This volume is devoted to exploring a subject which, on the surface, might appear to be just a trending topic. In fact, it is much more than a trend. It relates to an ancient, permanent issue which directly connects with people’s life and basic needs: the recognition and protection of individuals’ dignity, in particular the inherent worthiness of the most vulnerable human beings. The content of this book is described well enough by its title: ‘Human Dignity of the Vulnerable in the Age of Rights’. Certainly, we do not claim that only the human dignity of vulnerable people should be recognized and protected. We rather argue that, since vulnerability is part of the human condition, human vulnerability is not at odds with human dignity. To put it simply, human dignity is compatible with vulnerability. A concept of human dignity which discards or denies the dignity of the vulnerable and weak is at odds with the real human condition. Even those individuals who might seem more skilled and talented are fragile, vulnerable and limited. We need to realize that human condition is not limitless. It is crucial to re-discover a sense of moderation regarding ourselves, a sense of reality concerning our own nature. Some lines of thought take the opposite view. It is sometimes argued that humankind is – or is called to be – powerful, and that the time will come when there will be no vulnerability, no fragility, no limits at all. Human beings will become like God (or what believers might think God to be). This perspective rejects human vulnerability as in intrinsic evil. Those who are frail or weak, who are not autonomous or not able to care for themselves, do not possess dignity. In this volume it is claimed that vulnerability is an inherent part of human condition, and because human dignity belongs to all individuals, laws are called to recognize and protect the rights of all of them, particularly of those who might appear to be more vulnerable and fragile.

A novel and multidisciplinary exposition and theorization of human dignity and rights, brought to bear on current issues in bioethics and biolaw. “Human dignity” has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term—like love, hope, and justice—that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it; other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an urgently needed, nonideological, and thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei; provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability; presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective; explores issues of moral status; and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law.

In this significant addition to moral theory, George W. Harris challenges a view of the dignity and worth of persons that goes back through Kant and Christianity to the Stoics. He argues that we do not, in fact, believe this view, which traces any breakdowns of character to failures of strength. When it comes to what we actually value in ourselves and others, he says, we are far more Greek than Christian. At the most profound level, we value ourselves as natural organisms, as animals, rather than as godlike beings who transcend nature. The Kantian-Christian-Stoic tradition holds that if we were fully able to realize our dignity as Kantians, Christians, or Stoics, we would be better, stronger people, and therefore less vulnerable to character breakdown. Dignity and Vulnerability offers an opposing view, that sometimes character breaks down not because of some shortcoming in it but because of what is good about it, because of the very virtues and features of character that give us our dignity. If dignity can make us fragile and vulnerable to breakdown, then breakdown can be benign as well as harmful, and thus the conceptions of human dignity embedded in the tradition leading up to Kant are deeply mistaken. Harris proposes a foundation for our belief in human dignity in what we can actually know about ourselves, rather than in metaphysical or theological fantasy. Having gained this knowledge, we can understand the source of real strength. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.

Value and Vulnerability brings together scholars of many religions—including Catholicism, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Islam, and Humanism—to identify and examine conceptions and interpretations of dignity within different religious and philosophical perspectives and their applications to contemporary issues of conflict, such as gendered, religious, and racial violence, immigration, ecology, and religious peacemaking. Value and Vulnerability also includes response chapters that clarify and refine these interpretations from interfaith perspectives. Through this volume, Matthew R. Petrusek and Jonathan Rothchild offer recommendations for advancing the conversation about dignity within and among traditions and for addressing urgent global issues and threats to dignity. Together, Petrusek, Rothchild, and the contributors create a comparative framework constituted by seven questions: What sources justify dignity’s existence, nature, and purpose? What is the relationship between the divine and human dignity? What is the relationship between dignity and the human body? Is dignity vulnerable or invulnerable to moral harm? Is dignity inherent or attained? Is dignity universal and equal? Is dignity practical? Through its systematic, comparative, interdisciplinary, and practical dimensions, Value and Vulnerability fills in the gaps in contemporary theological, philosophical, and ethical discourses on dignity. Contributors: Matthew R. Petrusek, Jonathan Rothchild, Darlene Fozard Weaver, Kristin Scheible, Karen B. Enriquez, Elliot N. Dorff, Daniel Nevins, Christopher Key Chapple, David P. Gushee, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Zeki Saritoprak, William Schweiker, Hille Haker, Nicholas Denysenko, Terrence L. Johnson, William O’Neill, Victor Carmona, Dawn Nothwehr, OSF, and Ellen Ott Marshall.

Human dignity recognizes and reflects the equal worth of each and every member of the human family, regardless of gender, race, social or political status, talents, merit, or any other differentiator. But it is also right that can be claimed, an interest that can be protected, like liberty or equality or shelter or free speech. It is now recognized in more than 150 of the world's constitutions from all regions of the world. Also, increasingly, courts around the globe are recognizing the right to dignity and applying it against governments and others to ensure that the dignity of all is respected. This unique book aims to provide an introduction to dignity rights, including what they are (or are not), how they are embodied constitutionally around the globe, and how courts interpret and apply them (or don't). This book includes selected texts showing constitutionally embedded dignity rights around the globe, an overview which maps dignity law, and units on introduction to dignity law; dignity and identity; living with dignity; protecting the dignity of people with particular vulnerabilities; and participatory dignity, along with a conclusion and index.--Publisher.

Indivisibility and Hierarchy among Human Rights -- Notes -- References -- Index

This book intertwines two major themes in contemporary legal theory – the concepts of human dignity and the problem of the autonomy and limits of the law – while also addressing two other key aspects – the first one concerned with human rights practices and foundations (in their direct connections with the issue of dignity), the second one considering the role that the law’s aspirations attribute to the experience of an autonomous subject-person (and the demands that identify his/her position in the dialectical counterpoint with the rethinking of a community). The diversity of perspectives that each of these themes allows is explored in various contexts and with unmistakable implications concerning juridical validity, rule of law practices, pluralism, political and practical-cultural challenges, and divisive “bio-ethical” issues. This means considering the separation or separability theses between law and morality and the juridically relevant experience of person(hood) as a dialectic between autonomy and responsibility, the orthodox and heterodox images of comparable concreteness and incomparable singularity, the challenges of external points of view and interdisciplinary approaches.