A short time ago I posted here about Nicholas Aroney's piece titled "The Rise and Fall of Human Dignity." Then came an email from SSRN with the abstract of a forthcoming law review article by Frederick Mark Gedicks titled "Christian Dignity and the Overlapping Consensus." I would embed a link to Gedicks's piece but on every page there is a warning: "Do not cite or quote without permission." So I won't.
In short, the notion of a Christian foundation for human rights frightens Gedicks. Perhaps "frightens" is too strong but he certainly thinks Christian foundationalism is a bad idea. I would have been more open to Gedicks's concerns if his rapid-fire history of the Christian doctrine of the imago dei (image of God in humans) had been more than a tendentious replay of secondary and tertiary sources. See Aroney for a brief but better review of that history.
Substantively, Gedicks's fears seem straw mannish. Since any appeals to (Christian) foundations threatens his vision for an overlapping consensus à la John Rawls, THEY MUST STOP. Why they must stop isn't persuasively argued.(You can read why Rawls was wrong in a book edited by Greg Forster and Anthony Bradley here.) Without quoting Gedicks I can only suggest that he believes they won't work in an increasingly pluralized and secularized world. Well, secularized, anyway; following his ideological mentor, Gedicks's version of pluralism doesn't include space for non-secular points of view. That Christian foundations may be True is simply inconceivable.
More could be said about the weaknesses of Gedicks's piece but it won't be said by me. Suffice it to conclude that Geddick has secured a place for his paper in a US law review, which is all the more reason to lament the state of student-edited law journals.
He's a practicing Mormon teaching at BYU. I dont' know if he tried publishing elsewhere but I doubt that the Harvards and Yales and Virginias and Northwesterns welcome articles from "believers."
ReplyDeleteI think Mormons view themselves as Christian. I believe Harold Bloom did in The American Religion. So I don't think Gedicks is approaching this as a secularist trying to exclude religion from the public square. He may be acknowledging (without endorsement) of the prevailing secularism in academia (and elsewhere) generally.
My sense is that British Common Law was shaped by Christian principles with courts of equity being essentially part of the religious establishment. I'm guessing that Gedicks would not challenge that. I also think that Mormon doctrine is pro-life to the extent that's an issue in play in asking whether human rights accrue before birth.
I'd sense, rather, that Gedicks is searching for some agreed first principles that might facilitate discussion/debate among humans whether secular or not.
I have spent time as a law reform consultant in Moslem countries where it has been necessary to validate legal arguments without reference to religious values. Polygamy in juxtaposition with surviving spouse rights was one of the challenges. I guess I think that's a valid enterprise given commercial issues that reach beyond national or theological boundaries.