McClendon David
University of Texas at Austin.
Implicit Relig. 2014;17(1):47-61. doi: 10.1558/imre.v17i1.47.
Debate surrounding the United States Supreme Court's 2010 decision in is ostensibly about the legal rights of corporations. However, I argue that the debate about corporate personhood is infused with religious concerns, rooted in the Protestant Reformation, about the proper identification of agentive subjects and the consequences of identification for human personhood. Focusing on the language used by opponents and defenders in the popular media, I show how both sides are animated by Protestant notions of human agency and share similar anxieties about the threats to that agency posed by abstract corporate or governmental entities. Attending to this fundamentally religious dimension not only improves our understanding of the moral stakes in the debate over corporations' legal rights but it also illuminates the implicit religious underpinnings of American political discourse.
围绕美国最高法院2010年在[具体案件]中的裁决展开的辩论表面上是关于公司的法律权利。然而，我认为关于公司法人地位的辩论充斥着宗教关切，其根源可追溯到新教改革，涉及对能动主体的恰当识别以及这种识别对人类人格的影响。通过关注大众媒体中反对者和支持者所使用的语言，我展示了双方如何受到新教关于人类能动性观念的驱动，并对抽象的公司或政府实体对这种能动性构成的威胁有着类似的焦虑。关注这一根本的宗教层面不仅能增进我们对公司法律权利辩论中道德利害关系的理解，还能揭示美国政治话语中隐含的宗教基础。
