2 - The Alpine Climb between Paris and Rome

Summary

This chapter examines Samuel Moyn and John Finnis’s heated exchange over Christian human rights. Their diverging methodologies and conclusions are rooted in different fundamental commitments, respectively, historicism and metaphysical realism. Furthermore, the debate implicitly acts out older, deeper tensions between anti-Catholic modernity and antimodern Catholicism. This longer trajectory reached a paradoxical climax after the Second Vatican Council when many Catholics turned toward the modern paradigm just as others were diagnosing its demise. Contemporary reflection on Christian human rights demonstrates how the sufficient reasons of history complicate predictable choices between secular and religious worldviews. One ongoing challenge, then, is to mediate such differences through mutual translation and dialogue.