head, 2013). Sepúlveda holds that human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." (Sepúlveda, 2004, p. 3) Since they are inherent in human nature, human rights are acclaimed to be universal and inalienable to man. To say that human rights are universal implies that wherever man exists, under whatever culture, he lives; in any geopolitical habitat, he finds himself; at whatever time in history he exists, these rights are privileges he ought to enjoy. Similarly, the assertion that human rights are inalienable connotes that since human rights are intrinsically connected to the nature of man, insofar as man remains man, he possesses those rights. The argument can be demonstrated thus, human rights can be alienated from man if man's nature can be alienated from him. However, since man's nature cannot be alienated from him, human rights cannot be alienated from man. In recent years, some philosophers have raised objections as to the validity of the universality and inalienability claim of the human rights.

History Excursus of Human Rights

As aforesaid, Beauchamp, T.L holds that human rights are a recent label for what has traditionally been referred to as natural rights. In Locke's opinion, natural rights have their footing in natural law. Hence, natural rights were deemed to pre-exist actual social and political systems by social contract theorists such as John Locke.

Thus, natural rights are considered ultimately valid whether or not they are recognized by any given political ruler or assembly. John Locke, a 17th century philosopher is a foremost proponent of this position. In his Two Treatises of Government (1688), Locke argued that "individuals possess natural rights, independently of the political recognition granted them by the state. These natural rights are possessed independently of, and prior to, the formation of any political community" (Andrew Fagan, 2005, accessed 13/4/2013 www.iep.utm.edu/hum-rts/). Locke argues that individuals had to entrust these rights to a leader for the sake of order and peace. This, according to Locke, is the emergence of political society. However, there are some inalienable rights which the individual cannot relinquish; rather the state has only but to protect these rights. Locke even went to the extent of advocating for rebellion against instituted government should they fail to protect these rights. These inalienable rights include life, liberty, and happiness. The import of this claim that rights predate political society is that the coming into being of natural rights coincides with the coming into being of man. In other words, natural rights are as old as man.

In history, men have grappled with the concept human rights. In different epochs, the concept has taken different names and shapes. Taking from Beauchamp, T.L., it was initially denoted with the name natural rights. In France around 1789, it was legally recognized as the right of man. Nevertheless, "the term human rights probably came into use sometime between Paine's The Rights of Man and William Lloyd Garrison's 1831 writings in The Liberator, in which he stated that he was trying to enlist his readers in "the great cause of human rights." (Wikipedia, accessed 11/4/2013).

In different epochs, attempts have been made by different leaders and governments to promulgate a number of legal edicts that could be said to be precursors of and might have influenced the modern formulation of the concept of human rights. In 539 B.C., Cyrus the Great and his Persian army conquered the city of Babylon. He however "freed the slaves, declared that all people had the right to choose their own religion, and established racial equality. These and other decrees were recorded on a baked-clay cylinder in the Akkadian language with cuneiform script. Known today as the Cyrus Cylinder, this ancient record has now been recognized as the world's first charter of human rights" (http://www.humanrights.com/ what-are-human-rights/brief-history/cyrus-cylinder.html, 20/4/2013). Other edicts include: The Magna Carta which was promulgated in the year 1215; The Petition of Right promulgated in 1628; The 1776 United States Declaration of Independence; The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man in France, the US Bill of Rights promulgated in 1791, et cetera. Finally, in the year 1948, the United Nations adopted a document, which today has attained the statute of the most important document on human rights. The document was simply titled The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights came to light after the Second World War. The Second World War occasioned the most dreadful, appalling, horrendous, and abysmal atrocities against the human race; the outrageous massacre of war prisoners; the abominable genocide against the Jews; and many more regrettable crimes against humanity. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings still echo blaring reproach to us.

It is against this pernicious reality that the world embarked on a search of panacea to ameliorate the horrid and despicable condition of a good number of the human family, which is the resultant effect of the Second World War. The search also aimed at providing means of forestalling the reenactment of similar occurrences in the future. Recognizing that a clear understanding of human rights was necessary to achieve this aim, the United Nations, the universal body that was instituted after the Second World War to replace the League of Nations (still in quest for solution), was charged with the duty of codifying Human Rights. In 1948, they came up with the document Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today this document is regarded as the most important document with regard to human rights.

The Foundation of Human Rights

The very first sentence of the introduction of the Universal Declaration of Human rights introduces the concept on which the edifice of human rights is erected. It reads, "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world ..." (http:// www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml, accessed 11/4/2013). One can deduce from this opening statement that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights aims at bringing freedom, justice and peace in the world, but this can only be realized by the recognition of the inherent dignity of man. Note however that freedom, justice, and peace are at the service of human dignity. Thus, the dignity of man can be said to be the foundation of human rights. A study of the rest of the thirty articles of the Universal Declaration shows that they were enacted to define, restore, protect or to promote human dignity. In Donnelly's terms, "Human rights reflector at least analytically can be understood to reflect a particular specification of certain minimum preconditions for a life of dignity in the contemporary world." (Donnelly, 2009, p. 83)

Anthony Areji assent to the argument that human rights are founded on human dignity. He asserts that "the concept human rights, which has its basis on the dignity of human persons is as old as the homo sapiens, since human person is assumably born with inherent dignity" (Areji, 2007, p. 32). He asserts further that "human rights embody the basic standards without which people cannot realize their inherent dignity" (Areji, 2007, p.31). For Klaus Dicke, "human dignity functions with regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as 'a formal, transcendental norm' or 'a formal background value'" (2002, pp.118, 120).

Nevertheless, some people have jettisoned the argument that human dignity is at the base of the conception of human rights. In this vein, Bagaric and James argue that "the concept of dignity is itself vacuous. As a legal or philosophical concept it is without bounds and ultimately is one incapable of explaining or justifying any narrower interests ... the term is so elusive as to be virtually meaningless" (Bagaric and James 2006, p. 260). Acceding to the above, Davis posits that "the concept of human dignity does not give us enough guidance ... it has different senses and often points us in opposite directions" (Davis 2007, p. 177). For Macklin, "dignity is a fuzzy concept, and appeals to dignity are often used to substitute for empirical evidence that is lacking or sound arguments that cannot be mustered" (Chalmers and Ida, 2007,p. 158; quoting Macklin, 2002,p. 212). The above arguments above imply that albeit the fact that "the concept of human dignity has become ubiquitous to the point of cliché" (Witte 2003, p. 121), it eludes comprehension.

Some others see human rights as "foundational, declaratory, and undefined" (Beyleveld and Brownsword, 1998, p. 663). Harris and Sulston see it as "a sort of axiom in the system or as a familiar and accepted principle of shared morality" (Harris and Sulston, 2004, p. 797). For Weisstub it is "a bedrock concept that resists definition in terms of something else" (Weisstub, 2002, p. 2; cf. Jack Donnelly, 2009, p. 81).

Nevertheless, one can posit in consonant with Jack Donnelly that human dignity is not an unanalyzable 'Ur-principle' (Witte, 2003, p. 119). "Although ambiguous, dignity is a signalling term that goes to the heart of what constitutes the quality of humanness" (Weisstub, 2002, p. 269). In Donnelly's opinion, "that ambiguity, however, arises not from any special lack of clarity or from the absence of deeper substantive foundations. Rather, it arises from the fact that for different people human dignity points to different deeper foundations" (Jack Donnelly, 2009, p. 82). In actual fact, both concepts; human rights and human dignity, can be said to enjoy a symbiotic relationship. Donnelly captures it better. In his words "Human rights reflect or at least analytically can be understood to reflect a particular specification of certain minimum preconditions for a life of dignity in the contemporary world. But our detailed understanding of human dignity is shaped by our ideas and practices of human rights. And the practice of human rights can be seen as justified, in some ultimate sense, by its production of beings able to live a life of dignity" (Donnelly, 2009, p. 83).

"Human rights thus go beyond the inherent dignity of the human person to provide mechanisms for realizing a life of dignity. Human rights both specify forms of life that are worthy of beings with inherent moral worth and provide legal and political practices to realize a life of dignity that vindicates the inherent worth of the human person" (Donnelly, 2009, p. 83).

Human Dignity: A Review of Thoughts of Thinkers

Following the critic that human dignity is vacuous and elusive as to be virtually meaningless (Bagaric and James) and the assertion that dignity is a fuzzy concept (Macklin) it becomes pertinent that we elucidate the concept human dignity.

Etymologically, the word dignity derives from the French dignite which in turn derives from the Latin noun dignitas; adjective dingus and verb dignor, these refer to the English word 'worth'. In the early Roman world "'dignity' was a term of hierarchical distinction, an attribute of a distinguished few (patricians or 'optimates') that marked them off from the vulgar masses'" (Donnelly, 2009, p. 15). Dignitas was the status that dignitaries had a quality that demanded reverence from the ordinary common person the vulgar, in the original meaning of that term" (Brennan and Lo, 2007, p. 44). According to Shell, "Dignity, in Latin usage, refers especially to that aspect of virtue or excellence that makes one worthy of honor which, as Aristotle put it, accompanies virtue as its crown" (Shell, 2003, p. 53). Englard captures it differently, "In Rome the original meaning of dignity (dignitas) referred to an acquired social and political status, implying, generally, important personal achievements in the public sphere and moral integrity" (Englard, 1999, p. 1904). From the above it is perspicuous that in the early Roman world, dignity was not perceived as a common feature of all men. Rather, it was an attribute given to a few based on their achievements either in morality according to Aristotelian sense or in the society.

In contrast, Kant's concept of human dignity is universalistic in nature. In Kantian philosophy, human dignity is not an attribute of a few. It is rather an inherent quality of every man. In fact, it is this inherent dignity of every man that underlies morality in Kantian ethics. Kant uses the German word würde which in his words means "an absolute inner worth" (Kant1991: 230 translated by M. Gregor Cambridge University press). In Kantian ethics, this inner worth of man is so valued that it comes second to nothing. Thus the categorical imperative which can be regarded as the bedrock of Kantian ethics: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (Kant 1981:36 translated by J. Elingeon, Indiana Polis, Hakett Publisher).