scholarly journals Making Sense of Dignity: A Starting Point

Conatus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Filimon Peonidis
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Semantic Indeterminacy

Although appeals to human dignity became quite popular after the end of War World II in various moral and legal settings, the term retained an air of semantic indeterminacy, and scholars are of opposing minds concerning its usefulness and significance. In this essay I intend to offer a sketch of a “deflationary” account of human dignity – viewed as one moral value among many others – according to which it is conceived as the minimal respect we prima facie owe to our own personality, as well as to the personality of everyone else without any restriction or exception. This account is accompanied by a justification, which does not presuppose the endorsement of a particular moral theory, and envisages dignity as a bulwark to counter the morally abhorrent consequences of many categorical and normatively tainted dichotomies western societies have created.

The moral theology of John Paul II: Protestant reading

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-340
Author(s):  
Stephanie Smith
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Human Action ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analogia Entis ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
Normative Order ◽  
Moral Capacity

AbstractThis work critically examines the moral theology of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. In his writings as Wojtyla, and later as John Paul II, the theme of human dignity served as the starting point for his moral theology. This article first describes his conception of human dignity as influenced by Thomist and by phenomenological sources. The Thomist philosophy of being provided Wojtyla with an optimistic view of the epistemic and moral capacity of human persons. Wojtyla argued that because of the analogia entis, humans gain epistemic access to the normative order of God as well as the moral capacity to live in accordance with the law of God. Built upon the foundation of his Thomist assumptions, Wojtyla's phenomenological research enriched his insight into human dignity by arguing in favour of the formative nature of human action. He argued that human dignity rested also in this dynamism of personhood: the capacity not only to live in accordance with the normative order but to form oneself as virtuous by partaking in virtuous acts or to form one's community in solidarity through acts of participation and self-giving. After presenting his moral theology, this article then engages critically with his assumptions from a Protestant perspective. I argue that, while human dignity provides a powerful and beneficial starting point for ethics, his Thomist ontology of being/substance and the optimistic terms in which he interprets human dignity ultimately undermine his social programme. I propose that an ontology of relation provides a better starting point for interpreting human dignity and for appealing for acts of solidarity in the social realm.

Military Necessity and the Cultures of Military Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID LUBAN
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Law Of War ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Military Law ◽  
Interpretive Communities ◽  
The Military

AbstractMilitary and humanitarian lawyers approach the laws of war in different ways. For military lawyers, the starting point is military necessity, and the reigning assumption is that legal regulation of war must accommodate military necessity. For humanitarian lawyers, the starting point is human dignity and human rights. The result is two interpretive communities that systematically disagree not only over the meaning of particular law-of-war norms, but also over the sources and methods of law that could be used to resolve the disagreements. That raises the question whether military lawyers’ advice should acknowledge any validity to the contrary views of the ‘humanitarian’ community. The article offers a systematic analysis of the concept of military necessity, showing that civilian interests must figure in assessing military necessity itself. Even on its own terms, the military version of the law of war should seek to accommodate the civilian perspectives featured in the humanitarian version.

Utilitarian Strategies in Bentham and John Stuart Mill

Utilitas ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Careful Scrutiny ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
The Common ◽  
Utilitarian Theory

The argument of this paper is part of a general defence of the claim that Bentham's moral theory embodies a utilitarian theory of distributive justice, which is developed in his Civil Law writings. Whereas it is a commonplace of recent revisionist scholarship to argue that J. S. Mill had a developed utilitarian theory of justice, few scholars regard Bentham as having a theory of justice, let alone one that rivals in sophistication that of Mill. Indeed, Gerald J. Postema in his bookBentham and the Common Law Tradition, argues that Bentham had no substantial concern with the concept of justice, and that what analysis of the concept there is in Bentham's thought is unlike the utilitarian theory of justice to be found in chapter five of J. S. Mill'sUtilitarianismAlthough Postema's interpretation is not the only one that will be addressed in this paper, it serves as an important starting point for any rival interpretation of Bentham's ethical theory for two reasons. Firstly, it is the most comprehensive and most penetrating discussion of Bentham's utilitarian theory, drawing as it does on a wide variety of published and unpublished materials written throughout Bentham's career. Secondly, it is interesting in this particular context because the contrast that Postema draws between Bentham's and Mill's theories of justice depends upon a particular reading of Mill's theory of justice and utility which is derived from recent scholarship and which is by no means uncontroversial. As part of the defence of the claim that Bentham had a sophisticated theory of distributive justice, it will be argued in this paper that the contrast drawn between Bentham and Mill does not stand up to careful scrutiny, for insofar as Mill's theory of justice can be consistently defended it is not significantly different from the utilitarian strategy that Bentham employed for incorporating considerations of distributive justice within his theory. This is not to claim that there are not significant differences between the theories of justice of Bentham and J. S. Mill, but it is to claim that whatever technical differences exist between their theories, both writers saw the need to incorporate the concept of justice within utilitarianism. Therefore, rather than showing that Mill is an interesting thinker to the extent that he abandons his early Benthamism, by demonstrating how close Mill's theory of utility and justice is to that of Bentham, it will be possible to argue that Bentham employed a sophisticated and subtle utilitarian theory that was responsive to the sort of problems which occupied Mill a generation later.

scholarly journals Tentang Harmoni antara Tuhan, Manusia dan Alam dalam Tradisi Beduruk di Dusun Medang

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-56
Author(s):  
Fransiskus Gregorius Nyaming
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Man And Nature

In this paper the author focuses on the theme of harmony by using the Beduruktradition in Medang hamlet as a starting point for reflection. The harmony in question is harmony between man and God, between man and fellowman and between man and nature. The author believes that so far the beduruk tradition has contributed to the values and wisdoms that are needed to build that harmonies. The emphasis on the theme of harmony actually departs from the author’s own concern about the destruction of nature and the environment, especially in Indonesia. Therefore, through this discussion, the authors hope that whatever forms of human work in cultivating nature, always respect the Creator, respect for human dignity, and respect for nature.

Reading Signs and Symbols with Abdelkébir Khatibi

2020 ◽  
pp. 237-260
Author(s):  
Rim Feriani ◽  
Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani ◽  
Debra Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
The Body ◽  
Radical Theory ◽  
Abdelkebir Khatibi ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Theories Of Meaning

This chapter considers the ways in which Khatibi’s practices of reading contribute to theories of meaning through his thinking on the deciphering of signs and symbols and of making sense of the world, and of the worlds of the text, in their multifaceted forms. It takes as its starting point what Khatibi terms, in his introductory essay ‘Le Cristal du Texte’ in La Bessure du Nom propre, ‘l’intersémiotique’, migrant signs which move between one sign system and another. Khatibi takes as his own project examples from semiotic systems found within Arabic and Islamic cultures, from both popular culture, such as the tattoo, to calligraphy and the language of the Koran, from the body to the text and beyond – including storytelling, mosaics, urban space, textiles. His readings reveal the intersemiotic and polysemic meanings created in the movements of these migrant signs between their sign systems. For Khatibi, this ‘infinity’ of the ‘text’ is linked also to a mobile and migrant identity refracted in the multifaceted surfaces of the crystal (hence the title of the essay – ‘Le Cristal du Texte’) rather than in one reflection as in a mirror. Moving from these concerns of Khatibi with which he develops his radical theory of the sign, of the word and of writing, the chapter goes on to propose new readings of a selection of other writers with a shared, but varied, relationship to their Islamic heritage. These are writers working with and through that heritage – and importantly, as for Khatibi, including the Sufi heritage – and whose writing is also resonant with Khatibi’s intersemiotic theoretical and cultural project concerned with the individual and the collective, the historical and the contemporary, the political, the social and the linguistic.

Global Prescriptive Authority

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-97
Author(s):  
Margaret M. deGuzman
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Prescriptive Authority ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter explores the relationship between gravity and global prescriptive authority— the authority of the global community to prescribe rules of conduct and consequences for violating those rules. . It surveys the principal theories of international crimes and shows that virtually all of them rely significantly on a gravity threshold above which international prescriptive authority is justified. It goes on to explain how gravity has impeded the development of a coherent moral theory of global prescriptive authority, and advocates a theory that links such authority to the moral values at stake in labeling a crime “international,” in particular the value of human dignity.

scholarly journals Educating through exemplars: Alternative paths to virtue

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Croce ◽  
Maria Silvia Vaccarezza
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Character Education ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Italian History ◽  
Fundamental Feature

This article confronts Zagzebski’s exemplarism with the intertwined debates over the conditions of exemplarity and the unity–disunity of the virtues, to show the advantages of a pluralistic exemplar-based approach to character education. This pluralistic exemplar-based approach to character education is based on a prima facie disunitarist perspective in moral theory, which amounts to admitting both exemplarity in all respects and single-virtue exemplarity. First, we account for the advantages of pluralistic exemplar-based approach to character education, and we show how two figures in recent Italian history (Giorgio Perlasca and Gino Bartali) satisfy Blum’s definitions of ‘moral hero’ and ‘moral saint’. Then we offer a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of heroes and saints with respect to character education, according to four criteria derived from our pluralistic exemplar-based approach to character education: admirability, virtuousness, transparency, and imitability. Finally, we conclude that both unitarist and disunitarist exemplars are fundamental to character education; this is because of the hero’s superiority to the saint with respect to imitability, a fundamental feature of the exemplar for character education.

Questioning health security: Insecurity and domination in world politics

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 939-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOÃO NUNES
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social

AbstractIt has become common to speak of health security, but the meaning of the latter is often taken for granted. Existing engagements with this notion have been constrained by an excessive focus on national security and on the securitising efforts of elites. This has led to an increasingly sceptical outlook on the potentialities of security for making sense of, and helping to tackle, health problems. Inspired by the idea of security as emancipation, this article reconsiders the notion of health security. It takes as its starting point the concrete insecurities experienced by individuals, and engages with them by way of an analytical framework centred on the notion of domination. Domination deepens analysis by connecting individual experiences of insecurity, the social interactions through which these are given meaning, and the structures that make them possible. Domination also broadens the remit of analysis, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of insecurity. The analytical benefits of this framework are demonstrated by two examples: HIV/AIDS; and water and sanitation. The lens of domination is also shown to bring benefits for the political engagement with global health problems.

Can Character Ethics Have Moral Rules and Principles? Christian Doctrine and Comprehensive Moral Theory

Horizons ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-71
Author(s):  
David W. Haddorff
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
Moral Rules

AbstractThis paper investigates how character ethicists use rules and principles in their virtue-centered and narrative-dependent theories, and how such limited use fails to appreciate the performative content of Christian doctrine. If they are correct in insisting that Christian ethics begin with the practical import of theological convictions, then they not only limit the description of such beliefs but also the performance of such beliefs. A more “comprehensive ethic” that includes rules, principles, practices, and virtues, when one begins with the performance of doctrine not scriptural narratives. Such an argument unfolds through three states of the article: (a) it describes how character ethics uses rules, norms, and principles in its own moral theory; (b) it further evaluates this theory based on its own procedural starting point; and (3) it constructs how rules and principles can emerge from such a methodological starting point.

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