Who Is My Neighbor?: Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights [Hardcover]

Thomas D. Williams (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

The achievement of this book is to ground rights in the dignity of the human person, and to do so in a way that should be convincing to Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
- Richard John Neuhaus, Editor in Chief of First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life

Father Williams gets John Paul II's project just right. He shows what is traditional and what is novel, and he does so in terms that are comprehensible to the educated reader.
- F. Russell Hittinger, Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and Research, Professor of Law, University of Tulsa

Williams's study presents a significant contribution to the discussion on natural law and the dignity of man. He succeeds in bringing in the main features of personalistic anthropology and ethics and making them fruitful as grounding for thought on human rights.
- Prof. Eberhard Schockenhoff, Professor of moral theology, University of Freiburg

Williams has succeeded in doing for human rights what Pierre Duhem and Stanley L. Jaki have done for the rise of science, namely detaching it from the Enlightenment. An extremely readable volume, which should be fascinating for specialists and novices alike.
- Gregorianum

This book is an important contribution to both the ongoing debate about the place of rights language in Catholic social thought and the broader debate about the meaning of human rights.
- Journal of Markets and Morality

From the Inside Flap

Who Is My Neighbor? makes an original, compelling case for human rights as moral entitlements grounded in the dignity of the human person. Drawing upon insights of Thomistic Personalism, Thomas D. Williams sets forth in clear, vigorous prose the anthropological, philosophical and theological bases for asserting that the human person must always be loved as an end and never used as a mere means... Williams suggests that rights language not only does no violence to classical ethics but serves to highlight certain fundamental truths about the human person essential to right human relations.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Catholic University of America Press (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813213916
• ISBN-13: 978-0813213910
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,337,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Father Thomas D. Williams, LC, ThD, is an American Moral Theologian living in Rome. He teaches Ethics and Catholic Social Doctrine at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum, and has served as Vatican Analyst for NBC News, CBS News, and Sky News in the UK.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars highly recommended, May 16, 2008

By 

mary lemmons (St Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Is My Neighbor?: Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights (Hardcover)

This book explains not only how the personalism of Karol Wojtyla is able to establish human rights, but also how this love-centered personalism harmonizes with the traditional understanding of Thomistic natural law and Catholic theology. It is a major contribution to Thomistic personalism and to rights theory.