In his attempt to defend the Declaration of Human Rights against criticism from both the second and the third world, the Belgian philosopher Guy Haarscher admits in his book Philosophie des Droits de l’homme (Brussels, 1987) that this would be easier if modern men could still believe in God. Why? Because God is the embodiment of what is common to all people. He represents the universal truth of human values on which human rights are based.

Ever since Durkheim we have been strongly aware of the fact that there is a close relationship between society and faith in God. But Guy Haarscher states that God is dead. We cannot go back to a faith in God, he says, for it would entail accepting a hierarchically structured cosmos and thus a hierarchical society. Society before the French Revolution was such a society, one in which all individuals had their place, their definable rights and obligations. It was a society in which the value system was clear and persons enjoyed quite a lot of security, but in which they were not allowed to leave their places lest they endanger the society’s unity. In the third century Plotinus had argued for the inner goodness of such a social order, and his impact on Christian theology can hardly be overestimated; many Vatican declarations cannot be understood fully without some knowledge of Plotinus’ philosophy.

For modern human beings this hierarchical society is repressive. The French Revolution marked the death of of hierarchical society and the dawn of an age in which (in theory) all individuals were allowed to find the places in society which suited them most.