Essays on Religion and Human Rights: Ground to Stand On
Cambridge University Press, 3/26/2015
EAN 9781107072626, ISBN10: 110707262X
Hardcover, 420 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
This collection of essays by David Little addresses human rights in relation to the historical settings in which its language was drafted and adopted. Featuring five original essays, Little articulates his view that fascist practices before and during World War II vivified the wrongfulness of deliberately inflicting severe pain, injury, and destruction for self-serving purposes and that the human rights corpus, developed in response, was designed to outlaw all practices of arbitrary force. He contends that while there must be an accountable human rights standard, it should guarantee latitude for the expression and practice of beliefs, consistent with outlawing arbitrary force. Little details the theoretical grounds of the relationship between religion and human rights, and concludes with essays on US policy and the restraint of force in regard to terrorism. With a foreword by John Kelsay, this book is a capstone of the work of this influential writer on religion, philosophy, and law.
Acknowledgments
Foreword John Kelsay
Introduction
Part I. In Defense of Rights
1. Ground to stand on
2. Critical reflections on The Last Utopia
Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn
Part II. Religion and Rights
3. Religion, human rights, and the secular state
4. Religion, human rights, and public reason
protecting the freedom of religion or belief
5. Rethinking tolerance
a human rights approach
6. A bang or a whimper?
Assessing some recent challenges to religious freedom in the United States
7. Religion and human rights
a personal testament
Part III. Religion and the History of Rights
8. Religion, peace, and the origins of nationalism
9. Roger Williams and the Puritan background of the establishment clause
Part IV. Public Policy and the Restraint of Force
10. Terrorism, public emergency, and international order
11. The academic in times of war
12. Obama and Niebuhr
religion and American foreign policy
Afterword
ethics, religion, and human consciousness
further reflections on a 'two-tiered' or 'bifocal' approach to justification
Appendix. Ethics and scholarship
Index.