Bruce Frier, University of Michigan
Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international law in this area has been based on the relationship between Human Dignity, taken to be an inherent and inalienable quality of all humans equally; and lengthy lists of the Human Rights that, in some sense, are described as deriving from or dependent upon this Dignity. As the preambles of two international covenants from 1968 express the idea, “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,” and “these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.” Despite every portion of this doctrine being still highly controversial, in practice it has proven reasonably stable and highly influential.
Ancient Roman thinking on such matters, usually expressed in terms of duties rather than rights, has nothing directly anticipating the modern doctrine. But four fairly well-known passages contain important elements of the doctrine: Cicero, De Officiis 1.105-109 and 3.27-31; and Tertullian, Apologeticum 24.5, and Ad Scapulam 2.2. Although these passages have frequently been discussed in modern treatments of the pre-history of human rights doctrine, they have almost never been linked and are often misunderstood.
Cicero in the first passage gives the Latin word dignitas a highly unusual meaning, to designate a trait inherent in all humans equally. Dignitas <hominis> is characterized by reason, the ability to ascertain one’s moral duty and thereby to lift oneself above brute animals. Although Cicero’s dignitas looks inward to an individual’s moral compass, this is the first mention of a human dignity that everyone possesses in equal measure, no matter their status. In the second passage, Cicero suggests that third parties may have a moral claim against third parties based upon their rights as humans; this is a counterpart to the duties discussed earlier. In both passages, Stoic influence is almost certain, but hard to document.
The polemicist Tertullian, when attacking Roman persecution of Christians, moves a step forward. In the Apologeticum, he makes a passing reference to “freedom of religion” (libertas religionis) – the earliest known instance of such an entitlement. The Ad Scapulam passage goes further, to argue for religious freedom as “a human right and a natural faculty” (humani iuris et naturalis potestatis) – again, the first indisputable attestation not only of a generalized human right as a concept, but also of its philosophical justification. Tertullian goes on to argue on this basis for a moral claim against the Roman oppressors – again, a moral claim right that is deemed crucial to the structure of modern Human Rights thinking.
These passages indicate that Roman thinkers, and especially Stoic thinkers, possessed a basis for constructing something like the modern doctrine of Human Rights. They had the components, but lacked the chemistry. Still, they were not without subsequent influence; it is worth noticing that Thomas Jefferson paraphrased the Tertullian passages when writing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.