NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF'S JUSTICE: RIGHTS AND WRONGS: AN INTRODUCTION

This introduction sets the stage for four papers on Nicholas Wolterstorff's Justice: Rights and Wrongs , written by Harold Attridge, Oliver O'Donovan, Richard Bernstein, and myself. In his book, Wolterstorff defends an account of human rights. The first section of this introduction distinguishes Wolterstorff's account of rights from the alternative account of rights against which he contends. The alternative account draws much of its power from a historical narrative according to which theory and politics supplanted earlier ways of thinking about justice. The second section sketches that narrative and Wolterstorff's counter-narrative. The third section draws together the main points of Wolterstorff's own account.     

Should Inherent Human Dignity Be Considered Intrinsically Heuristic?

What are “human rights” supposed to protect? According to most human rights doctrines, including most notably the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), human rights aim to protect “human dignity.” But what this concept amounts to and what its source is remain unclear. According to Glenn Hughes (2011), human rights theorists ought to consider human dignity as an “intrinsically heuristic concept,” whose content is partially understood but is not fully determined. In this comment, I criticize Hughes's account. On my view, understanding inherent human dignity as an intrinsically heuristic concept tethers it to an “indeterminateness of sense,” which leaves it open to exploitation from theorists unsympathetic to the moral salience of rights and what rights are supposed to protect.     

Letters, Notes, and Comments

Letter: Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's Religions
Commenting on "Leaping into the Boundless: A Daoist Reading of Comparative Religious Ethics" by Francisca Cho, "Moral Reason, Risk, and Comparative Inquiry" by Robin W. Lovin, "Heuristic Power as the Test of Theory" by Ronald M. Green, and "The Author Replies" by Francisca Cho     

THE LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS AND CONCEPTUAL HISTORY

The historical problem about the origins of the language of rights derives its importance from the conceptual problem: of “two fundamentally different ways of thinking about justice,” which is basic? Is justice unitary or plural? This in turn opens up a problem about the moral status of human nature. A narrative of the origins of “rights” is an account of how and when a plural concept of justice comes to the fore, and will be based on the occurrence of definite speech‐forms—the occurrence of the plural noun in the sense of “legal properties.” The history of this development is currently held to begin with the twelfth‐century canonists. Later significant thresholds may be found in the fourteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth centuries. Wolterstorff's attempt to find the implicit recognition of rights in the Scriptures depends very heavily on what he takes to be implied rather than on what is stated, and at best can establish a pre‐history of rights‐language.     

Response to Ranganathan

This essay responds to Bharat Ranganathan's “Comment” on my essay, “The Concept of Dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (2011). Addressing key criticisms in this “Comment,” I make the following points. First, neither the idea of inherent dignity being “imparted” to humans, nor the Universal Declaration's implication—through its use of terms such as “inherent” and “inalienable”—that humans participate in transcendent reality, necessarily presuppose a Christian metaphysics. Second, a concept such as “inherent dignity” must be affirmed to be intrinsically heuristic unless we are to assume that its meaning can be completely known within the conditions of existence; but this affirmation does not render such concepts “indeterminate of sense.” Finally, Ranganathan's distinction between“weak” and “strong” senses of transcendence is untenable. If human truths beyond all contingencies are knowable (“weak” transcendence), then there must be a real dimension of meaning that transcends all contingencies (“strong” transcendence).     

JUSTICE AS INHERENT RIGHTS: A RESPONSE TO MY COMMENTATORS

The critical comments by my fellow symposiasts on my book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs , have provided me with the opportunity to clarify parts of my argument and to correct some misunderstandings; they have also helped me see more clearly than I did before the import of some parts of my argument. In his comments, Paul Weithman points out features of the right order conception of justice that I had not noticed. They have also prodded me to clarify in what way rights are trumps; and both his comments and Bernstein's have prodded me to clarify certain aspects of the theistic account of human rights that I offered. Attridge's comments lead me to see that I was perhaps over-zealous in emphasizing the objective aspects of the semantic range of dikaiosunê as used in the New Testament and downplaying the subjective aspects. And O'Donovan's comments have provided me with the opportunity to make clear that my account of rights is not an immunities account that presupposes nominalism, and to emphasize the ways in which it is not an asocial individualistic account.     

Family: Introductory paper

Changes in the family make it difficult to define any typical structure. What is most striking is the role of the child, henceforth the holder of certain recognized rights, within a group whose mutual relations are based on the notion of a contract. In this way, we can talk of a family citizenship, acting as the basis for citizenship in society.     

Scientific approach of health by INSERM youth clubs

Health education must rest on the notion of responsibility, for the young must be aware of their own health. This can be achieved through the acquisition of a scientific approach, but also by realizing the realities of science. On this account, INSERM youth clubs are an illustration of the partnership which can exist between the worlds of science and of youth.     

Toward the 'Rights of the Poor' Human Rights in Liberation Theology

In this article, the author traces the response of liberation theologians to human rights initiatives through three distinct stages over the past thirty years: from an initial avoidance of the concept, to an early critique, and then to a nuanced theological appropriation. He contends that liberation theology brings a thoroughgoing concern for the poor and an innovative methodology of historicization to the discussion of human rights. In clarifying the treatment of human rights within a specific religious movement, the author also addresses larger questions about the specific role of human rights language. To this end, the article shows how liberation theologians have grappled concretely with the divisions among different 'generations' of rights, various rights discourses, and diverse options for rights advocacy.     

Young people and life in the city. The lessons of political sociology and of the patterns of socialization of young people

Faced with a considerable lack of interest in politics among the young, in spite of their precocious maturity, we must come to terms with the failure of over‐institutionalized practices. The way of integrating the young into democratic life must go through a dynamic approach, favoring associative processes so as better to take account of the real needs and the experience of the young.