Abstract:
This article discusses the view of the Leiden professor Paul Cliteur that human rights are
essentially secular and require rejection of God’s will as source of moral authority. Firstly,
it analyses Cliteur’s reception of Kant and his claim that an exclusively anthropological
grounding of human rights is the only possible one. Next, it investigates Nicholas
Wolterstorff’s criticism of Kant’s grounding of human dignity in the rational capacity of
mankind and his theistic grounding of human rights in God’s love by the mediating concept
of human worth. Although Wolterstorff rightly believes that God’s special relationship
with human beings is ultimately the best ground for human rights, his understandings
of God’s love and of human worth appear to be problematic. Finally, the article explores
the possibility to ground human rights directly in God’s justice by construing creation, the
giving of the Ten Commandments and the justification of the sinner as central divine acts of
justice in which God has given human rights to all human beings.