Alan Gewirth

Alan Gewirth (November 28, 1912 – May 9, 2004) was an American philosopher, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago, and author of Reason and Morality (1978), Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (1982), The Community of Rights (1996), Self-Fulfillment (1998), and numerous other writings in moral philosophy and political philosophy.

Ethical theory

Gewirth is best known for his ethical rationalism, according to which a supreme moral principle, which he calls the "Principle of Generic Consistency" (PGC), is logically derivable from the nature and structure of human agency. The principle states that every agent must act in accordance with his or her own and all other agents' generic rights to freedom and well-being.

According to Gewirth's theory, the PGC, is derivable from the fact of human agency, but it is derivable only via a dialectically-necessary mode of argumentation. The mode is "dialectical" in the sense that it presents the steps of the argument to the PGC as inferences made by an agent, rather than as statements true of the world itself. Each step is thus a description of what the agent thinks (or implicitly asserts), not what things are like independently of the viewpoint of the agent. This mode of argumentation is also "necessary" both in the sense that its initial premise is inescapable from any agent's standpoint and that the subsequent steps of the proof are logically deduced from this premise.

Talal Asad

Talal Asad (born 1932) is an anthropologist at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Asad has made important theoretical contributions to post-colonialism, Christianity, Islam, and ritual studies and has recently called for, and initiated, an anthropology of secularism. Using a genealogical method developed by Friedrich Nietzsche and made prominent by Michel Foucault, Asad "complicates terms of comparison that many anthropologists, theologians, philosophers, and political scientists receive as the unexamined background of thinking, judgment, and action as such. By doing so, he creates clearings, opening new possibilities for communication, connection, and creative invention where opposition or studied indifference prevailed".

His long-term research concerns the transformation of religious law (the shari'ah) in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt with special reference to arguments about what constitutes secular and progressive reform.

Biography

He was born in Saudi Arabia to Austrian diplomat, writer and reformer Muhammad Asad, a Jew who converted to Islam in his mid-20s, and a Saudi Arabian Muslim mother, Munira Hussein Al Shammari (died 1978).

Human rights

Human rights are moral principles or norms, that describe certain standards of human behavior, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights "to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being," and which are "inherent in all human beings" regardless of their nation, location, language, religion, ethnic origin or any other status. They are applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone. They require empathy and the rule of law and impose an obligation on persons to respect the human rights of others. They should not be taken away except as a result of due process based on specific circumstances; for example, human rights may include freedom from unlawful imprisonment, torture, and execution.

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs

The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs is an academic research center at Georgetown University in Washington, DC dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of religion, ethics, and politics. The center was founded in 2006 under a gift from William R. Berkley, a member of Georgetown's Board of Directors. The center's founding director was Thomas Banchoff.

The Berkley Center's mission is to explore global challenges, including democracy, human rights, economic and social development, international diplomacy, and inter-religious understanding. The Center states that two premises underlie its work: that a deep examination of faith and values is critical to address these challenges, and that the open engagement of religious and cultural traditions with one another can promote peace.

Nine programs are currently encompassed under the Berkley Center, though a variety of projects have been operated by the Center in the past. The programs engage scholars from around the United States and the world. These include the American Pilgrimage Project , the Doyle Engaging Difference Program, the project for Faith, Values, and Public Life, the project on Globalization, Religions, and the Secular, the project on Islam and World Politics, the project for Law, Religion, and Values, the project for Religion and Global Development, the Religion Freedom Project, and the project on The Church and the World.