The Basic Goods and the "Lawlike" Use of Reason: Comments on Human Rights and the Common Good

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-146
Author(s):  
S. Hope
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Basic Goods ◽  
The Common

Against Humanity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Dubal
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Lord's Resistance Army ◽  
The Common ◽  
Lord’S Resistance Army

This book is not about crimes against humanity. Rather, it is an indictment of “humanity,” the concept that lies at the heart of human rights and humanitarian missions. Based on fieldwork in northern Uganda, this book brings readers inside the Lord’s Resistance Army, an insurgent group accused of rape, forced conscription of children, and inhumane acts of violence. The author talks with and learns from former rebels as they find meaning in wartime violence, politics, spirituality, and love—experiences that observers often place outside the boundaries of humanity. Rather than approaching the LRA as a set of possibilities, humanity looks at the LRA as a set of problems, as inhuman enemies needing reform. Humanity hegemonizes what counts as good in ways that are difficult to question or challenge. It relies on specific notions of the good—shaped in ideals of modern violence, technology, modernity, and reason, among others—in ways that do violence to the common good. What emerges from this ethnography is an unorthodox question—what would it mean to be “against humanity”? Against Humanity provocatively asks us how to honor life existing outside normative moralities. It challenges us to shift toward alternative, more radical approaches to humanitarian, political, medical, and other interventions, rooted in anti-humanism.

Human Rights and the Common Good: A Critique

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
A. Harel
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common

scholarly journals SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INTEGRAL HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: ON HAPPINESS, WELFARE AND DIGNITY

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taras DOBKO ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Good Society ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
Integral Human Development

This article examines philosophical assumptions of whether and how happiness could become a goal of political action and standard for assessing government’s performance. It is argued that solidarity and care for the common good require the political economy of citizenship balanced with affirmation of the dignity of the human person in the form of basic human rights. The rule of law and fair procedures should be complemented with the concern for character development into citizenship and mature civic commitment. This unfolds both in faith-based and secular attempts to imagine and measure human development in terms beyond GDP index and economic statistics. To succeed these attempts must be based on an adequate anthropology, draw their strength from a sound moral source and inspire mature ethical agency. Catholic social thought conceives of integral human development as a way of envisaging social arrangements that foster flourishing of the whole person and each person. It is based on the vision of the human being as an image of God and draws its energy from the idea of “good society” in which respect for the dignity of the human person and care for the common good of all people are central to political and social life. KEY WORDS: Integral human development, common good, dignity, good society, human rights, social progress

Social Ethics

2005 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Elsbernd
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Restorative Justice ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Economic Ethics ◽  
Catholic Social Thought ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common

[The survey addresses recent publications in five areas: (1) foundational resources and approaches; (2) Catholic social thought; (3) faith and public life; (4) reconciliation and social conflict; and (5) environmental and economic ethics. Recurring issues include: praxis-based approaches, the common good and human rights, religion's role in public life, restorative justice, as well as attention to the marginalized.]

scholarly journals The Time of Dialectic Spiritualism: From Medina to Mecca Charter

Illuminatio ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-191
Author(s):  
Mustafa Cerić
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Common Word ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Current Time ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
State Of Affairs

A crisis is a call for change and creative thinking that initiates a dialectics of thought and action. Also, the challenge for nations as well as individuals in crisis is to figure out which parts of their identities are already functioning well and do not need changing, and which parts are no longer working and do need changing. Indeed, Muslim thought today needs the courage to recognize what must be changed in order to deal with the new circumstances. But, at the same time, Muslim scholars need to draw a line and stress the elements that are so fundamental to the faith and culture of Islam that they refuse to be changed. This state of affairs we call dialectical spiritualism, as opposed to Marxist „dialectical materialism“. It is time for humanity to meet the Zeitgeist, „Spirit of the Age“, which is „the Spirit of Peace“ among religions and nations across the globe. History, past and present, is not void of good examples of accords, charters, declarations and commitments to peaceful coexistence between religions and nations from the Medina Charter (622), the Magna Carta Libertatum (1215), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Nostra Aetate (1965), the Declaration of European Muslims (2005), the Common Word Between Us and You (2007), the Marrakesh Declaration (2016), the Alliance of Virtue for the Common Good (2018), the Declaration of Human Fraternity (2019) to the Mecca Charter (2019). All these initiatives, past and present, promote the idea of „the Spirit of Peace“ of all times, but this current time has the biggest need of all times for the Zeitgeist, „Spirit of the Age“, which is the „Spirit of Peace and Tolerance“. This paper attempts to explain this need from a Muslim perspective with a comparison with other initiatives.

FINNIS ON THE AUTHORITY OF LAW AND THE COMMON GOOD

Legal Theory ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Duke
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Coordination Problems ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Basic Goods ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Moral Difference

This paper seeks to elucidate the role played by the common good in John Finnis's arguments for a generic and presumptive moral obligation to obey the law.1Finnis's appeal to the common good constitutes a direct challenge to liberal and philosophical anarchist denials of a generic and presumptive obligation to obey the law.2It is questionable, however, whether Finnis has presented the strongest possible case for his position. In the first section I outline Finnis's account of the relationship between basic goods, the common good, and the authority of law. Section II demonstrates how Finnis's emphasis upon the instrumental nature of the common good leaves his position vulnerable to Joseph Raz's objections3that not all cases of law make a moral difference and that governmental authority is often unnecessary to resolve coordination problems. I argue that Raz's critique nonetheless fails adequately to address an alternative defense of the existence of a generic and presumptive obligation to obey the law, suggested by some passages in Finnis's work, according to which the common good is integral, rather than merely instrumental, to the good of individuals. In the final section I consider whether Finnis could strengthen his case for a generic and presumptive obligation to obey the law by adopting a more consistently robust—and hence also more contentious—account of the common good.

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