Prompted (provoked?) by some misunderstandings, I decided to post a paper on SSRN a little sooner than I might have. The title of the paper is Morality and Normativity. The download link is below. Here's the abstract:
I have explained why I am skeptical that
there is a plausible secular ground for the morality of human rights.
See Perry, TOWARD A THEORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS 1-29 (Cambridge, 2007). The
blogosphere has recently yielded commentary--mainly, I think, at
BALKINIZATION and MIRROR OF JUSTICE--on my argument. However, some of
the commentary--in particular, by Brian Tamanaha and Andrew
Koppelman--reflects serious misunderstandings of my argument.
1.
My argument is not theistic. In the course of making my argument, I
articulate a theistic position, which I attribute to someone named
“Sarah”, but Sarah's position is not my argument. My argument is in
part *about* Sarah's position—and also about some secular positions. 2.
It is not as a theist that I make my argument. Indeed, some
non-theists, such as Art Leff and Raimond Gaita, have made similar
arguments. 3. Yes, some religious believers have been among the
principal violators of human rights, and, yes, some theologies deny the
claim that is at the heart of the morality of human rights, namely,
that all human beings have inherent dignity. But my argument nowhere
presupposes, claims, or hints to the contrary.
I hope that
this paper, MORALITY AND NORMATIVITY, helps to clarify my argument. The
paper--which I first presented at Fordham Law School as the Natural Law
Colloquium Lecture (February 2007)--is my contribution to a symposium
on the moral and legal philosophy of John Finnis. The symposium, which
includes a response by Finnis, will be published in LEGAL THEORY.
As
we all know, there is not just one morality in the world; there are
many. By a "morality", I mean a claim or set of claims to the effect
that human beings, either some or all, should live a certain sort of
life--"should" in the sense of "have conclusive reason to". The
morality Adolph Hitler espoused is radically different from the
morality Mother Teresa espoused; nonetheless, each is a morality.
"Hitler's 'morality' is not a morality," you reply, "because it is, to
put it mildly, false. There is only one true morality, and
Hitler's--least of all Hitler's--is not it!" To say that there are many
moralities, however, is to say nothing about whether a particular
morality--or indeed any morality--is true. There are many
moralities--and the morality Hitler espoused is one of them. Of course,
just as one can acknowledge that there are many moralities and reject
every one of them as false, one can acknowledge that there are many
moralities and affirm a particular morality as true--affirm as true,
that is, the claim that one should live, that one has conclusive reason
to live, the sort of life the morality claims one should live.
A
morality may purport to be true for all human beings, by claiming that
all human beings have conclusive reason to live the sort of life it
claims all human beings should live. Or a morality may purport to be
true only for some human beings. Either way, a morality may be false in
one sense but partly true in another: Some, but only some, of the human
beings for whom the morality purports to be true may have conclusive
reason to live the sort of life the morality claims they should live.
Conceivably, two (or more) moralities may both be true, or both be
partly true, in this sense: One morality may be true for those, or for
some of those, for whom it purports to be true, and another morality
may be true for those, or for some of those, for whom it purports to be
true.
Notice that it would beg the question to say to someone
that the conclusive reason she has for living the sort of life a
morality claims she should live is just that that sort of life is (for
her) moral: The question is precisely whether the sort of life the
morality claims she should live is (for her) truly moral; she wants to
know whether in fact she has conclusive reason to live the sort of life
the morality claims she should live.
The "ground of
normativity" question--as I call it--can be asked about any morality;
to ask it about a particular morality is simply to ask whether (and for
whom) the morality is true and, if so, why--in virtue of what--it is
true. Again, to say that a particular morality is true (for one) is to
say that one should live--that one has conclusive reason to live--the
sort of life the morality claims one should live; put another way, it
is to say that one has conclusive reason to be(come) the sort of person
who lives the sort of life the morality claims one should live. So to
ask whether a particular morality is true is to ask what conclusive
reason one has, if any, to live the sort of life the morality in
question claims one should live. To ask the ground-of-normativity
question about a particular morality is to ask what grounds the
"should" in the morality's claim that one should live a certain sort of
life; it is to ask why--in virtue of what--one should live that sort of
life.
In this paper, I elaborate a particular, and
particularly important, morality, which I call the morality of human
rights (because, as I explain, it is the principal articulated morality
that underlies the law of human rights). Next, I ask the
gound-of-normativity question about the morality of human rights and
proceed to elaborate a religious response. (It bears emphasis, first,
that the religious response I elaborate—Sarah's response--specifically
*rejects* the “divine command” conception of morality, and, second,
that in the paper I do *not* argue that Sarah's response is [or is not]
true or even plausible.) Then, after explaining why one might be
skeptical that there is a plausible secular response to the question
(i.e., to the question asked about the morality of human rights), I
comment critically on some secular responses. Finally, I ask what
difference it makes if there is no plausible secular response and if we
reject any religious response.
There is no doubt plenty in
this paper with which one can reasonably disagree, but the blogospheric
commentary to which I referred above has not (yet) engaged—because it
has misconceived--my argument.
Here's the download link: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1009604
Friday, August 24, 2007
Lilla's piece continues to provoke comment. (Previsous MOJ posts: here, here, and here.)
This, today, from dotCommonweal, is certainly worth reading: here.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Poland's shame
John Cornwell
Both
bishops and religious orders are failing to condemn an avowedly
anti-Semitic Redemptorist priest, whose radio station is bolstering
political support for the extreme nationalism of the 58-year-old
identical twins inhabiting the offices of Polish President and Prime
Minister
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
This is a followup to my earlier post.
From the online Chronicle of Higher Education:
August 21, 2007
Mark Lilla and the Threat of Theological Politics
Siva Vaidhyanathan declares himself a longtime admirer of Mark
Lilla's work, which is precisely why he is worried about Lilla's
forthcoming book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West, which was excerpted this past Sunday in The New York Times Magazine.
Vaidhyanathan's
concern stems from Lilla's apparent belief that there is something
called "the West" and that "within this alleged 'West' there is a 'We'
that conforms to the core tenets of textbook history: 'We' were once
burdened by superstitions and irrationalities until somehow 'we' became
enlightened."
Vaidhyanathan, settling in to his new digs at the University of Virginia, where he is a professor of media studies and law, lays out his case on Eric Alterman's Web site, Altercation, where he is guest blogging this week. (To read more about Vaidhyanathan, check out this profile by The Chronicle's Scott Carlson.)
"Any
construction of an intelligible and enlightened 'West' must elide all
of those messy contradictions within it: Nazism, Francoism (Catholic
royalism), Stalinism, radical Serbian nationalism, Jerry Falwell, etc.
But mostly," Vaidhyanathan writes, "it must ignore the diversity of
thought and practice among real people who inhabit 'the West.' And it
must ignore the omnipresence of materialism, secularism, consumerism,
rationalism, and even atheism as major traditions in places that could
not easily be described as 'Western' such as India, Iran, and China."
Contrasting Lilla,
a professor of the humanities at Columbia University, Vaidhyanathan is
not "puzzled" by the sort of "theological radicalism" that emanates
from Iran or Saudi Arabia. He claims that it echoes the theologically
infused politics that one can find "in any conservative Baptist church
in Texas." Even more arresting, Vaidhyanathan claims that this
"hard-core millenarianism...is perhaps the most powerful strain of
political thought in the United States today." As such, he faults Lilla
for failing to examine how political theology influences not only
radical Islam, but also radical Christianity and radical Judaism.
"The
conflict between political theology and political liberalism is, as
Lilla claims, the central conflict of our time," Vaidhyanathan writes.
"I would add that it is the central conflict of all time. And it ain't
just Americans and Europeans who have to deal with it. The front lines
of this struggle run through Jakarta, Bombay, Karachi, Cairo, and
Lagos. That's where the real story is."
(Not surprisingly, Christopher Hitchens has some of his own objections to Lilla's thesis.)
Evan Goldstein | Posted on Tuesday August 21, 2007 | Permalink
Sunday, August 19, 2007
For all those interested in the subject of religion in politics. (Aren't we all?)
Mark Lilla (Columbia University), The Politics of God, New York Times Magazine, Aug. 19, 2007.
To print and read, click here.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
[Lifted from the New York Times online:}
July 18, 2007, 9:29 am
By Chris Suellentrop
Rudy Giuliani is “Nixon’s political twin,” writes former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson in his latest Washington Post column. Gerson elaborates:
In his elections, Nixon appealed to conservatives and the country as
a culture warrior who was not a moral or religious conservative.
“Permissiveness,” he told key aides, “is the key theme,” and Nixon
pressed that theme against hippie protesters, tenured radicals and
liberals who bad-mouthed America. This kind of secular, tough-on-crime,
tough-on-communism conservatism gathered a “silent majority” that loved
Nixon for the enemies he made.
By this standard, Giuliani is a Nixon Republican. He is perhaps the
most publicly secular major candidate of either party — his conflicts
with Roman Catholic teaching make him more reticent on religion than
either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. But as a prosecutor and mayor
of New York, he won conservative respect for making all the right
enemies: the ACLU, advocates of blasphemous art, purveyors of racial
politics, Islamist mass murderers, mob bosses and the New York Times
editorial page.
Gerson worries that Giuliani, like Nixon, is “a talented man without
an ideological compass, mainly concerned with the accumulation of
power.”
Just to underscore the point that he thinks nominating Rudy Giuliani
for president would be a really, really bad idea, Gerson adds that he
fears nominating a Republican who is “in direct conflict with the Roman
Catholic Church.” He writes:
Giuliani is not only pro-choice. He has supported embryonic stem
cell research and public funding for abortion. He supports the death
penalty. He supports “waterboarding” of terror suspects and seems
convinced that the conduct of the war on terrorism has been too
constrained. Individually, these issues are debatable. Taken together,
they are the exact opposite of Catholic teaching, which calls for a
“consistent ethic of life” rather than its consistent devaluation. No
one inspired by the social priorities of Pope John Paul II can be
encouraged by the political views of Rudy Giuliani. Church officials
who criticized John Kerry on abortion are anxious for the opportunity
to demonstrate their bipartisanship by going after a Republican. Those
attacks on Giuliani have already begun.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
New York Times
July 15, 2007
Bush Is Prepared to Veto Bill to Expand Child Insurance
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, July 14 — The
White House said on Saturday that President Bush would veto a
bipartisan plan to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program,
drafted over the last six months by senior members of the Senate
Finance Committee.
The vow puts Mr. Bush at odds with the Democratic majority in
Congress, with a substantial number of Republican lawmakers and with
many governors of both parties, who want to expand the popular program
to cover some of the nation’s eight million uninsured children.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said: “The president’s senior
advisers will certainly recommend a veto of this proposal. And there is
no question that the president would veto it.”
The program, which insured 7.4 million people at some time in the last year, is set to expire Sept. 30.
[To read the rest of this inspiring story, click here.]
