Duterte and being human

I’m trying hard to wrap my head around President Duterte’s understanding of human rights (vis-à-vis, for example, human dignity, law and order), that makes him utter such statements as “I am not afraid of human rights” or “Human rights should not be used as a shield or an excuse to destroy our country.”

The first paragraph of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it so well when it affirms that “the 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.”

I’m aware of criticisms against human rights as a concept (for example, that it is supposedly a Western concept that cannot be applied to Eastern cultures). Such criticisms, of course, are to be welcomed. Philosophers know there is nothing that cannot be subjected to critique, philosophy and philosophers themselves included. Thus, even such a document as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights cannot simply be accepted uncritically.

But neither can one simply disregard it. As Ban Ki-moon notes in his foreword: “Now available in more than 360 languages, the Declaration is the most translated document in the world—a testament to its global nature and reach. It has become a yardstick by which we measure right and wrong. It provides a foundation for a just and decent future for all, and has given people everywhere a powerful tool in the fight against oppression, impunity and affronts to human dignity.”

Now, for sure, the difficulty with human rights is that, in the end, they are not something that can be proven or demonstrated to be true. They do not even belong merely to the ethical or political realm. Ultimately, they are based on our fundamental conviction about what it means to be human. There is no proof or evidence that will render Socrates’ famous dictum valid, namely, that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” The Filipino Jesuit philosopher Roque Ferriols translated the passage into Filipino as follows: “Ang buhay na hindi kinikilatis ay hindi buhay-tao”—The unexamined life is not a human life, which, he said, was closer to the Greek original.

Thus, ultimately, human rights are derived from our conviction about what a human life is, and what is not. Such a conviction is not merely intellectual. It involves our whole being. We react not just with our minds, but with every bone and sinew in our bodies. We say in Filipino, “Bumabaliktad ang aking sikmura” (My stomach turns), when we witness a crime so heinous that we simply know it does not belong to being human, that to do so is to be not human. In a word, inhuman.

Ferriols also used to say, “May mga bagay na sadyang hindi ginagawa.” There are things that we simply do not, should not, do. Ancient thinkers understood as much. In explaining the “golden mean,” Aristotle said murder is just wrong. One cannot tell a murderer to moderate his murderous instinct, and suggest, “Hey, you’ve been murdering an average of 10 people a week. Could you kindly cut it down to five?” No, we simply do not, should not, murder anyone. Every murder, especially the murder of an innocent and defenseless person, is a murder of one too many.

We have much to learn from Simone Weil, too, she whom TS Eliot considered to be a rare combination of genius and saint. In “The Need for Roots,” which she wrote in her final years (she died at age 34), Weil says:

“The notion of obligation comes before that of rights, which is subordinate and relative to the former. A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds, the effective exercise of a right springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from men who consider themselves as being under a certain obligation towards him. Recognition of an obligation makes it effectual. An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth much…

“…A man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatever, but he would have obligations.”

Ferriols’ claim about the things we simply ought not to do also therefore means there are things that we are obliged to do. Am I obliged to be honest to others? Can I cheat my way to getting a driver’s license, for example? When I do so, it will be valid for me to drive a car, even if in reality I can endanger other people’s lives with my lack of competence as a driver. Am I obliged to keep other people free from harm while I drive my car?

Presumption of innocence until guilt is proven, ensuring due process, respect for human dignity—are these matters of obligation, or are they merely optional? Does it belong to being human to uphold these principles, and to feel obliged to defend such principles?

Our answers to such questions will tell us what acts are there that we simply do not or should not do. Ultimately, they will reveal our convictions (or lack thereof) about what it means to be human.

In confronting the drug menace in the Philippines, for example, we can go ahead with our objectives with such stubbornness and determination, and get the results we want, measurable in terms of numbers and quotas, without sufficient examination, analysis of and reflection on the problem. But whether we like it or not, we are accountable for our convictions about what belongs to being human, and what does not.

But do we still stop and ask such questions these days? Do we still consider it essential to our being human to ask what is worth living and what is not, what is a human life and what is not? Do we still feel something in our bones and sinews whenever we witness a terrible harm being done to an innocent person? Or the way their bodies are being treated, in life as in death?

And if we don’t, if we no longer feel anything in our bones and sinews, if our stomach no longer turns, will it even occur to us at all to ask if we are still human?

Remmon E. Barbaza is with the Department of Philosophy, Ateneo de Manila University.