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Reflections on “Universal Absolutes”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2015

Max L. Stackhouse
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Extract

On the grounds of an (essentially) Roman Catholic moral theology and political philosophy, Michael J. Perry states and argues for positions that vindicate the accent of recent popes on human rights as both a matter of faith and of reason—positions I believe to be largely valid and that could gain even stronger support from a Reformed Christian philosophical theology. This should not be surprising, for the Catholic tradition was the common tradition for centuries, it deeply stamped the legal structure of the West that gave rise to “rights talk,” and those strands which led to human rights in its modern form were implicitly in it, even if they were strengthened by the struggles of Protestants to establish a right to convert and, later, to advocate the freedom of religion on spiritual, intellectual, and organization grounds. Perry knows, as most Catholic and Protestants believe, that social morality is unavoidably linked to religion, that these matters can be discussed in public discourse, and that it is fateful for politics, law, social well-being and international relationships to do so. These matters are made clear not only in this book, but also in his earlier Love and Power: The Role of Religion and Morality in American Politics, The Constitution and the Courts: Law or Politics and Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives. In the present book, as in the other remarkable products of this decade, we find Perry engaged not only with contemporary political philosophy and jurisprudence, which are largely secular in outlook, but with a number of scholars who are concerned with what David Tracy has called “public theology,” a term which several Protestants as well as Catholics have adopted—although in somewhat different ways.

Type
Perry Symposium
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , 1999 , pp. 97 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1999

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References

1. Perry, Michael J., Love & Power: The Role of Religion and Morality in American Politics (Oxford U Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

2. Perry, Michael J., The Constitution in the Courts (Oxford U Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

3. Perry, Michael J., Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives (Oxford U Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

4. Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (Crossroad, 1981)Google Scholar; Benne, Robert, The Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-First Century (Fortress Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Browning, Don & Schüssler-Fiorenza, Francis, eds, Habermas, Modernity and Public Theology (U Of Chi, 1992)Google Scholar; Thieman, Ronald, Constructing a Public Theology (Westminster/John Knox, 1991)Google Scholar; Lovin, Robin, Christian Faith and Public Choices (Fortress, 1984)Google Scholar; Himes, Michael & Himes, Kenneth, Fullness of Faith: The Public Significance of Theology (Paulist Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Casanova, José, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chi U Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Stackhouse, Max L., Public Theology and Political Economy (Eerdmans Pub, 1986)Google Scholar.

5. Witte, John & der Vyver, Johan Van, eds, Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives (The Hague, 1996)Google Scholar.

6. This, of course, is a disputed claim. While his view of the continuity between natural law theory and natural rights theory is supported by Tierney, Brian, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law (Scholars Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Haakonssen, Knud, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy (Cambridge U Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haas, Gunther, The Idea of Equity in Calvin's Theology (SSRC, 1997)Google Scholar and many others, another stream of scholars who oppose deontological ethics see human rights as a repudiation of natural law. See, for example, Fortin, Ernest, Studies in Early Christian and Medieval Thought: Human Rights, Virtue and the Common Good (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996)Google Scholar. MacIntyre, Compare A., Whose Justice (U of Notre Dame, 1988)Google Scholar.

7. Perry, Michael J., The Idea of Human Rights 5 (Oxford U Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

8. Id at 43-56. I have attempted to make a similar case in several works. See, for example, Stackhouse, Max L., Creeds, Society and Human Rights (Eerdmans, 1986)Google Scholar; Stackhouse, Max L. & Healey, S.W. in Religious Human Rights In Global Perspective at 485–516 (cited in note 5)Google Scholar; Stackhouse, Max L., Public Theology and Ethical Judgment 54 Theo Today 165–79 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stackhouse, Max L., Human Rights and Public Theology: The Basic Validation of Human Rights, Religion and Human Rights: Competing Claims? 12–30 (Sharp, M.E., 1999)Google Scholar, with a response from Louis Henkin. That discussion is continued in The Intellectual Crisis of a Good Idea in J Rel Ethics, § 26.2 at 263–68 (Fall 1998)Google Scholar.

9. Lehmann, Paul, Ethics in a Christian Context 125 (Harper & Row, 1963)Google Scholar. He and some disciples do not seem to recognize that insofar as they use the term “human” as a central criteriological principle in discerning what God is doing (in the various context of life) that is “humanizing” and what other forces are doing that is “dehumanizing,” their view depends upon an abstract universal that is being applied as an absolute as to cases. In the process, they determine what is “right” and what “wrong,” what is “good” and what is “evil,” although they assiduously avoid such terms because they think these are normative and prescriptive in morally illegitimate ways rather than indicative and discerning descriptions, which they morally approve.

10. See, for example, Hsiung, J.C., ed, Human Rights in East Asia: A Cultural Perspective (Paragon House, 1985)Google Scholar and de Bary, Wm. T. & Weiming, Tu, eds, Confucianism and Human Rights (Columbia U Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Cerna, Compare Christina, Universality of Human Rights and Cultural Diversity: Implementation of Human Rights in Different Socio-Cultural Contexts 16 Human Rights Qtly 740–52 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, Xiarong, Asian Values' and the Universality of Human Rights, Philosophy and Public Policy 18–23 (Spring 1996)Google Scholar; and Stackhouse, Max L., The Future of Human Rights: Multiculturalism in Vienna Christian Century 660–62 (1993)Google Scholar.

11. In this connection, it is important to note that those who defend a theological basis for human rights often distinguish between kinds of “in-group/out-group” ways of thinking, and thus have two boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. Theistic (and panentheistic) religions usually have an inclusive recognition of “all humans” to whom human rights apply, and an exclusive recognition of “those who belong to our religious community due to shared convictions and practices about that reality,” to whom rights of membership apply. Some rights apply to “all” and others to “us.” Those who acknowledge the moral and spiritual rights of all, but reserve other particular rights, duties and loyalties to an “us,” would differ from a definition that considered the “us” to be the only “all,” denying rights, even the term “humanity,” to any outside the “us.” The best defense for human rights, I think, is provided by those theological traditions that see themselves under a theistic reality that governs the universal “all,” since nothing else is fully inclusive, and defends the rights of multiple particular groups of “us”-religious, political, ideological, educational, etc.-to organize and set forth their specific views of truth and right practice in public. See Stackhouse, Max L. & Hainsworth, Deidre, Deciding for God: The Right to Convert in Protestant Perspectives in Witte, John Jr., ed, Sharing the Book: Religious Perspectives on the Rights and Wrongs of Proselytism (Orbis Books, 1999)Google Scholar.

12. It is one of the oddities of our time that Amnesty International, one of the great human rights advocacy organizations, invited a large number of scholars who hold such views to speak of human rights, and they did so in ways that in fact undercut the possibility of holding to them. See Shute, Stephen & Hurley, Susan, eds, On Human Rights (BasicBooks, 1993)Google Scholar. Compare Max L. Stackhouse & S.W. Healey, Religion and Human Rights: A Theological Apologetic (cited in note 8).

13. The concept of “globalization” and all that it may entail is hotly debated, especially in relation to post-modemity. Perhaps the best half-dozen resources are Robertson, Roland, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Sage, 1992)Google Scholar; Witte, John, ed, Christianity and Democracy in Global Context (Westview Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Beyer, Peter, Religion and Globalization (Sage, 1994)Google Scholar; Featherstone, Mike, Lash, Scott, & Robertson, Roland, eds, Global Modernities (Sage, 1995)Google Scholar; Küng, Hans, A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics (Oxford U Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Marpel, David & Nardin, Terry, eds, International Society (Princeton U Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

14. Perry, , The Idea of Human Rights at 65 (cited in note 7)Google Scholar.

15. See id at 89ff.

16. Id at 93.

17. Id at 106. Much of this chapter has to do with a critique of the moral absolutism of John Finnis, the noted natural law advocate. Finnis, Compare John, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision and Truth 12, 20 (Catholic U of America Press, 1991)Google Scholar. At the end of Perry's last sentence, one finds a very interesting and complex footnote with references to Kent Greenawalt's influence, especially in regard to his Natural Law and Political Choice: The General Justification Defense: Criteria for Political Action, and the Duty to Obey the Law 36 in Catholic U L Rev (1986)Google Scholar. Compare also Greenawalt, Ken, Private Consciences and Public Reasons (Oxford U Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. He also refers to Porter's, JeanDirect and Indirect in Grisez's Moral Theory 57 Theo Studies 611, 627–31 (1996)Google Scholar.

18. I do not take up the debate between Perry and his adversary, Finnis, in this chapter except to say that from the standpoint of a Protestant, it appears to be a debate between the more modest semi-Pelagian view of Perry and the more Pelagian perspective of Finnis. The latter seems to believe that we can both know and attain the good in both personal morality and civil order by the exercise of our rational will as directed to its natural ends. I mention this also to indicate that certain classical theological debates and findings often provide accurate access to critical ethical and social debates otherwise remaining obscure.

19. See, as a 20th century restatement of a very long tradition from St. Paul through the reformers, the Puritans (such as Jonathan Edwards) to some contemporary theological ethicists, Niebuhr, Reinhold, 1 Nature and Destiny (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941), especially ch 10Google Scholar, where he treats the residual effects of justitia originalis (a quite different way of understanding what others call “natural law,” which allows (among other things) believers and non-believers to recognize that the policies and ideology of the Nazis are wrong, whether people are Christians or not, or part of the western cultural traditions or not, even if they disagree about human ends. On this basis, even fascist believers would have some awareness of moral self-deception and have no excuse. Compare The Colloquium, Paul Ramsey, On Human Rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Fifty Years Later, 82 First Things 18–22 (1998)Google Scholar. These views represent Augustinian, or better, semi-Augustinian perspectives.

20. In fact, in most theological views, it is not even clear that all persons will be “saved” beyond history. Insofar as they may converge in some ultimate salvation beyond history and society, the matter is outside of the range of either personal or social morality. It is best treated by the poetic imagination of John, Dante, or Milton.

21. See Stackhouse & Hainsworth, Deciding for God (cited in note 11).

22. It is this insight which many of the “liberal” philosophical heirs of Locke and Kant actually have developed in modernity, even if they, as Perry and many postmodernist thinkers show, cannot give self-sustaining grounds for what they—for example, Habermas, Rawls, Nussbaum, etc.—argue. But that does not mean that they are entirely wrong about rights, but only that they are limited with regard to the compelling quality of the arguments they give as to why humanity should hold to them because, as I mentioned, of their irrational, anti-theological bias.