Wolterstorff Justice

Rights and Wrongs
Core Textbook
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2871-5
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 416 Seiten

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Systematische Theologie Ethik, Moraltheologie, Sozialethik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface vii

Introduction 1

PART I The Archeology of Rights 19

CHAPTER ONE: Two Conceptions of Justice 21

CHAPTER TWO: A Contest of Narratives 44

CHAPTER THREE: Justice in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible 65

CHAPTER FOUR: On De-justicizing the New Testament 96

CHAPTER FIVE: Justice in the New Testament Gospels 109

PART II Fusion of Narrative with Theory: The Goods to Which We Have Rights 133

CHAPTER SIX: Locating That to Which We Have Rights 135

CHAPTER SEVEN: Why Eudaimonism Cannot Serve as Framework for a Theory of Rights 149

CHAPTER EIGHT: Augustine's Break with Eudaimonism 180

CHAPTER NINE: The Incursion of the Moral Vision of Scripture into Late Antiquity 207

CHAPTER TEN: Characterizing Life- and History-Goods 227

PART III Theory: Having a Right to a Good 239

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Accounting for Rights 241

CHAPTER TWELVE: Rights Not Grounded in Duties 264

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Rights Grounded in Respect for Worth 285

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Nature and Grounding of Natural Human Rights 311

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Is a Secular Grounding of Human Rights Possible? 323

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: A Theistic Grounding of Human Rights 342

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Applications and Implications 362

EPILOGUE: Concluding Reflections 385

General Index 395

Index of Scriptural References 399

Über Autor(innen)

Nicholas Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His many books include Until Justice and Peace Embrace.