Nature of Dignity

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.