Dignity and Cultural Degradation
Shaping a performance in the drama of living, each of us wonders: How am I doing? Am I creating a persona suitable to the human drama, crafting…
Shaping a performance in the drama of living, each of us wonders: How am I doing? Am I creating a persona suitable to the human drama, crafting…
Most people, understandably, have not reflected systematically on the idea of their own inherent dignity: what exactly it consists of, and why it is “inalienable.” Even fewer…
There is a well-known way to prevent transcendent reality from becoming a living truth, and to keep uncertainties about the ground of reality (and existential shakenness) at…
Those committed to inherent human dignity and rights may, or may not, focus attention on the transcendence of the “absolute” that validates them. If they do, they…
If inherent human dignity exists—and the judgment that it does is a foundation-stone of liberal democracy—then the contingent particularity of every person (embodied, fragile, here-now-gone-tomorrow) is also…
The phrase inherent human dignity refers to the value of being a person. So we must ask: What is a person? Sometimes, nowadays, we hear impassioned assertions…
The four members of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights responsible for crafting the final version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Charles Malik, Eleanor Roosevelt,…
The United Nations was founded in October 1945. Eight months later, it established a Commission on Human Rights, which was given the task of producing an international…
The idea of inherent human dignity has come to play a prominent role in contemporary culture. A commonplace, now, in political discourse and journalism, it has long…
All ideas of a purely “immanent” human nature are based on a philosophical oversight: the failure to recognize that affirmation of an “immanent reality” has metaphysical meaning…
When we ask what human nature is, the words themselves can be a cause of misdirection, as the word nature suggests that a complete answer to the…
Sometimes, in a set of reflections, one needs to slow down and describe certain details with delicacy and fine attention; sometimes, though, summary strokes are needed. Here…
Discovery of the transcendence of ultimate reality—whether undesrtood as Tao, Brahman, Yahweh, Logos, or in another fashion—alters how the “world,” initially experienced as the cosmos, comes to…