May 31, 2011
Human Dignity
Remy Debes reviews George Kateb's Human Dignity, Harvard University Press over at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:
You really should read this book. I think . . .
George Kateb's Human Dignity has the ring of popular philosophy. It isn't rigorously researched, especially with regard to the literature on human dignity. It overreaches, making substantive claims not just about the nature and basis of human dignity, but also human rights, liberty, morality, mind, consciousness, self-consciousness, identity, imagination, language, autonomy, and agency. And it defends more than a few contentious positions, including the central claim that human dignity is underwritten by human uniqueness in the strong sense that humans are partly divorced from the natural order -- a claim, it must be added, which is on the one hand intended secularly and on the other hand defended unabashedly from the armchair. Still -- you should probably read this book.
It is a rewarding book. Rewarding because of its scope -- or more exactly, because of its enviable ability to be (generally) deep despite the incredible scope. Rewarding because of its style -- its intentionally personal tone and scholastically unencumbered pace. And it is rewarding because it is so bold. Given the timid and hedge-prone state of recent work on human dignity, Kateb's confident viewpoint is refreshing and engaging even when it is frustrating, wildly speculative, and wrong. In short, Human Dignity is one of the more interesting contributions on the subject of human worth in the last few decades. It absorbed me when it succeeded. And it absorbed me when it failed.
Ironically, one of this book's more important successes may be one Kateb himself appreciates least: unlike most work on human dignity, Kateb uses the right method. Abstracting from his substantive and normative claims about the nature of dignity, claims which are the focus of the book, Kateb implicitly appears to appreciate the need to get clear on, and be led by, what I have recently called the form of dignity.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:43 PM | Permalink
Comments
"the central claim that human dignity is underwritten by human uniqueness in the strong sense that humans are partly divorced from the natural order" a claim strongly reminiscent of the Bible authenticating the Bible and other question-begging power games.
Posted by: cavall de quer | Jun 1, 2011 5:13:26 AM
Robin, I like the concept of "the form of dignity" as well as they way you deal with how Debes deals with the substance of dignity.
Clearly it is a cloudy subject, especially when considering the "he is dignified" and "he is not dignified" moral contrast aspect of it.
Then there is the matter of the dignity of the species itself, which seems to be the focus of "his substantive and normative claims about the nature of dignity".
That could lead to the notion that there is a cosmic aspect to dignity.
Which may end up only being measured by an understanding of cosmic dignity.
An understanding of the long term requirements for ultimately determining the cosmic aspects of the the dignity of the human species.
Posted by: Dredd | Jun 1, 2011 7:15:51 AM
Post a comment