Human Rights and a Post-Secular Religion of Humanity

This essay reconsiders anti-foundationalism, the majority position in human rights theory, not once more from a rationalist foundationalist perspective but from a post-secular perspective. Post-secularism offers a relatively new vantage point from which to consider anti-foundationalism in human rights theory. That vantage point leads this essay to its first claim, which is that anti-foundationalists provide no compelling motive for upholding human rights. Anti-foundationalists may reconstruct human rights regimes as the times demand, but they may also abandon these regimes when faced with difficult contingencies. The second claim is that, of the three distinct foundationalist alternatives to the anti-foundationalist consensus produced by post-secularism, only one is compelling in offering what amounts to a religion of humanity. The essay identifies the first of these other two post-secular theorizations of human rights as too sectarian, and the second as too wedded to the conviction that beliefs can be bracketed. The third and final claim of this essay is the most preliminary, which is that contemporary theorists of this religion of humanity should turn to the work of important post-secular predecessors; recommended here as a starting point is the religion of humanity proposed by John Stuart Mill.