The Idea of Human Rights : Four Inquiries

Michael J. Perry

ISBN 10: 0195116364 / ISBN 13: 9780195116366

Editore: Oxford University Press, 1998

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nach der Bestellung gedruckt Neuware - Printed after ordering - Inspired by a 1988 trip to El Salvador, Michael J. Perry's new book is a personal and scholarly exploration of the idea of human rights. Perry is one of our nation's leading authorities on the relation of morality, including religious morality, to politics and law. He seeks, in this book, todisentangle the complex idea of human rights by way of four probing and interrelated essays. \* The initial essay, which is animated by Perry's skepticism about the capacity of any secular morality to offer a coherent account of the idea of human rights, suggests that the first part of the idea of human rights--the premise that every human being is 'sacred' or 'inviolable'--is inescapablyreligious. \* Responding to recent criticism of 'rights talk,' Perry explicates, in his second essay, the meaning and value of talk about human rights. \* In his third essay, Perry asks a fundamental question about human rights: Are they universal In addressing this question, he disaggregates and criticizes several different varieties of 'moral relativism' and then considers the implications of these different relativist positions for claims abouthuman rights. \* Perry turns to another fundamental question about human rights in his final essay: Are they absolute He concludes that even if no human rights, understood as moral rights, are absolute or unconditional, some human rights, understood as international legal rights, are--and indeed, shouldbe--absolute. In the introduction, Perry writes: 'Of all the influential--indeed, formative--moral ideas to take center stage in the twentieth century, like democracy and socialism, the idea of human rights (which, again, in one form oranother, is an old idea) is, for many, the most difficult. It is the mostdifficult in the sense that it is, for many, the hardest of the great moral ideas to integrate, the hardest to square, with the reigning intellectual assumptions of the age, especially what Bernard Willi.

Codice articolo 9780195116366

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Idea of Human Rights : Four Inquiries
• Editore: Oxford University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1998
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0195116364
• ISBN 13: 9780195116366
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 235 L x 157 A x 14 P (millimetri) 235 millimetri di larghezza per 157 millimetri di altezza per 14 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 409 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Of all the influential--indeed, formative--moral ideas to occupy centre stage in the twentieth century, the notion of human rights is for many the most difficult. Inspired by a 1988 trip to El Salvador, Michael Perry's new book explores this idea in full. His typically lucid exposition of this complex issue (one so rich in social, political, and philosophical implications, especially at the international level) is rooted in the recognition that every human being is sacred, "inviolable," has "inherent dignity" and worth, and is an end to himself. Therefore, in Perry's view, the concept of human rights is inescapably religious.

But are human rights universal? And are they absolute? The latest thinking from one of our nation's leading authorities on morality, politics, and religion, The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries addresses these questions adroitly. The legal and moral dimensions of "rights" rhetoric itself--such as its meanings and functions--are also carefully considered.

Recensione

Perry refers to a wide range of contempory writing by leading human rights lawyers, Anglo-American philosophers and theolgians. Writing with integrity and in a careful but informal style, he highlights the major contemporary debates on "the difficult idea of human rights". The Cambridge Law Journal 01/04/1999