Loss of rights

In the April issue of the October magazine, an article by Alexander Verkhovsky "Defeat in Rights" was published, devoted to the analysis of the concept of the Russian Orthodox Church on issues of "dignity, freedom and human rights."

In recent years, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church has been speaking out more and more actively on a variety of public issues, even on purely political ones, although it still avoids unequivocally taking sides in party conflicts (as we recently saw in the statements of Patriarch Kirill about the protests).

The task of the ROC, like any serious organization, is to maximize its influence, which in this case involves helping to shift society from its current highly secular state to a more traditional state in which the Church would again become a truly influential institution.

To achieve this goal, church leaders try, to the extent possible, to speak on all important topics, more precisely, to translate into their own language all significant social problems. After all, the promotion of one's language, one's system of concepts is the most important instrument of influence. This fully applies to one of the most important concepts of the modern social and political language - human rights. The understanding of human rights in the ROC is very peculiar and, therefore, deserves attention. Meanwhile, the “Fundamentals of the Russian Orthodox Church's Teaching on the Dignity, Freedom and Rights of Man”, adopted back in 2008, has so far hardly been discussed in essence.

Of course, one should not expect from a traditionalist religious organization, at least suspicious of the modernization of society, the complete acceptance of modern ideas about human rights. The "Fundamentals" are written from the point of view of the idea of ​​the only true doctrine - Orthodoxy.

Accordingly, those who are not ready to share the Orthodox worldview should not enter into a theological debate about the foundations of the position of the ROC. The reproaches against certain Orthodox figures that they misunderstand the precepts of Christ, which are often found in non-church polemics, are inappropriate. But two remarks concerning the doctrinal basis of the text under discussion still need to be made.

First, the "Fundamentals" are based on the postulate that human dignity does not extend to the distortions that have arisen in human nature as a result of the fall. This idea is repeated many times and further: human dignity is possible only without sin. But the Church itself does not consider anyone sinless, so it turns out: if human rights are inseparable from human dignity, and the latter is linked to sinlessness, then these rights simply do not belong to anyone. Here a really radical contradiction arises with the classical, let's call it that, the doctrine of human rights, according to which they are inherent in just anyone.

But in reality, a rare Christian will argue that a sinner is deprived of human dignity. And hardly anyone will insist that dignity is inversely proportional to sinfulness: then one would have to “calculate” the amount of rights for everyone at every moment of his life. The only way to evade this unsolvable task is to agree that everyone, even the most unworthy, should have some minimum rights. And the Foundations, contrary to their own main thesis, seem to agree with this: “a morally unworthy life ontologically does not destroy God-given dignity.”

What is this minimum amount of human rights? Supporters of different conceptual approaches among human rights defenders offer different answers. If the "Basics" formulated its minimum, it would be easier to discuss the differences between church and other approaches. But the authors of the Fundamentals did not do this, and generally do not seem to have noticed the internal contradiction in the text.

Secondly, The Foundations compares human rights not directly with the biblical commandments, but with the "traditional morality" supposedly based on them. And in this the Church is clearly making a compromise with secular society, substituting a proper religious view with moral conservatism, which can have very different, and not only Christian, grounds. Such a compromise is advantageous for advancing one's views, but rather a losing one for understanding and discussing them.

"Traditional morality" is not a solid foundation, since this term, in principle, does not describe at least somewhat unambiguously understood moral code. Different groups of people understand “traditional morality” in different ways, and not only in cultural areas distant from each other, but also within the same cultural paradigm, including the Russian Orthodox one (suffice it to compare, for example, the attitude towards corporal punishment now and a couple centuries ago). In view of this vagueness, the theoretical basis for human rights offered by the Fundamentals cannot function as such (not to mention the fact that the norms of “traditional morality” in the eyes of many citizens may not coincide with their moral conclusions from the Gospel).

Thus, a view external to the Church stumbles upon serious problems in the very foundations of the Church's position. This makes it difficult to discuss the differences between the ecclesiastical and classical understanding of human rights, but discussion of this still cannot be avoided, so at least the main points of the difference should be indicated.

The classical concept of human rights is based on the priority of individual freedom, understood as freedom of choice, including moral choice. The Church reminds that for her there is another understanding of freedom - "freedom from sin" and this freedom is higher than the freedom of choice. I am glad that the Fundamentals distinguish between two Christian understandings of freedom, since this allows the authors to build, and readers to see, very clear value priorities: purity of doctrine - freedom from sin - morality form the highest row, and freedom of choice and human rights - the lowest. Harmony is understood as the recognition of this hierarchy, not only theologically, but also socially. And here we see the opposition of the idealized traditional society and the real modern society. The Church is on the side of the former, and in this sense it is an irreconcilable political opponent of liberals and human rights activists.

But the Church lives and acts in the modern world, and Russia is not quite, but already quite a modernized country. Accordingly, the ROC is faced with the task of adapting its doctrine to activities in modern society. In the meantime, The Foundations only maximalist reminds that social mechanisms are not capable of exterminating evil, for it is rooted in sin, but they forget to add that the Church is not in a position to perform such a miracle. Of course, if evil could be successfully fought without social mechanisms, then the need to create such as human rights would disappear by itself ... Alas, the reality is not like that (including, by the way, from a Christian point of view).

It would be more constructive for the Church, both from the point of view of a reasonable dialogue with society and from the point of view of its own practice, to recognize the productivity of social mechanisms built on a non-Orthodox value basis, and thus make its own participation in their formation more effective. The “Osnovy” are trying to take some steps in this direction, but they are too timid. In addition, the authors of the Fundamentals (as well as many of our citizens, by the way) have a rather vague idea of ​​the scope of applicability of the concept of “human rights”. One gets the impression that they confuse them with social activity in general: this can already be seen from the proposed motley list of “human rights works” of the Church.

A constructive approach is also hampered by the fact that the Church perceives the secular environment as aggressive, and itself as a victim of pressure, which can also be understood as a human rights problem (by the way, a symmetrical idea of ​​the ROC is widespread among supporters of secularism). "Fundamentals" states: "Christians find themselves in a situation where social and state structures can force, and often already force them to think and act contrary to God's commandments."

Yes, at the level of behavior such a conflict is quite possible, if we are guided by the traditional understanding of the commandments. And nothing can be done about this, since the problem of interpreting the commandments is in the sphere of intra-confessional discussion: society has no right to impose anything on either the Church or the believers. Public - especially the state! - regulation can only apply to issues that go beyond the church framework. There is no doubt that now an attempt to follow the commandment and stone a harlot will lead those who are stoning to prison. Such precedents are unknown, but, for example, Orthodox opponents of the TIN (they, of course, also understood their protest as following a commandment) have already faced certain restrictions established by the state. The problem is also that those Orthodox who are faced with this kind of external coercion are not inclined to consider their moral and other norms as intracommunal, they see them as universal.

This collision of general civil and communal norms is known not only by the example of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. It is obvious that no society can accept any “sets” of norms as equally acceptable, of course, the ROC itself agrees with this. It is in her interests to offer her own version of the solution of the conflict, but she cannot do this yet, except for arguments about the priorities of “traditional” religions and “traditional” morality, which are simply inapplicable in the absence of criteria for such “traditionality”. In the absence of a clear concept, church leadership can only rely on vivid and populist examples, hence, apparently, the constant, simply obsessive appeal to the topic of homosexuality.

Another example of the obvious underdevelopment of the Fundamentals is the very concept of “compulsion to think” used in the above quotation. Such coercion is not a phenomenon of law and human rights. Any person experiences certain pressures from society, the media, show business, and so on, and there is no doubt that believers in a secularized society face forms of environmental pressure that are specific to them. But there is simply no government compulsion to think this way or that way.

In principle, the problem of pressure on the consciousness of a minority can, of course, be conceptualized as a human rights one, but only on the basis of the inherently leftist concept of “collective rights”, a reference to which is available in the Fundamentals. However, there is no such attempt on the part of the ROC. The fact is that the “Fundamentals” do not follow any concept of human rights at all, since they were written by people who did not delve into these concepts and therefore build their understanding of human rights rather intuitively. In particular, they clearly confuse a person's right to a certain type of behavior with the moral approval or encouragement of these actions by society or the state, or at least with tolerance for such behavior. Unfortunately, the fact that the absence of a legislative prohibition of some kind of evil is not state support for this evil and is not a human right is repeatedly ignored in the Fundamentals. This is probably due to a deeply erroneous understanding of human rights not as a set of specific basic rights, but as a set of everything that is not prohibited by law. The simplest example of this logical error: the law does not prohibit cheating on a spouse, but there is no human right to adultery, and the state does not support such a practice in any way.

But there is a topic related to the pressure of secular society on religious minorities and, undoubtedly, is a human rights one - this is the topic of freedom of speech: the Church recognizes freedom of conscience, but worries that ideas about the “religious neutrality of the state and society” will not prevent her from “revealing errors ". (In this case, the ROC behaves like a typical minority, and not like the "Church of the majority", and this shows an adequate understanding of its place in society.) In principle, it is the religiously neutral state and society that will not interfere with anyone. whatever it was to expose. But ideal neutrality is unattainable in practice, and in the modern world more and more conflicts arise between moral denunciation and violation of ideas about tolerance.

Alas, just this interesting topic in the "Fundamentals" is only slightly affected. On the one hand, the need to denounce vices is emphasized, on the other hand, the requirement for tolerance is formulated, moreover, on the basis of the priority of group rather than individual values: “The right to self-expression of an individual or groups of people should not be exercised in forms that are offensive to the beliefs and lifestyle of others. members of the society. At the same time, one of the basic principles of the hostel must be observed - mutual respect for various worldview groups. It is difficult to say whether the equal protection of any “ideological groups” is seriously spoken of here, but it is noteworthy that the thesis itself is not clearly expressed: “should not” mean the approval of a moral behavioral norm or the proposal of a legislative ban? But for the topic of human rights, this is precisely what is fundamentally important: not everything is illegal, which is negatively assessed from a moral point of view.

It seems that a fundamental solution to the aforementioned collision of denunciation and tolerance is possible only with a clear distinction between behavior that is permitted (not persecuted by the state) and desirable, moral (according to the opinion of the majority in society). If the law did not prohibit people and associations from arbitrarily criticizing each other, but only up to a certain limit, not allowing calls for discrimination, and even more so for violence, then already within this framework, society could recommend limiting criticism to decent and non-offensive forms. The ROC in such a situation would probably choose respect for other “traditional religions” and vilification of, for example, gay culture, and someone could approve this choice, and someone could condemn it, but no one could forbid it.

In a number of other aspects, the text of the Fundamentals also gives the impression of being preliminary. For example, the paragraph about the value of love for the Fatherland does not fit into the context at all. It is not clear how the proposal for legislative protection of shrines (over and above the protection that is already in Russian law) can be implemented. Several years have passed since the publication of the document, and clarity has not been brought in, although Patriarch Kirill and especially Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin have spoken on these topics more than once.

It is not surprising that the Fundamentals never became the starting point for public discussion: if the church leadership itself is not ready, for one reason or another, to develop the proposed concept, no one will take it seriously enough. But at the same time, one can see that human rights discourse and partly (so far to a very small extent) human rights practice are penetrating inside the church fence. Apparently, in the modern world, this is simply inevitable. And this means that sooner or later the Church will have to take seriously the task of realizing and formulating its understanding of human rights.

Sources

• Verkhovsky A.M. Dark water in the clouds // October. 2012. No. 4. b/d.