Rights as Religious or Secular: Why Not Both?
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...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1999
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| In: |
Journal of law and religion
Year: 1999, Volume: 14, Issue: 1, Pages: 41-52 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | 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. |
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| ISSN: | 2163-3088 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of law and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1051776 |