Abstract
Nathaniel Wood develops an Eastern Christian approach to human rights that is grounded in the crucial theological concept of theosis. Wood begins by acknowledging that Orthodox Christians have fallen behind their Catholic and Protestant counterparts when it comes to serious engagement with the challenges of political secularization and liberalization (issues that are closely related to the topic of human rights). By and large, says Wood, the Orthodox reaction to liberalism, and especially to the concept of human rights, has been negative. This is especially true of the current patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill of Moscow, who has expressed skepticism about the compatibility of human rights and Orthodox theology. In response to this, Wood turns to the religious philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev to develop a vision of human rights according to which rights are meant to assist human beings in the realization of their deification, or union with God.
This chapter was supported by my participation as Senior Fellow in the “Orthodoxy and Human Rights” project sponsored by Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center and was generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and Leadership 100.
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Notes
- 1.
For an overview of the doctrine, see McGuckin (2003).
- 2.
Various lectures and statements by Patriarch Kirill, from both before and after his 2009 patriarchal enthronement, have been collected and translated into English in the collection Freedom and Responsibility: A Search for Harmony—Human Rights and Personal Dignity (2011).
- 3.
The dominant treatment of dignity as a moral category rather than a strictly legal one is not without its challengers. See, e.g., the position of Jeremy Waldron (2012).
- 4.
- 5.
See O’Mahoney (2012) for an explanation and critique of the right to dignity.
- 6.
Aristotle Papanikolaou (2020) also examines image and likeness in relation to dignity in his paper “Dignity: An Orthodox Perspective.” Papanikolaou draws on the work of Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas to offer an Orthodox theological critique of the ROC’s use of the concepts; the present chapter supplements Papanikolaou’s critique with stronger focus on political theology and the work of Russian Religious Philosophy.
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Wood, N. (2022). Theosis and Human Rights: Two Orthodox Approaches. In: Siemens, J., Brown, J.M. (eds) Eastern Christian Approaches to Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10762-7_13
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