Nature of Dignity (eBook)

Ron Bontekoe (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2010
324 Seiten
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-0-7391-3264-7 (ISBN)

Infos

The Nature of Dignity argues that, given what evolutionary biology tells us about human nature, we need a new understanding of what is involved in the exhibition of personal dignity, since Kant and other Enlightenment figures whose ideas of dignity have shaped our own were wrong in several of their key assumptions. The required new conception of dignity is then developed on the basis of insights gleaned from history, political-economics, literature, film, hermeneutical ethics, and evolutionary biology.

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The Nature of Dignity is a highly interdisciplinary work of philosophy that focuses primarily on the form of dignity (or nobility of demeanor) that individuals exhibit to varying degrees, rather than the form of dignity that we tend to presume we always already possess simply by virtue of being human. The book contends that the Enlightenment assumptions that have traditionally been appealed to in elucidating our conceptions of human dignity are no longer tenable-most importantly because of what we know about evolutionary biology, but also in light of certain dominant strains in modern political-economic theory. The book argues that, nonetheless, dignity is a value to which we should remain committed, and offers a new set of conceptual underpinnings with which to replace the no longer tenable Enlightenment assumptions of Kant, Locke, and others on this subject.

Autor

Ron Bontekoe is professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii.

Inhalt

Part 1 Dignity in EclipsePart 2 The Nature of Dignity: A Preliminary InquiryPart 3 Implications of Human FinitudePart 4 Tragedy and SacrificePart 5 Dignity and the Struggle for Survival: Evolutionary BiologyPart 6 Dignity and the Struggle for Survival: Political EconomicsPart 7 Why Embrace the Regulative Ideals?

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.3.2010
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sonstiges ► Geschenkbücher
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
• Schlagworte: Epistemology • Good and evil • Philosophy of dignity • Philosophy of Ethics and Morals
• ISBN-10: 0-7391-3264-4 / 0739132644
• ISBN-13: 978-0-7391-3264-7 / 9780739132647