Babel's Children: Reconstructing the Common Good

In this essay, I consider the rival liberal and communitarian accounts of justice emerging in complex, pluralist societies. I argue that we err in posing the question of human rights as a Hobson's choice between a formal, universal metanarrative, as envisioned in philosophical liberalism, or as...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: O'Neill, William R. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Society of Christian Ethics 1998
In: The annual of the Society of Christian Ethics
Year: 1998, Volume: 18, Pages: 161-176
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:In this essay, I consider the rival liberal and communitarian accounts of justice emerging in complex, pluralist societies. I argue that we err in posing the question of human rights as a Hobson's choice between a formal, universal metanarrative, as envisioned in philosophical liberalism, or as a merely local, ethnocentric narrative of the western bourgeoisie, as in the communitarian critique. For human rights are best viewed rhetorically, as establishing the possibility of rationally persuasive argument across our varied narrative traditions. The essay concludes by attending to the role of religious belief in the public reason of a postmodern society.
ISSN:2372-9023
Contains:Enthalten in: Society of Christian Ethics, The annual of the Society of Christian Ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.5840/asce19981815