The Idea of Human Rights.

Four Inquiries Michael J. Perry Oxford University Press, $29.95, 162 pp.

All occupations have their hazards. That to which political philosophers are especially susceptible we might call Laputa syndrome, after Swift's description in Gulliver's Travels of a floating island whose residents are so absorbed by abstract speculations that they barely acknowledge the world around them. This malady threatens all political theorists who, in striving to articulate principles rationally persuasive to all, proceed from an idea of the person that intentionally abstracts from any particularities that might block agreement to those principles. Laputa syndrome has struck when the individuals who populate the world of political philosophy have become so denuded that they forfeit any genuine connection to the real people whose conflicts the theorists aim to resolve.

Michael Perry, who holds a distinguished chair in law at Wake Forest, has long waged a persuasive campaign against Laputa syndrome. He is particularly concerned with political philosophers who undervalue the claims of religion, a failing all the more vexing given that these theorists often rely on moral presuppositions which are, for many men and women, inseparable from their religious beliefs. In The Idea of Human Rights, Perry's aim is even more ambitious: Instead of arguing simply that religious beliefs merit serious attention from theorists, his claim here is that the very idea of human rights - the idea, as he puts it, "that certain things ought not to be done to any human being and certain other things ought to be done for every human being" - simply makes no sense outside a religious framework.

Perry argues, in the first chapter, that the idea of human rights amounts to a claim that all human beings are sacred and that no nonreligious account can adequately account for the sacred. In forestalling the objection that he has simply begged the question, Perry says quickly that one could just as well replace the idea of being sacred with being inviolable, or having inherent worth. ! think, though, the issue is more complex than he allows. For Perry will later assert that the idea of human rights does not impose any absolute constraints on what one may do to others, and that such rights may always in theory be outweighed by other concerns. On its face, this seems hard to square with the notion of inviolability. Nor does "having inherent worth" seem adequate as a gloss on the sacred, for - to use one of Perry's examples - one could argue that the pleasure of scratching an itch has inherent worth, but that hardly makes it sacred.

I suspect that Perry connects the idea of human rights to the sacred because he believes that only a religious framework can give our lives meaning. And only if our lives have meaning can one finally justify the existence of moral obligations toward others. Though powerful, this argument is open to important objections. Many philosophers, for example, regard the very question of life's meaning as rather obscure. Wittgenstein once asked how immortality solves the mystery of our lives: would not eternal life, he noted, be as much a fiddle as our present life? At the foundational level that Perry stresses, a similar question can be asked: How, exactly, does the fact that God created us give our lives a meaning they otherwise lack? Perhaps some think this question confused, the answer self-evident. But nonreligious defenders of human rights can make the same reply when Perry asks on what grounds they claim that rape, torture, and murder are things that ought not be done to other people. Need they say more than that such acts deeply and without justification harm human wellbeing, and that it's self-evident one ought not do them?

In fact, however, Perry offers another, more suggestive argument for the dependence of human rights on religion. Only a religious view, he says, explains how all men and women are, because created by God, members of one family. And just as a good life for anyone involves appropriate degrees of concern for one's family, the truth of creation reveals that a good life involves similar concern for all human beings. Notice how this approach elegantly resolves the moral philosopher's thorny problem of motivation: Everyone has a reason to treat others well because such concern is part of any good life. This is an immensely interesting argument, especially timely now as moral theorists are turning more attention to the importance of personal relationships as a locus of moral responsibilities, but its ambit may be limited. Perry is surely right that without caring relationships with family and friends, an individual leads an impoverished life, but that's because such goods as companionship, love, and deep trust can be achieved only in such relationships. If I already have such relationships, however, it's not clear what I lose by failing to include all people in the world within the circle of my concern. Further, such inclusion may potentially attenuate the close relationships I do have: though our emotional resources are probably larger than we know, they may not be limitless.

After arguing for the essentially religious grounding of the idea of human rights, Perry defends the idea against three objections: that it ignores other important ideals (including responsibilities and communal goods), that it is incoherent because there are no interests common to all human beings, and that the absolute nature of rights is unreasonable. The first two objections are easily, if not all that interestingly, disposed of: rights talk need not be insensitive to the importance of other ideals, nor is the denial that there are significant interests shared by all human beings at all plausible.

The question of whether rights must be understood in absolute terms proves more recalcitrant, and more fruitful. On some interpretations, the idea of human rights creates absolute prohibitions on what may be done to human beings - for example, it makes it always wrong to torture an innocent person, even if necessary to save millions more. In countering this absolutist view, then, Perry must show that such acts might be not only morally permissible, but also consistent with the idea of human rights.

Given the traditional schism between a rights-based morality and a consequentialist one, Perry's goal is enormously ambitious, and his discussion here is rich and stimulating. Ultimately, again, I'm not convinced Perry is right. The absolutist interpretation of rights claims may serve most importantly as a means by which human beings assert their independence from the vagaries of a fickle world, as an expression of our moral sovereignty in the face of unpredictable circumstances. And it may be, though I'm unsure, that we can assert this independence only by committing ourselves to certain absolute principles. About the only principle to which Perry appears willing to declare absolute allegiance is, "Always treat another human being lovingly," and even there it's hard to see how one could honor that in torturing another.

But while Perry has not convinced me of the two major claims that bookend this volume, I am not sure he is wrong. These are among the deepest questions in moral philosophy, and Perry forces us to confront the fact that certain views about rights that many of us take for granted (that they can be understood in a secular sense, or that they establish absolute protections) are open to serious objections. Those readers who want a short book (excluding notes, the text runs about one hundred pages) that introduces them to several critical issues surrounding the idea of human rights will find this book extremely rewarding. Anyone who has considered the idea more thoroughly will also benefit from Perry's powerful arguments. That's a fine achievement for such a slim book.

David McCabe teaches in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Colgate University.