Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and
Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of
justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it
is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth
of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights
require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular
account of natural human rights is successful; he offers instead a
theistic account. Wolterstorff prefaces his systematic account of
justice as grounded in rights with an exploration of the common claim
that rights-talk is inherently individualistic and possessive. He
demonstrates that the idea of natural rights originated neither in the
Enlightenment nor in the individualistic philosophy of the late Middle
Ages, but was already employed by the canon lawyers of the twelfth
century. He traces our intuitions about rights and justice back even
further, to Hebrew and Christian scriptures. After extensively
discussing justice in the Old Testament and the New, he goes on to
show why ancient Greek and Roman philosophy could not serve as a
framework for a theory of rights. Connecting rights and wrongs to
God's relationship with humankind, Justice not only offers a rich and
compelling philosophical account of justice, but also makes an
important contribution to overcoming the present-day divide between
religious discourse and human rights.
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Rights and Wrongs
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400828715
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Antall sider
416
Forfatter