Posts Tagged ‘Foundations’

A Symposium Hosted Jointly by Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University, April 12- 14 2010

The idea of Human Rights is now the common language of ethical and political debate and deliberation in Western democracies and indeed throughout the world – often even for peoples who would contest the essentials of Western liberalism. So dominant is this vocabulary of rights that it might almost seem impertinent to inquire into its sources or foundations, except that the very meaning of these rights, as well as the relation of the ethics of rights to other moral vocabularies and bonds of community, remains very much an open question.

Central to the philosophical problem of Human Rights is the question of the role of Biblical religion and of appeals to nature and reason. Human rights are in one sense asserted against any superhuman authority, and in their classical form these rights were held to be founded upon a “nature” accessible to simple human reason. And yet the very sense of the dignity of every human individual that informs our rights seems clearly to have sprung from a Judeo-Christian understanding.

Does the authority and even the meaning of human rights require a faith in God or, alternatively, a foundation in nature? Or is humanity now able to affirm its dignity and its rights without recourse to any foundation, whether natural or divine? These and related questions will be examined through a series of lectures and discussions involving noted scholars invited to join us in Provo and Orem as well as numerous participants from the host institutions.

For more information and a comprehensive schedule of events: Download our PDF