Justice

by Wolterstorff, Nicholas

• ISBN13: 9780691146300
• ISBN10: 0691146306
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-12
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Wide-ranging and ambitious,Justicecombines 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,Justicenot 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.

Author Biography

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Archeology of Rights	p. 19
Two Conceptions of Justice	p. 21
A Contest of Narratives	p. 44
Justice in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible	p. 65
On De-justicizing the New Testament	p. 96
Justice in the New Testament Gospels	p. 109
Fusion of Narrative with Theory: The Goods to Which We Have Rights	p. 133
Locating That to Which We Have Rights	p. 135
Why Eudaimonism Cannot Serve as Framework for a Theory of Rights	p. 149
Augustine's Break with Eudaimonism	p. 180
The Incursion of the Moral Vision of Scripture into Late Antiquity	p. 207
Characterizing Life-and History-Goods	p. 227
Theory: Having a Right to a Good	p. 239
Accounting for Rights	p. 241
Rights Not Grounded in Duties	p. 264
Rights Grounded in Respect for Worth	p. 285
The Nature and Grounding of Natural Human Rights	p. 311
Is a Secular Grounding of Human Rights Possible?	p. 323
A Theistic Grounding of Human Rights	p. 342
Applications and Implications	p. 362
Epilogue Concluding Reflections	p. 385
General Index	p. 395
Index of Scriptural References	p. 399
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