Dignity And Vulnerability

Author : George W. Harris
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2023-04-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780520309722

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Dignity and Vulnerability by George W. Harris Pdf

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.

Author : Aniceto Masferrer,Emilio García-Sánchez
Publisher : Springer
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2016-08-26
Category : Law
ISBN : 9783319326931

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Human Dignity of the Vulnerable in the Age of Rights by Aniceto Masferrer,Emilio García-Sánchez Pdf

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.

Author : Matthew R. Petrusek,Jonathan Rothchild
Publisher : University of Notre Dame Pess
Page : 616 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2020-06-25
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780268106683

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Value and Vulnerability by Matthew R. Petrusek,Jonathan Rothchild Pdf

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.

Author : Unesco. International Bioethics Committee
Publisher : UNESCO
Page : 47 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2024-04-27
Category : Bioethics
ISBN : 9230011118

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The Principle of Respect for Human Vulnerability and Personal Integrity: Report of the International Bioethics Committee of UNESCO (IBC) by Unesco. International Bioethics Committee Pdf

Author : Maria Luisa Mendes Teixeira,Lucia Maria Barbosa de Oliveira
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2021-04-13
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9783030685607

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Organizational Dignity and Evidence-Based Management by Maria Luisa Mendes Teixeira,Lucia Maria Barbosa de Oliveira Pdf

This book discusses dignity in the organizational context. Combining diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, as well as empirical studies, this book examines the concept of dignity between organizations and a variety of stakeholders. Going beyond the traditional approach of the relationship between company and employees, and beyond the traditional perspective of human dignity in a Kantian or post-Kantian approach, this volume innovates by discussing dignity from different epistemic perspectives, bringing to the fore dignity, inserted in different organizational and cultural contexts. The volume is divided into five parts. The first part is dedicated to the concept of dignity in the organizational sphere (dignity inside organizations, dignity between organizations and their stakeholders, and dignity in business-to-business relationships) discussed under different epistemic approaches. The second part deals with dignity in the relationships between companies and employees. The third part deals with the relationship between companies and clients. The fourth part of the book studies business-to-business relationships, addressing the educational sector, restaurants, and microcredit. Finally, the fifth part focuses on the relationships between the organizational dignity construct and other constructs, such as stress, spirituality and trust. Opening new theoretical and methodological perspectives for the study of dignity, this book will be of use to researchers and students studying management, leadership, and business strategy, as well as management and HR professionals.

Author : Daniel Bedford,Jonathan Herring
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 190 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2020-02-13
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781351105682

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Embracing Vulnerability by Daniel Bedford,Jonathan Herring Pdf

This book brings together legal scholars engaging with vulnerability theory to explore the implications and challenges for law of understanding vulnerability as generative and a source of connection and development. The book is structured into five sections that cover fields of law where there is already significant recourse to the concept of vulnerability. These sections include a main chapter by a legal theorist who has previously examined the creative potential of vulnerability and responses from scholars working in the same field. This is designed to draw out some of the central debates concerning how vulnerability is conceptualised in law. Several contributors highlight the need to re-focus on some of these more positive aspects of vulnerability to counter the way law is being used enable persons to escape the stigma associated with vulnerability by concealing that condition. They seek to explore how law might embrace vulnerability, rather than conceal it. The book also includes contributions that seek to bring vulnerability into a non-binary relationship with other core legal concepts, such as autonomy and dignity. Rather than discarding these legal concepts in favour of vulnerability, these contributions highlight how vulnerability can be entwined with relational autonomy and embodied dignity. This book is essential reading for both students studying legal theory and practitioners interested in vulnerability.

Author : Donna Hicks
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2019-10-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780300240856

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Leading with Dignity by Donna Hicks Pdf

What every leader needs to know about dignity and how to create a culture in which everyone thrives This landmark book from an expert in dignity studies explores the essential but under-recognized role of dignity as part of good leadership. Extending the reach of her award-winning book Dignity: Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, Donna Hicks now contributes a specific, practical guide to achieving a culture of dignity. Most people know very little about dignity, the author has found, and when leaders fail to respect the dignity of others, conflict and distrust ensue. She highlights three components of leading with dignity: what one must know in order to honor dignity and avoid violating it; what one must do to lead with dignity; and how one can create a culture of dignity in any organization, whether corporate, religious, governmental, healthcare, or beyond. Brimming with key research findings, real-life case studies, and workable recommendations, this book fills an important gap in our understanding of how best to be together in a conflict-ridden world.

Author : Yechiel Michael Barilan
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2012-09-14
Category : Medical
ISBN : 9780262304887

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Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Responsibility by Yechiel Michael Barilan Pdf

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.

Author : Remy Debes
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2017-06-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190677541

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Dignity by Remy Debes Pdf

In everything from philosophical ethics to legal argument to public activism, it has become commonplace to appeal to the idea of human dignity. In such contexts, the concept of dignity typically signifies something like the fundamental moral status belonging to all humans. Remarkably, however, it is only in the last century that this meaning of the term has become standardized. Before this, dignity was instead a concept associated with social status. Unfortunately, this transformation remains something of a mystery in existing scholarship. Exactly when and why did "dignity" change its meaning? And before this change, was it truly the case that we lacked a conception of human worth akin to the one that "dignity" now represents? In this volume, leading scholars across a range of disciplines attempt to answer such questions by clarifying the presently murky history of "dignity," from classical Greek thought through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present day.

Author : Andrea Sangiovanni
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2017-06-26
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674049215

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Humanity Without Dignity by Andrea Sangiovanni Pdf

Why are all persons due equal respect? Andrea Sangiovanni rejects the view that human dignity is grounded in our capacities for reason, love, etc. Rather than focus on the basis for equality, we should focus on inequality: Why and when is it wrong to treat others as inferior? Moral equality, he writes, is best explained by a rejection of cruelty.

Author : Debra B. Bergoffen
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 147 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2013-03-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781136596940

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Contesting the Politics of Genocidal Rape by Debra B. Bergoffen Pdf

Rape, traditionally a spoil of war, became a weapon of war in the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. The ICTY Kunarac court responded by transforming wartime rape from an ignored crime into a crime against humanity. In its judgment, the court argued that the rapists violated the Muslim women’s right to sexual self-determination. Announcing this right to sexual integrity, the court transformed women’s vulnerability from an invitation to abuse into a mark of human dignity. This close reading of the trial, guided by the phenomenological themes of the lived body and ambiguity, feminist critiques of the autonomous subject and the liberal sexual/social contract, critical legal theory assessments of human rights law and institutions, and psychoanalytic analyses of the politics of desire, argues that the court, by validating women’s epistemic authority (their right to establish the meaning of their experience of rape) and affirming the dignity of the vulnerable body (thereby dethroning the autonomous body as the embodiment of dignity), shows us that human rights instruments can be used to combat the epidemic of wartime rape if they are read as de-legitimating the authority of the masculine autonomous subject and the gender codes it anchors.

Author : Erinn Gilson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2013-12-17
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781135136178

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The Ethics of Vulnerability by Erinn Gilson Pdf

As concerns about violence, war, terrorism, sexuality, and embodiment have garnered attention in philosophy, the concept of vulnerability has become a shared reference point in these discussions. As a fundamental part of the human condition, vulnerability has significant ethical import: how one responds to vulnerability matters, whom one conceives as vulnerable and which criteria are used to make such demarcations matters, how one deals with one’s own vulnerability matters, and how one understands the meaning of vulnerability matters. Yet, the meaning of vulnerability is commonly taken for granted and it is assumed that vulnerability is almost exclusively negative, equated with weakness, dependency, powerlessness, deficiency, and passivity. This reductively negative view leads to problematic implications, imperiling ethical responsiveness to vulnerability, and so prevents the concept from possessing the normative value many theorists wish it to have. When vulnerability is regarded as weakness and, concomitantly, invulnerability is prized, attentiveness to one’s own vulnerability and ethical response to vulnerable others remain out of reach goals. Thus, this book critiques the ideal of invulnerability, analyzes the problems that arise from a negative view of vulnerability, and articulates in its stead a non-dualistic concept of vulnerability that can remedy these problems.

Author : Donna Hicks
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780300261424

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Dignity by Donna Hicks Pdf

A noted conflict-resolution expert explores dignity, its role in human conflict, and its power to improve relationships Drawing on her extensive experience in international conflict resolution and on insights from evolutionary biology, psychology, and neuroscience, Donna Hicks explains what the elements of dignity are, how to recognize dignity violations, how to respond when we are not treated with dignity, how dignity can restore a broken relationship, why leaders must understand the concept of dignity, and more. By choosing dignity as a way of life, Hicks shows, we open the way to greater peace within ourselves and to a safer and more humane world for all. For the Tenth Anniversary Edition of Dignity, Hicks has written a new preface that reflects on her experience helping communities and individuals understand the power of dignity and how it can lead to a more peaceful world. "Anyone who understands the importance of personal feelings and their fuel for conflict should consider Dignity as a powerful advisory and motivational guide."--Midwest Book Review Winner of the 2012 Educator's Award, given by the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International.

Author : Jeffrey Tranzillo
Publisher : CUA Press
Page : 399 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780813220116

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John Paul II on the Vulnerable by Jeffrey Tranzillo Pdf

In John Paul II on the Vulnerable, Jeffrey Tranzillo provides a lucid introduction to John Paul II's philosophical and theological understanding of the human person.

Author : Paulus Kaufmann,Hannes Kuch,Christian Neuhaeuser,Elaine Webster
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2010-10-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789048196616

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Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization by Paulus Kaufmann,Hannes Kuch,Christian Neuhaeuser,Elaine Webster Pdf

Degradation, dehumanization, instrumentalization, humiliation, and nonrecognition – these concepts point to ways in which we understand human beings to be violated in their dignity. Violations of human dignity are brought about by concrete practices and conditions; some commonly acknowledged, such as torture and rape, and others more contested, such as poverty and exclusion. This volume collates reflections on such concepts and a range of practices, deepening our understanding of human dignity and its violation, bringing to the surface interrelationships and commonalities, and pointing to the values that are thereby shown to be in danger. In presenting a streamlined discussion from a negative perspective, complemented by conclusions for a positive account of human dignity, the book is at once a contribution to the body of literature on what dignity is and how it should be protected as well as constituting an alternative, fresh and focused perspective relevant to this significant recurring debate. As the concept of human dignity itself crosses disciplinary boundaries, this is mirrored in the unique range of perspectives brought by the book’s European and American contributors – in philosophy and ethics, law, human rights, literature, cultural studies and interdisciplinary research. This volume will be of interest to social and moral philosophers, legal and human rights theorists, practitioners and students.