Responding to what he calls the failure of social criticism after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Richard B. Miller aims in Terror, Religion, and Liberal Thought to help us “think normatively about religious violence and terrorism” (2). Miller reviews four types of explanations for the attacks — historical, economic, relativist, and internal critiques — and argues that each fails to analyze and defend the moral indignation Americans experienced in response, thereby participating in a “culture of excuse and apology” (4). He argues that his own account avoids this fate, even while remaining sensitive to cultural and religious differences, by defending moral indignation in terms of the violation of human dignity the attacks represented.

Miller grounds human dignity in the capacity humans have for moral subjectivity. Drawing on the work of Stephen Darwall, Miller argues that the ability to deliberate about and order one's life, and then to take responsibility for these decisions and actions, means that persons deserve respect as ends in themselves. Persons deserve respect not because they have human rights, but they have human rights because of the respect their moral subjectivity demands. These rights then entitle all persons to immunity from arbitrary harm or aggression. According to Miller, this immunity “provides the moral grounding for the conviction that unprovoked or arbitrary acts of danger or violence are unjust” (58). The attacks on September 11th represent a moral atrocity because they involved deliberate acts of destruction and killing of those who did nothing to forfeit their entitlement to security and life.

Grounding dignity in the capacity for moral subjectivity allows Miller to distinguish between respect for persons and respect for their beliefs and practices, which he casts in terms of Darwall's distinction between recognition respect and appraisal respect. The former requires only that we respect another as a moral subject, while the latter goes beyond this to esteem, based on a set of evaluative standards, the beliefs, and actions that result from the exercise of moral subjectivity. As Miller pithily puts it, I accord you recognition respect when I respect that you have feelings and appraisal respect when I respect the feelings you have. Taking account of the fact that our evaluative standards are culturally and religiously based, Miller introduces a third form of respect into Darwall's dichotomy, what he calls benefit-of-the-doubt respect. Situated between recognition and appraisal respect, benefit-of-the-doubt respect requires a presumptive openness to listen and learn from others, thereby potentially altering the standards by which one grants or withholds appraisal respect.

Miller is quick to note that this openness does not require changing one's standards or refusing to pass judgment on those of others, something he associates (mistakenly, in my view) with the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Instead, Miller argues that recognition respect functions as a basic standard that must be met in order to be accorded appraisal respect: “Customs, beliefs, or practices that assign recognition respect move one step toward earning appraisal respect” while those that deny recognition respect to others “undermine the grounds for securing appraisal respect” (99). This thin account of morality, Miller argues, sets the parameters for, and must take priority over, thicker accounts. The September 11th attackers and other religious extremists fail this test. They do not distinguish recognition respect from appraisal respect and so respect only those who share their thick morality.

Miller's book provides a clear and useful account of liberal political ethics, along with a helpful case study of how this approach might help illuminate questions of rights violations in the context of cultural and religious diversity. The triad of recognition, appraisal, and benefit-of-the-doubt respect provides a handy heuristic for sorting through issues that tend to befuddle students in their studies and citizens in public discourse. I mention students and citizens because the book is relatively brief, clearly written, and well-pitched for a thoughtful lay audience. It would be a nice addition to courses on ethics, human rights, or religion and politics. On the other hand, its brevity means that it ignores some key relevant scholarship, including a growing literature that sees human rights not as universal and pre-political, as he holds, but rather as performative practices or political acts themselves. The book also takes for granted that religion and religiously-motivated action are straightforwardly identifiable and separable from other domains of life, skirting important questions about the degree to which the concept of religion itself already depends on a western, if not specifically Protestant Christian, framework.

Given their indiscriminate use of violence and unambiguous violation of recognition respect, acts of terrorism are among the easier cases in which to apply Miller's framework. It would be interesting to see how it fares with harder cases involving the clash of religion and rights, those not involving overt violence. For example, what does this framework conclude when a state actor refuses to issue marriage licenses to a same-sex couple on religious grounds, or in which a commercial vendor refuses to provide services to same-sex couples in violation of anti-discrimination ordinances? Who has been denied recognition respect, the same-sex couple, the religious objector, or perhaps both? Does licensing or somehow participating in a same-sex wedding necessarily mean that one is giving the practice appraisal respect, or can one withhold appraisal respect while still offering recognition respect? Sorting out these questions is not straightforward, but Miller's Terror, Religion, and Liberal Thought has done a service in providing a way to frame them.