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Rights as Religious or Secular: Why Not Both?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2015

Lisa Sowle Cahill
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Extract

Michael Perry has written a nuanced, insightful, provocative, often sensible, frequently convincing, and ultimately perplexing book. I am not sure what his thesis is. Since he titles the book as a series of “inquiries,” perhaps he doesn't have a unified thesis, or need one. And as an extended set of ponderings over the complexities of defining and defending human rights, this book certainly “works.”

The book's apparent thesis is set out in the introduction and repeated frequently thereafter: that it is not possible to understand talk about human rights, such as that contained in the International Bill of Human Rights, in secular terms. Instead, “the idea of human rights is … ineliminably religious.” This is so because the idea of human rights requires affirming that each person is “sacred” in relation to a holistic view of the world and its meaning, so that there are certain things that should not be done to and that should be done for any person. The only sort of view of the world and of the person within it that can ground the idea of human rights is a religious view, Perry suggests; there is no secular equivalent.

Type
Perry Symposium
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , 1999 , pp. 41 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1999

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References

1. Perry, Michael J., The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries 13 (compare 25, 35) (Oxford U Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

2. Id at 13.

3. Perry, , The Idea of Human Rights at 29 (cited in note 1)Google Scholar.

4. Perry, Michael J., Liberal Democracy and Religious Morality 48 DePaul L Rev 22 (1998)Google Scholar.

5. Perry, , The Idea of Human Rights at 106 (cited in note 1)Google Scholar.

6. Id at 35.

7. Id at 63.

8. Id at 64.

9. See id at 86.

10. See id at 88, 95.

11. See id at 59.

12. The possibility of defending rights in a variety of traditions has substantial theological and historical support (see note 22 and accompanying text).

13. Perry, , The Idea of Human Rights at 13 (cited in note 1)Google Scholar.

14. See id at 20.

15. See Nussbaum, Martha C., Human Functioning and Social Justice: In Defense of Aristotelian Essentialism 20 Pol Theory 216–21 (1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Ricoeur, Paul, Oneself as Another 180 (U Chi Press, Blamey, Kathleen, trans, 1992)Google Scholar.

17. On the role of emotion in moral knowledge and response, especially compassion, see Nussbaum, Martha, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton U Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Cates, Diana Fritz, Choosing to Feel: Virtue, Friendship, and Compassion for Friends (U Notre Dame Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Cates, Diana Fritz, Ethics, Literature, and the Emotional Dimension of Moral Understanding: A Review Essay 26 J Rel Ethics 409–31 (1998)Google Scholar.

18. See Cady, Linell E., Religion, Theology, and American Public Life (SUNY Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

19. According to Max L. Stackhouse, the chief and perhaps only contribution of recent sharp criticisms of Enlightenment “foundationalism” is that “it discloses the degree to which the Enlightenment failed to acknowledge how deeply theological its assumptions were …” Stackhouse also faults the Enlightenment for failing “to recognize that such theological assumptions were indispensable to the further development of the reason, progress, and respect for dignity that the Enlightenment rationalists advocated.” Stackhouse, Max L., The Intellectual Crisis of a Good Idea 26 J Rel Ethics 267 (1998)Google Scholar. However, Stackhouse does not seem to concur in Perry's suggestion that religion supplies to the idea of rights some indispensable grounding element not present in “secular” discourse, but rather be seen to view religion, as I have done, as part of a comprehensive cultural milieu, from which the “secular” cannot be easily extricated. In the same issue of the JRE, John Langan, S.J., offers no fewer than twelve models of the complementary relation between theological and human rights discourse. John Langan, S.J., Contrasting and Uniting Theology and Human Rights 26 J Rel Ethics 249–55 (1998)Google Scholar.

20. See Hollenbach, David S.J., The Common Good and Christian Ethics (Cambridge U Press, ms in progress)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hollenbach argues that historical experiences of violence and persecution have led to the near absolutization of an ethic of “toleration” in the US. However, mere toleration is not adequate to provide the sense of social solidarity necessary to pursue the common good, and especially to fund critical debate about the content of a good common life.

21. See Mojekwu, Chris C., International Human Rights: The African Perspective in Nelson, Jack L. & Green, Vera M., eds, International Human Rights: Contemporary Issues 85–95 (Human Rights Pub Group, 1980)Google Scholar; Ilesanmi, Simeon O., Human Rights Discourse in Modern Africa: A Comparative Religious Ethical Perspective 23 J Rel Ethics 293–322 (1995)Google Scholar; and Hollenbach, David S.J., Solidarity, Development, and Human Rights: The African Challenge 26 J Rel Ethics 305–17 (1998)Google Scholar.

22. See Twiss, Sumner B., Comparative Ethics and Intercultural Human-Rights Dialogues: A Programmatic Inquiry in Cahill, Lisa Sowie & Childress, James F., eds, Christian Ethics: Problems and Prospects 357–78 (Pilgrim Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Twiss, Sumner B., Moral Grounds and Plural Cultures: Interpreting Human Rights in the International Community 26 J Rel Ethics 271–82 (1998)Google Scholar; and Johnson, James Turner, Human Rights and Violence in Contemporary Context 26 J Rel Ethics 319, 328 (1998)Google Scholar.

23. Mayor, Federico, Human Rights: Looking to the Future 24 Future Generations J 4 (1998)Google Scholar. This journal is edited by Emmanuel Agius and published by the Foundation for Int'l Studies, U Malta, St. Paul's Street, Valletta VLT 07 Malta.

24. See Slaughter, Anne-Marie, The Real New World Order 76 Foreign Affairs 183–97 (1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Gudorf, Christine, Life Without Anchors: Sex, Exchange, and Human Rights in a Postmodern World 26 J Rel Ethics 300 (1998)Google Scholar.