Transcript
[continues part 1] And so it pretty much follows that if there is a biblical contour of obligations and a biblical contour of rights, then there's probably also a biblical contour of the good, of the human good of course, of what it is to flourish as a human being. And I submit that there is such a contour or understanding encapsulated in what the adequate means of sustenance is a key component in the understanding of the human good which pervades the
scriptures. That is a key component in shalom. It's best to understand this by contrast. The ancient Stoics, to pick one example, had a very different understanding of the human good. On their view, the only good thing for each of us is our own moral worth. That's right, our own moral worth. Among the other things that there are, some are preferable to others. Having adequate food is definitely preferable to not having adequate food. But said the Stoics,
having adequate food is not a good. And if one is truly a wise person, I have here what they said of course, if one is truly a wise man, one will experience no emotional distress should adequate food be lacking. That's the Stoics. You say, well, not enough food today, I'm not going to get upset over that because it doesn't impair my moral goodness and that's the only truly good thing. So why get upset? By contrast, shalom,
that is the human good as the biblical writers understand it, includes such components as having sufficient food and living in political freedom. And that's why it is that the righteous person cries out to God in a state of emotional distress for deliverance from such evils as starvation and servitude. What is it that separates goods to which we are entitled from those to which we're not entitled, from those that go beyond entitlement? A good to which one
is entitled is a good such that if one is deprived of its enjoyment, exercise or possession, one is wronged. Yeah, that's right. But is that the end of the story? Can anything else be said? Well let's try. Reflect once that feeling hurt is an appropriate emotional response to being deprived of some good to which one has a right, along with anger at the one who deprived one of the right. Up to this point I've emphasized the
anger at the depriver and now I want to say feeling hurt by the deprivation. Now one feels hurt when one has been injured in some way. I'm hurt and I feel the hurt when I sprain my ankle. It's worth noting then that when someone has been wronged, we speak sometimes of their having been wounded. The idea is morally wounded of course. There may have been no sticks and stones breaking her bones. So what is it to
be morally wounded? It is, so I suggest, a heaven's worth not adequately acknowledged. The violation of rights is not as such a failure to acknowledge the worth of the goods of the world. It is I think rather failure to acknowledge the worth of those who are deprived of those goods. Many goods are such that my being deprived of them is no sign whatsoever that my worth isn't being adequately acknowledged. I think it's when a person's deprivation
of some good is an indication that the worth of that person is not adequately acknowledged, that the person has a right to that good. Put it the other way around, a person's rights are those goods that the person must enjoy if her worth is to be adequately acknowledged. Rights are what respect for persons requires, for the worth of persons. To deprive a person of his rights is to fail to acknowledge his dignity or to fail to
acknowledge it adequately. It is to wreak on him an indignity. And that's why the repetition of such indignity all too often results in the loss of appropriate self-esteem. The point is of course that acknowledging the worth of persons is not some sort of private mental performance. On the contrary, it's eminently public. If after winning the race I'm not awarded the prize which has been set for the winner of the race, then my worth as the
winner of the race is not being acknowledged. If after writing a top-notch paper the student is not awarded an A on her record, then her worth as one who has done top-notch academic work is not acknowledged. Of course deprivation of rights is usually not arbitrary and whimsical. There's usually some other evil behind it. Hitler refused to give Jesse Jones the gold medal for winning the 100-yard dash because Owens was black. What these examples
point to is the fact that to acknowledge a person's worth is to acknowledge her worth as something or other. There's no such thing as just acknowledging a person's worth, period. Acknowledging her worth is always as something or other. Of course there is such a thing as acknowledging a person's worth just as a person. It's such acknowledgement that lies at the basis of natural human rights. The right not to be tortured is grounded in the fact that
torturing somebody is incompatible with acknowledging his or her worth as a person. If one's reflections on rights are focused entirely on natural human rights, to the ignoring of all others, then it can be expected that the respect which underlies rights will be thought of to be respect for persons just qua persons. But I've come to think that if we cure ourselves of rights myopia and recognize what I've been arguing, this enormous and rich panoply of rights,
then correspondingly we're going to begin to recognize that the respect which underlies rights extends far beyond acknowledging the worth of persons just qua persons. It extends to acknowledging their worth as someone who has accomplished one thing and another, for example, won the race, written a top-notch paper, and so forth. And it's going to go beyond acknowledging accomplishments. At the bottom of the black consciousness movement in South Africa was the insistence that black people be acknowledged
not just for their worth as persons, but for their worth as black people. At the bottom of a good deal of feminism is the insistence that women be acknowledged not just for their worth as persons, but for their worth as women. And at the bottom of all forms of nationalism is the insistence that persons of the nation in question be acknowledged not just for their worth as persons, but for their worth as Palestinians or Basques or
Kurds or whatever. The picture which St. John draws in his apocalypse of the nations of the earth bearing their treasures into the heavenly city indicates to me that it's unacceptable in classic liberal fashion to confine our acknowledging of the worth of persons to acknowledging their worth just qua persons in saying, but I'm not going to pay any attention to the fact that you are Inuit or feminine or Palestinian or whatever. Oh dear, a lot more could
and should be said about what it is to acknowledge the worth of persons. I've just sort of tossed it up. Such acknowledgement being, so I have suggested, what grounds the distinction between those goods to which one has a right and those to which one does not have a right. But I've got to forego that further discussion and conclude now by bringing into the picture the fact that we human beings are God's creatures, objects of God's special
love. Suppose you've made something of which you are proud, rightly proud, and to which you are specially attached, a painting, a sculpture or whatever. And now suppose that I destroy it. To make things simpler, let's suppose that I destroy it in full knowledge of your pride in having made it and full knowledge of your special attachment to it. What do you say? Has your moral status in such a case been altered by this act of destruction
on my part? Surely it has. You've been wronged, morally wronged by my actions. And so too then I suggest for God, only more so. For as the paintings and sculptures that you and I make are all inert and incapable of flourishing, God's love for us takes the form of desiring our flourishing. And part of what goes into the flourishing of a human being is acknowledgement by her fellow human beings of her worth and enjoyment of those
goods which respect for her worth requires that she enjoy. Accordingly, as I see it, to wrong a fellow human being is also to wrong God. To morally injure a fellow human being is to morally injure God. The existence of rights by those of his creatures whom God specially loves implies that God is susceptible to moral injury. I say this in full knowledge of the fact that most of the Christian theological tradition has dismissed the possibility that
God is susceptible of being wronged and injured. Moral guilt is disobedience to God's laws. Being morally wronged is a violation of God's love. To moral guilt, God's response is anger. To moral injury, God's response is sympathetic sorrow for those human beings injured and divine hurt in response to the injury that their injury brings on God's self. Obligations are grounded in the will of God. Rights are grounded in the love of God. In the vulnerable love of
God, those who cry out for their rights touch the heart of God. Thank you. [applause]