Beauty is truth ...

Michael J. Perry ("The Morality of Human Rights," July 14) finds the attempts to lay a nonreligious foundation for human rights unconvincing; and, in the commitment to human rights among secular thinkers, he discerns only an "aesthetic preference," unsupported by secularist principles. "Aesthetic preference," however, may be a better foundation for morality than Perry allows.

Einstein pointed out that aesthetic considerations are important in science. Elegance and beauty contribute to the credibility of a scientific theory. The beauty of the morality of human rights is the way it simplifies and rationalizes the usually messy answer to the question: "Who has rights?" In traditional cultures, the answer to this question is complex. Some have many rights, others have some, many have none. The distribution of rights is also contingent on the distribution of power--might confers rights. The morality of human rights, however, sweeps away this complexity and contingency with the simple assertion that everyone has rights. The theory is elegantly, stunningly simple; and its appeal is not sentimental, as Nietzsche wrongly supposed, but acutely intellectual.

Aesthetic perception is not merely a "preference," but an intuition of truth. Can the morality of human rights stand unsupported by theological or metaphysical doctrine? The suasive role of aesthetics in science suggests that a cogent argument is possible, not requiring belief in God, but only belief in the beauty of truth.

(REV.) DOHRMAN W. BYERS

Georgetown, Ohio