Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Note on Text Structure
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: The Distinction of Dignity
- Chapter Two Dignity, Freedom and Reason: From Ancient Greece to Early Modernity
- Chapter Three The Sense of Dignity in Moral Philosophy: From the Ethical Intuitionists to the Irrationalists
- Chapter Four Marx's Critique of Morality: Natural Law, the State and Citizenship
- Chapter Five Classical Sociology's Regard for Human Dignity
- Chapter Six The Human Face of Dignity Reflected in Phenomenology and Existentialism
- Chapter Seven A Fresh Term for Dignity: Attending the Frankfurt School (Both ‘Old’ and ‘Young’)
- Chapter Eight Notes Sampling Research and Practice: Making Dignity Work; Making Dignity Care
- Chapter Nine The Slighting of Dignity: The Critic's Charter
- Chapter Ten Conclusion: After the Recognition of Dignity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter One - Introduction: The Distinction of Dignity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Note on Text Structure
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: The Distinction of Dignity
- Chapter Two Dignity, Freedom and Reason: From Ancient Greece to Early Modernity
- Chapter Three The Sense of Dignity in Moral Philosophy: From the Ethical Intuitionists to the Irrationalists
- Chapter Four Marx's Critique of Morality: Natural Law, the State and Citizenship
- Chapter Five Classical Sociology's Regard for Human Dignity
- Chapter Six The Human Face of Dignity Reflected in Phenomenology and Existentialism
- Chapter Seven A Fresh Term for Dignity: Attending the Frankfurt School (Both ‘Old’ and ‘Young’)
- Chapter Eight Notes Sampling Research and Practice: Making Dignity Work; Making Dignity Care
- Chapter Nine The Slighting of Dignity: The Critic's Charter
- Chapter Ten Conclusion: After the Recognition of Dignity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Reverence for life and being, for otherness, is something which can be taught or suggested very early. ‘Don't kill the poor spider, put him out in the garden’. Even a use of ‘him’ or ‘her’ instead of ‘it’ may help […] Morality, as the ability or attempt to be good, rests upon deep areas of sensibility and creative imagination, upon removal from one state of mind to another, upon shift of attachments, upon love and respect for the contingent details of the world. (Murdoch 1992, 337)
Zygmunt Bauman has remarked quite astutely that a word has ‘a feel’ as well as a meaning (Bauman 2001, 1); we might be tempted to append that it has also a history. The relation between changes in society over historical time and the concomitant transformation of a concept that depicts something of intrinsic value in that society is complex and contingent. An attempt is made, here, to see if we can get any closer to a rounded, threedimensional view of dignity by drawing on the historical record, on philosophy and social thought more widely and, finally, on contributions that present dignity in a rather more public and political light. We are at once faced with the question as to whether dignity is primarily an ethical– moral question, a politico– legal matter, a property of the normative order, an ontological phenomenon or, in itself, a force of nature. It may be all of these things at any one time, or, conspicuously, none of them. In considering what he calls the ‘compass of moral value judgements’, Friedrich Nietzsche lists dignity along with other ‘virtues’ he describes as being ‘sweet- sounding words’ (Nietzsche 2017, 210). If we were to take dignity as the case in point, he wonders whether it should be taken in itself, in its own right, or as seen from a certain perspective, or, even, in terms of its consequences (or, perhaps, its utility). Despite his disparagement of a ‘virtue’ like dignity, he is drawing out for us, here, the rounded, three- dimensional quality we might be looking for. At this point, however, answers to the questions he raises are not really forthcoming.
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- Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2018