by Michael J. Perry
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Product Description
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, to disentangle 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 inescapably religious.
* 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 about human 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, should be--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 or another, is an old idea) is, for many, the most difficult. It is the most difficult 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 Williams has called 'Nietzsche's thought': 'There is not only no God, but no metaphysical order of any kind....' For those who accept 'Nietzsche's thought', can the idea of human rights possibly be more than a kind of aesthetic preference? In a culture in which it was widely believed that there is no God or metaphysical order of any kind, on what basis, if any, could the idea of human rights long survive?"
The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries will appeal to students of many disciplines, including (but not limited to) law, philosophy, religion, and politics.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Must read for anyone investigating the concept of Human Rights, 2009-01-07
"The Idea of Human Rights" is one of those books that leaves a lasting impact on those that read it. The picture on the front is enough to instigate conversations on an incredible array of topics. I read it in a "rights" class investigating whether there were such a thing as objectively derived rights, as opposed to something we subjectively believe should be the case. If you are an ardent supporter of human rights and believe that they cannot be denied, you may not like this book, but you should read it nonetheless because it possesses issues with the concept of universal human rights that must be dealt with. If you are just investigating the concept, once again, it should be read as the issues posed cannot be avoided.
Written with clarity and a logical flow, the arguments are easy to follow and very tangible. I keep few academic books from when I was working on my degree. This is one of them.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
disturbing, thought provoking, and accessible, 2006-02-26
Is the idea of human rights a religious idea? Is there such a thing as an absolute right? What are the things that no human being should ever do to another human being? And what are the things that all human beings ought to do for other human beings? Is the language of human rights (as entitlement) part of the problem as we try to understand what is ethical behaviour?
Perry asks, and answers these questions. His writing is lawyerly, but accessible. He explores these questions for himself, taking you along for the ride. A smart guy with a lot of information about these things, it is an informative ride and useful to apply to both day-to-day life, and an understanding of what the UN is up against.
A required book for anyone who wants to work in politics, especially, but really for anyone who cares about know what we ought to do and ought not to do as moral human beings.
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