David Little

Rethinking Human Rights

In reviewing five edited collections and one monograph from the 1990s, the article summarizes the present status of the “human rights revolution” that was signaled by the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It goes on to elaborate and evaluate some of the attempts contained in these books to deal with theoretical and practical controversies surrounding the subject of human rights, particularly the discussion of what to make of “cultural relativism” as far as human rights are concerned. Finally, the article summarizes some recent thinking and research on a neglected area, namely compliance with human rights standards protecting “freedom of religion or belief.”

Belief, ethnicity, and nationalism

On the basis of a continuing study sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace, this essay addresses the role of religious and related forms of belief in the formation and mobilization of ethnic identity and nationalism. It is particularly concerned with the relationship of ethnic conflict to intolerance and discrimination, as defined by human rights standards. Drawing upon the work of Max Weber, and giving examples from case studies of Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Tibet, the essay proposes a partial explanation of the sources of intolerance.

Religion, Order, and Law: A Study in Pre-Revolutionary England

The issue of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism has been debated endlessly, but few scholars have seriously continued Webers own research into the Reformation sources of seventeenth-century England. David Littles study was one of the first to do so, and remains an important contribution.-Guenther Roth, University of Washington

Human Rights: An Exuberant Disarray

Book reviewed in this article: n n n nLiberty, Community, and Justice. By R.E. Ewin. n n n nPersons, Rights, and the Moral Community. By Loren E. Lomasky n n n nMaking Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By James W. Nickel

Human Rights: An Exuberant Disarray@@@Liberty, Community, and Justice@@@Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community@@@Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Book reviewed in this article: n n n nLiberty, Community, and Justice. By R.E. Ewin. n n n nPersons, Rights, and the Moral Community. By Loren E. Lomasky n n n nMaking Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By James W. Nickel

Religion and Social Analysis in the Thought of Ernst Troeltsch

physics of history has symbolic and not empirical validity. When Troeltsch distinguishes between communal and societal periods, and interprets the present period as the development towards a new communal period and even towards a religious re-integration-such assertion is very questionable to say the least, if it is to be understood in an empirical sense. But as soon as this assertion is understood not as an empirical expectation but as a symbolic interpretation of history, it acquires a different significance. Re-integration or better, the synthesis of autonomous cultural and societal creativity with religious traditions into a theonomous unity is the social-ethical goal in an absolute sense. Its realization in the endless tensions between autonomy and theonomy is the great theme of history in all periods. Certain periods, like late antiquity or like the Middle Ages, can symbolically represent the one or both, poles. And by contemplating them, motives for the transformation of ones own cultural situation can arise. But this has nothing to do with attempts to develop an empirical periodization of history. It contains no scientific judgment concerning the present. It is not historiography or even philosophy of history, but rather an ethical-prophetic attitude (which is, in any case, more important than the other), and it is the attitude towards whose portals Troeltsch has led us, and which is the deepest meaning of his work. The logical, empirical and philosophical problems of history are not excluded by such a prophetic view of history. The questions of economic and social history as well as those of intellectual history remain valid.