Respect for the equality and equal rights of all people and nations: Confronting despotism, wars, and abuses of power

From 30 August to 1 September 2024, 150 participants and 22 speakers from Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the U.S. met for this year’s September Talks of “Mut zur Ethik” in Thurgau, Switzerland.

This year, as in the previous 31 years, guests from various European countries and numerous speakers from around the world gathered for three days to learn about the pressing issues of our time, to discuss them with each other, and to explore possible solutions. As usual, the discussions were held in a hybrid format, so that speakers and participants from various countries could join remotely in addition to those present.
  This year’s topic was: “Respect for the equality and equal rights of all people and nations: Confronting despotism, wars, and abuses of power”.
  Some might say that this year’s topic is self-evident. Who today still openly speaks out in favour of the abuse of power, or despotism, or war and against the equal rights and equal value of all people and states?
  Indeed, equal rights and equivalence are enshrined in international and human rights law.
  This is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from 1948:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

And the Charter of the United Nations, which dates to 1945, alludes in its preamble to

equal rights of men and women and of nations, large and small,

And, in Article 1, of the aim of the United Nations,

to develop friendly relations between nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.

In Article 2, the Charter describes the United Nations thus:

The organisation is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.

But even the United Nations Charter broke with its own principles by granting the victorious powers of the war special rights, in particular the right of veto in the U.N. Security Council. And a look at our reality since 1945 shows that we are still a long way from actually recognising the equal rights and equality of all people and nations.

The fallacy of ‘Manifest Destiny’

We know the mass-murdering race and class ideologues from the 20^th century. To this day, there is the idea of a “Manifest Destiny”, which virtually demands that the whole world be shaped according to the ideas of the nation possessed of such destiny. Josep Borrell’s distinction between “the garden and the jungle” is also well-known. Or there is the idea of being “God’s chosen people”, which in practical politics means that one’s neighbours are treated worse than animals.
  The fact is: Continuous wars are keeping the world on tenterhooks. Social justice is no longer considered an issue. Breaches of the law by state institutions are on the increase. Inflammatory propaganda is poisoning the social climate. The treatment of opinions that differ from the mainstream media is becoming more authoritarian, and the tone is becoming harsher. Human dignity is being trampled underfoot. We are witnessing the erosion of the foundations of humanity. The French anthropologist and historian Emmanuel Todd speaks of an “anthropological rupture”.
  The majority of non-Western countries are no longer fooled by Western propaganda formulas such as “democracies versus autocracies” and no longer submit to Western hegemonic claims. These nations are going their own, self-determined way – on the basis of international law and the U.N. Charter. The new, multipolar world order continues to take shape. The demand is for a world based on respect for equality and the equal rights of all people, nations and states.

Human sciences constants

What is the conditio humana, the human condition, today? What is it as regards to the recognition and respect of human dignity, the bonum commune, the common good, the protection of the inalienable rights of all human beings, and the moral responsibility of each and every one of us?
  Decency, honesty, and respect must be demanded again; this requires an inner attitude on the part of the individual, which also means becoming aware again of the human sciences constants that humanity has developed in all areas of human and social coexistence. That means living humanely, for the sake of humanity, with the aim of advancing humanity and bringing the human cause to fruition.
  But this also means demanding that states and governments throughout the world respect and uphold human rights and international law. From the point of view of personalist psychology, what does this require with regard to the self-actualizing person? It needs people who have an emotionally anchored basis in their view of humanity, on the basis of which they can co-operate with other people in freedom and equality.

Fundamental principle
of psychology and pedagogy

Ten years ago – far too early – the widely respected historian and psychologist Dr Annemarie Buchholz-Kaiser, who founded “Mut zur Ethik” 31 years ago, passed away. From her estate comes an unpublished manuscript entitled “Strengthening human beings”, which she wrote in 2000. It is a consideration together of direct democracy, fundamental psychological findings, and the concept of a value-oriented citizens’ movement.
  I would like to quote from the chapter “The concept of man in personalist psychology”, in which Dr Buchholz-Kaiser describes, among other things, human dignity as a fundamental principle of psychology and education. It gives an idea of what equality means as an essential component of an “inner attitude”, as I called it above, and how it can be developed:

Human Dignity, in order for it to be more than a simple postulate, must involve an emotional quality that can be experienced and reinforced only within a social context. It is founded on a mutual give-and-take. Families, schools, as well as society can create conditions in which human dignity is not only respected but also lived. It is no coincidence that, in 1948 – after the disaster of World War II – this postulate was taken up as the first point in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Dr Buchholz-Kaiser then quotes Article 1 of the UDHR, as I have above. And she continues:

Psychology and pedagogy, families and schools can lay the foundations in education and upbringing. They can provide the opportunity for adults to become living examples of this principle. Human dignity does not come about of its own accord, it does not fall from heaven and it is not an entity beyond the human mind and human control. On the contrary, human dignity must be laid within human coexistence, it is here where it is fostered, strengthened, continuously reinvigorated and passed on: it must be lived. In order for it to be protected as an ‘essential’ of human existence, it must, however, be firmly entrenched in the constitution of countries and in international conventions.

Struggle for a multipolar world

For the coexistence of states and peoples, we are witnessing a continuing, difficult, and unfortunately sacrificial struggle for a multipolar world based on international law, as expressed in the principles of the United Nations Charter, which I have also cited above.
  The idea and the struggle to recognise and respect the equal rights and equality of all people and states is also part of European cultural history as well as of other cultures. While ancient philosophy only recognised equal rights and equality to a limited extent – Cicero is particularly noteworthy here – the Christian churches laid a foundation with the doctrine of the “imago deity”, or image of God, of all people. The Renaissance, humanism, the Enlightenment, and, in our time, the personalist human sciences have built on this foundation with rational reason.
  Even in our time it is impressive to see how courageous Christians managed to wrest concessions to human dignity from the inhuman European colonialism of the early modern era. Joseph Höffner (1906–1987), a German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, has documented this in his book, first published in 1947 under the title “Christianity and Human Dignity” and then republished in 1972, now entitled “Colonialism and the Gospel. Spanish Colonial Ethics in the Golden Age”. In his final chapter, Cardinal Höffner formulated sentences that are still very much worth considering today. He writes,

Western culture and civilization cannot be set up as the norm for all mankind. […] The unique value and right to existence of all cultural areas is to be recognised as a matter of principle. It would be foolish to refuse to realize that Europe has lost its leading position and prestige in the world. The focal points of world affairs have shifted to other continents. All these developments and changes show that, for the modern world, which has become a unity and is conscious of this unity, the law of the reciprocal fertilisation of different cultural areas must hold if worldwide catastrophes are not to come about.

Recognising and respecting human dignity, which underlies the equal rights and equality of all people and nations, is a recurring topic in the work and conferences of “Mut zur Ethik”. In 1997, we dedicated an entire conference to the topic of human dignity and adopted principles that have lost none of their significance.
  This is stated in the preamble to these theses:

Recognising the dignity of the human person in all areas of social life is the most valuable moral and legal achievement of our civilisation. It is the basis of the constitutions of modern democracies and the international covenants of the community of nations It is a historical fact that, to the extent that it has occurred, recognising human dignity has led our societies out of endless religious and civil wars, state despotism, social injustice and totalitarian oppression.
  Returning to human dignity and human rights, their objective justification from the essence of man and his nature, their protection and further realisation are therefore among the most pressing problems of our time.

In this edition, we are publishing a first selection of conference contributions. Further contributions will be published in subsequent editions of Current Concerns.  •