Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Calo on Catholicism, Liberalism and Human Rights

Zachary Calo (Valparaiso) has posted Catholicism, Liberalism and Human Rights, on SSRN.  The abstract follows. — MLM

Human rights is the dominant moral category of modernity. As both a theoretical concept and the basis of legal norms, human rights shapes the way we think and talk about personhood, social justice, and political obligation. Yet, it is also the case that there is no one account of human rights, but rather competing traditions of human rights that strive for primacy. Human rights, in short, is a deeply contested category through which different moral visions aim to shape institutions and policies. In spite of the label, human rights claims are not universal, either methodologically or substantively. Rather, under the umbrella of human rights is located a constant struggle between the universal and the particular. How this tension unfolds, and whether it does so in a constructive or disruptive manner, is one of the foundational questions that must be engaged in coming years.

In the past, the tension between universality and particularity was considered most commonly in the context of cultural relativism, with particular attention given to the ways in which human rights was a western construct that could not adequately account for different forms of communal values. This issue remains important, though this paper advances the claim that the most significant point of tension is not between human rights values and non-human rights values, but rather a tension within the idea human rights. More specifically, the primary fault line concerns the role of religion and religious traditions as they relate to human Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Coughlin’s “Canon Law”

Readers interested in an introduction to Roman Catholic canon law should find Canon Law: A Comparative Study With Anglo-American Legal Theory (OUP 2011), by Rev. John J. Coughlin, O.F.M. (Notre Dame law school) a very useful book.  Fr. Coughlin sets up a comparison of three approaches to canon law: antinomianism, legalism, and one based in the rule of law, and he defends the last of these against the other two.  One of the worthwhile things about Fr. Coughlin’s methodology is that, as the title indicates, the book offers a comparative perspective with 19th and 20th century philosophy of law (represented in the tradition beginning with John Austin and proceeding through to Hart, Raz, Finnis, and also Rawls). 

Particularly interesting in this respect is Chapter Four, in which Fr. Coughlin compares theories of property ownership in canon law and liberal philosophy.  After an illuminating discussion tracing the historical views in each tradition, he says: Read more

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Geroulanos’s “An Atheism That Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought”

A “humanist” or even “secular humanist” view is sometimes, perhaps even often, contrasted with a “religious” perspective.  But in An Atheism That Is Not Humanist Emerges in French Thought (Stanford UP 2010), Stefanos Geroulanos (NYU, History) investigates the thought of early to mid-twentieth century French intellectuals and teases out the development of an atheism which was distinctively non- or even anti-humanist.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

French philosophy changed dramatically in the second quarter of the twentieth century. In the wake of World War I and, later, the Nazi and Soviet disasters, major philosophers such as Kojève, Levinas, Heidegger, Koyré, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Hyppolite argued that man could no longer fill the void left by the “death of God” without also calling up the worst in human history and denigrating the dignity of the human subject. In response, they contributed to a new belief that man should no longer be viewed as the basis for existence, thought, and ethics; rather, human nature became dependent on other concepts and structures, including Being, language, thought, and culture. This argument, which was to be paramount for existentialism and structuralism, came to dominate postwar thought. This intellectual history of these developments argues that at their heart lay a new atheism that rejected humanism as insufficient and ultimately violent.

 

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Berman on Equality in Biblical Thought

Scholars debate the extent to which contemporary ideas about legal equality derive from religious, as opposed to Enlightenment, thought.  In a new book, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (OUP 2011), Joshua Berman (Bar-Ilan University) argues that Bible, specifically the Pentateuch, provides the earliest theory on record for an egalitarian society. Along the way, Berman compares Biblical constitutionalism with Montesquieu’s version.  A description follows.  — MLM

In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought. He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. What emerges is the blueprint for a society that would stand in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East — Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire – in which the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that an egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion in the Pentateuch and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate ancient developments. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of those espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.
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Atkinson on The Future of Philanthropy: Questioning Today’s Orthodoxies, Re-affirming Yesterday’s Foundations

Rob Atkinson Jr. (Florida State University College of Law) has posted The Future of Philanthropy: Questioning Today’s Orthodoxies, Re-Affirming Yesterday’s Foundations. The abstract follows. – ARH

Philanthropy today has reached an impasse, in both theory and practice. This article maps a way beyond that impasse by taking us back to philanthropy’s core function and traditional values. The standard academic model sees philanthropy as subordinate and supplemental to our society’s other public sectors, the market and the state, and uses their metrics to measure its performance. Current law, best reflected in the federal income tax code, closely parallels that perspective. This article proposes to reverse the dominant theoretical perspective and reveal a radically different relationship among society’s three public sectors, the market, the state, and the philanthropic. Following both classical western philosophy and the West’s three Abrahamist faiths, this perspective places philanthropy first and measures everything, including our current economic and political systems, by a neo-classical philanthropic standard: the highest good of all humankind.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Alzate on Religion and Self-Interest in Locke

A tension exists at the heart of liberal political theory: a society that encourages individual rights is not so good at motivating citizens to make necessary sacrifices for the community as a whole. In a recent article, Beyond Rights: Religion Offsets Self-Interest in the Lockean State, Elissa Alzate (College of Wooster/UC-Davis) examines the thought of John Locke and argues that, for him, religion provides the solution: religious groups foster the social bonds that make cohesion possible in the liberal state. An abstract follows.  — MLM

 Liberal political thought embodies a tension between the citizen and the community. The liberal state is based on principles of individual rights and appeals to self-interest. Conversely, the political society created out of the liberal social contract must transcend the self-interest guiding independent individuals; the contract creates something greater than the aggregate individuals – a community, whose interest is greater than the interest of Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Polkinghorne, “Science and Religion in Quest of Truth”

In America, one of the recurring controversies over the place of religion in public life has to do with the teaching of evolution in public schools. The extremes are defined by those people who reject any explanation for life other than a materialistic, “scientific” one and those who reject any explanation other than a literal interpretation of Genesis. But those are not the only possible positions. One could accept evolution as a  fact demonstrated by the fossil evidence, but still believe in a divine Creator who, somehow, in ways humans do not understand, guides the process. This position would not be “unscientific,” because science, understood as empirically-verifiable knowledge, does not deal in metaphysics.

Sir John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest, and winner of the 2002 Templeton Prize, addresses evolution and other issues in his new book, Science and Religion in Quest of Truth (Yale University Press 2011). A description follows.  — MLM

 John Polkinghorne, an international figure known both for his contributions to the field of theoretical elementary particle physics and for his work as a theologian, has over the years filled a bookshelf with writings devoted to specific topics in science and religion. In this new book, he undertakes for the first time a survey of all the major issues at the intersection of science and religion, concentrating on what he considers the essential insights for each. Clearly and without assuming prior knowledge, he addresses causality, cosmology, evolution, consciousness, natural theology, divine providence, revelation, and scripture. Each chapter also provides references to his other books in which more detailed treatments of specific issues can be found.

For those who are new to what Polkinghorne calls “one of the most significant interdisciplinary interactions of our time,” this volume serves as an excellent introduction. For readers already familiar with John Polkinghorne’s books, this latest is a welcome reminder of the breadth of his thought and the subtlety of his approach in the quest for truthful understanding.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Classic Revisited: Greenawalt’s “Private Consciences and Public Reasons”

Today’s Classic Revisited is Kent Greenawalt’s Private Consciences and Public Reasons (OUP 1995), a study of the circumstances in which it is appropriate for citizens, legislators, and judges to employ religious reasons to make judgments about political matters.  My old teacher, known for the carefulness of his analysis and for his fine and thoughtful distinctions between various issues, laces this discussion with lively thought experiments about the sort of political society we would want to live in if given the choice among a number of church-state arrangements.  And as is also common with Kent, sprinkled into the text every so often are personal stories or reflections that have shaped his thinking on these matters.  Finally, and in keeping with the book’s emphasis on the “accessibility” of reasons, Kent writes in a straightforward and easily accessible style.  You could not do better for an introduction to his intermediate, nuanced, middle-road, and deeply sophisticated views on these important questions.  The publisher’s description follows.  — MOD

Within democratic societies, a deep division exists over the nature of community and the grounds for political life. Should the political order be neutral between competing conceptions of the good life or should it be based on some such conception? This book addresses one crucial set of problems raised by this division: What bases should officials and citizens employ in reaching political decisions and justifying their positions? Should they feel free to rely on whatever grounds seem otherwise persuasive to them, like religious convictions, or should they restrict themselves to “public reasons,” reasons that are shared within the society or arise from the premises of liberal democracy? Kent Greenawalt argues that fundamental premises of liberal democracy alone do not provides answers to these questions, that much depends on historical and cultural contexts. After examining past and current practices and attitudes in the United States, he offers concrete suggestions for appropriate principles relevant to American society today. This incisive and timely analysis by one of our leading legal philosophers should attract a wide and diverse readership of scholars, practitioners, and concerned citizens.
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Stanley Fish on the Distinction Between Religion and Philosophy

Stanley Fish, professor of law and humanities at Florida International University in Miami, and contributor to NYT.com, has posted a follow-up piece to his article, Does Philosophy Matter?.  In it, Fish argues that philosophical and religious belief are fundamentally distinguishable.  Both, he reflects, may be momentous—say, killing is always wrong.  But one may arrive at philosophical belief from many sources—one’s mother, a good book.  And though one may state philosophical belief in absolute terms, it is subject to the challenges and standards of philosophical reasoning.

On the other hand, he says, religious belief arises from commands—moral imperatives not subject to an umbrella system of reasoning or logic.  And, unlike a philosophical belief, which can be a passing intellectual exercise, one observes religious belief always: at temple, home, and work.  (Fish contextualizes this dichotomy in part by reference to Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997)—the Due Process challenge to Washington State’s prohibition of assisted suicide—and the so-called Philosopher’s Brief, the amicus curiae by Ronald Dworkin and five other moral and political philosophers opposed to the law.)

Is religious belief so absolute or unquestioning as Fish claims?   Read more