(United Nations, 1948) states this idea in its Article 6:‘Everyone has
the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.’This
article forbids treating people as mere property; it also forbids the
establishment of prisons and other punitive means that lie outside all
legal territories. The article grants the right to have property and
make binding contracts as a legal person.^245 In a sense, the right to
legal recognition is a meta-right that establishes other rights since,
when a legal person is established, this person can marry, have private
property, practise a religion, and exercise freedom of thought and
conscience.
The United Nations Declaration does not yet proceed towards the
‘politics of difference’outlined by Charles Taylor and other contem-
porary theorists (cf. section 1.2). The‘right to recognition’does not
state that minorities enjoy special positive treatment. Only when a
member of a minority loses something of his overall status as legal
person are his or her human rights violated. In this sense, the
Declaration promotes a politics of universalism. Such an idea
of non-discrimination is usual in Western democratic societies.^246
As we saw in section 1.2, stronger positive forms of a politics of
difference are currently being proposed.
Although the right to recognition as a person before the law is in
some ways self-evident in modern Western democracy, it can be
understood as creating a bridge between the philosophical-theoretical
and legal-pragmatic frameworks of recognition. Fichte and Hegel
wish to define an individual who is both autonomous and a respon-
sible member of society. This kind of person is assumed and affirmed
in the contemporary legal-pragmatic concept of human rights. The
limits of such personhood are not, however, self-evident; for instance,
the digital extensions of a person^247 and the exact temporal beginning
and end of individual personhood constitute complex test cases.
For the purposes of the present study, this concise outline is
relevant for two reasons. First, churches and individual theologians
have assumed this concept of human rights especially since 1948.
Second, the ecumenical discussion shifts the emphasis from the
recognition of persons to the recognition of institutions and
(^245) Bogdan & Kofod Olsen 1999.
(^246) Here: Kymlicka 1995a, 9. For contemporary legal discussion, see also Kymlicka
1995b and Kymlicka et al. 2014.
(^247) See Solove 2004.
166 Recognition and Religion