Rights and Christian Ethics

Kieran Cronin helps philosophers and theologians to understand each other's perspectives on the language of rights.

Kieran Cronin (Author)

9780521092944, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 January 2009

348 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.44 kg

Kieran Cronin aims in this book to show how a Christian perspective may have something fruitful to contribute to the language of rights. In so doing, he examines some of the complexities involved in using this language, drawing from literature in moral philosophy and jurisprudence in the process. The novelty of his approach lies in the attempt to distinguish two complementary aspects within metaethics, aspects which the author calls the 'discursive' and the 'imaginative'. Cronin regards the use of models (which are extended metaphors) as providing a bridge between these two aspects, and the imaginative metaethics which emerges is seen to be rich in possibilities for both secular and Christian understandings of rights-talk.

Introduction
1. Metaethics - meaning and justification
2. Initial elucidation of rights-language
3. Conceptual scepticism and rights
4. Moral and theological scepticism
5. Imagination, metaethics and rights
6. Theological imagination and rights
7. Rights, power and covenant
8. Theological foundations of rights-language
Afterword: Criteria for theological/metaethical models
Index.

Subject Areas: Christian theology [HRCM]