The notion of subjective individual human rights is presently occupying a dominant position
in legal thinking and practice. Hence, people’s position within the legal order is almost
exclusively conceptualised in terms of individual human rights – abstract, equal, universal
subjective individual human rights – to put the concept in true perspective. Nothing, so it is
believed, needs to be added to that.
In our day, moreover, human rights assume the character of a redeeming gospel,
guaranteeing justice comprehensively and serving as a panacea for all the challenges humanity
might be facing. Whenever a new ill arises a new human right will surface providing the
required cure.
However, the dominance of human rights is no natural given. Its present dominance is
also of fairly recent origin. It is associated with a distinctive individualist ideology that emerged
only since early modernity. It made tumultuous strides during the revolutionary era in the last
quarter of the eighteenth century and finally triumphed only after World War II.
Given the tremendous upsurge of subjective individual rights, conceptualisation of law
in its objective guise as a holistic system has largely been neglected. This is unfortunate, since
it has caused a distorted and impoverished view of what law – and a legal order – on closer
analysis should signify.
The last part of the discussion (Part 4) precisely seeks to offer suggestions as to what law
viewed from an objective vantage point should signify.
To reach that point, an historical overview of the emergence of the concept of the individual
is first given in part 2, followed in part 3 with an overview of the rise of individual rights.
These two issues are closely inter-related. For clarity’s sake we deal with them separately.
Focusing first on the individual (and individualism), it is shown that the “individual” of
Classicism and the Middle Ages was in fact far removed from the individual of present-day
individualism. Thus Louis Dumont (similar to Ernst Troeltsch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Collin
Morris and various other idea historians referred to in Part 2) highlights the drastic break
between the kind of individuality of early Christianity in stark contrast to contemporary
individualism, explaining:
Actually, the old form and the new are separated by a transformation so radical and so
complex that it took at least seventeen centuries of Christian history to be completed, if
indeed it is not continuing in our times.
This “individual” was a sinner before God the Almighty, equal to all other individual sinners,
yet “naturally” anchored in a variety of communal settings occupying designated places and
fulfilling roles. The latter were not regarded as equal to all others and exercising individual
rights on an equal footing with all other individuals. Only after the individualising events
specifically associated with René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes, something that vaguely
resembled the modern-day individual, reflecting the notion of individualism, really started
emerging, culminating in the post World War II triumph of individualism.
Part 3 deals with the equally modern-day notion of subjective individual human rights.
Concurrent with abstracting the notion of the individual, the idea of individual rights appears
to have emerged only in the nominalism of William of Ockham and others. Before that, none
of the Classical roots of our Western civilisation – Christianity, Classical Athenian philosophy,
Roman law – conceived of law as a system of subjective equal human rights. On the contrary, law was viewed in the first place as a natural whole designating specific places, roles and
offices to each person. Thus Michael Oakeshott explains:
This is the ‘well-ordered’ polis, the polis in which not only is each man doing what his
special aptitude fits him to do, but in which, also, the proper hierarchy of faculties of the
soul is preserved.
Roman law with reference to numerous classical sources such as the work of Celsus and Paulus
as reported in the Digest in the Justinian Code, as well as various others such as Marcus
Aurelius all viewed law as an objective (cosmic) order of justice sustained by everyone fulfilling
his and her (naturally) allocated, distinctive roles.
Individual rights have no doubt brought about huge strides to the betterment of human
existence, but such rights also have a dark downside, having caused an inordinate degree of
fragmentation, atomism and loss of a sense of civilisation.
It is suggested that our classical Western roots of civilisation may be of help not by simply
transplanting them into our present-day reality but instead to regard them with hermeneutical
judgment as argued by Danie Goosen. It is on the basis of this constructive relationship with
our tradition, steering clear from the extremes of a reactionary retreat to classicism on the
one hand as well as, on the other, a hostile rejection of anything that classicism might offer,
that I embark on the discussion in Part 4.
It is argued that over and above subjective individual rights we stand to gain richly from
the following six notions for elucidating our insight into how a sound legal order should be
conceived. These six notions, unpacked in the last part are that of place, role, office, capacity,
responsibility and calling.
Individuele regte, meer bepaald die denkbeeld van abstrakte, gelyke, universele, subjektiewe
menseregte oorheers tans die regsdiskoers en -praktyk. Dit is egter van onlangse oorsprong,
want hierdie denkbeeld het eers gedurende die rewolusionêre tydvak in die laaste kwart van
die agtiende eeu sterk op die voorgrond getree en toe ná die Tweede Wêreldoorlog beslissend
geseëvier.
In hierdie bespreking word die opkoms van die individu eers nagegaan en daarna dié van
individuele regte. Dit word gedoen met verwysing na die Klassieke Griekse denke, die klassieke
Romeinse reg en die daaropvolgende Middeleeuse tradisie tot by die Vroeg-Moderne tydvak.
In plaas daarvan dat die individu met (individuele) regte in ’n potensieel of daadwerklike
verhouding van spanning met ander individue met soortgelyke (botsende) individuele regte as die wesenlike eienskap van die reg beskou is, is die reg eerder kosmies beskou, dit wil sê,
as ’n objektiewe regsgeheel waarbinne mense uiteenlopende toegewese rolle vertolk het.
By die beantwoording van die vraag of ons enigsins baat te vind het by hierdie pre-moderne
beskouings is die uitgangspunt, in navolging van Danie Goosen, dat ons met hermeneutiese
oordeel eerder as met dogmatiese drif te werk moet gaan. Daarvolgens word die uiterstes
vermy om die klassieke denkbeelde óf heeltemal (progressiwisties) te verwerp óf dit reaksionêr
op ons huidige werklikheid te probeer oorplant.
Teen hierdie agtergrond word hier geredeneer dat die volgende ses denkbeelde wat verder
in Deel 4 uitgepluis word, náás individuele regte ’n belangrike bydrae te lewer het tot ’n meer
omvattende, realistiese en harmoniese begrip van wat die reg behoort te behels. Die denkbeelde
is plek, rol, amp, hoedanigheid, verantwoordelikheid en roeping.
