Rethinking the Value of Humanity

Sarah Buss is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. She is the author of articles on autonomy, moral responsibility, practical rationality, respect for persons, and various issues in ethics, and co-editor of The Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt (2001).Nandi Theunissen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. She works on foundational topics in ethics, with a focus on the nature of value, and is the author of The Value of Humanity (OUP, 2020), as well as essays on Kant's moral philosophy, regress arguments, moral realism, and the nature of well-being.

• AcknowledgementsList of Contributors IntroductionSarah Buss 1. Decomposing HumanityJon Garthoff 2. Do the Ancients See Value in Humanity?Richard Bett 3. Spinoza's Anti-Humanism: Human Value and Dignity Yitzhak Melamed 4. Slavery, Freedom, and Human Value in Early Modern PhilosophyJulia Jorati 5. Valuing Humanity in 'Common Life': Grotius and Pufendorf on Equal 'Sociable' DignityStephen Darwall 6. The Dignity of HumanityRalf M. Bader 7. Great Beyond All ComparisonKenneth Walden 8. Fichte on the Value of Rational AgencyMichelle Kosch 9. Explaining the Value of Human BeingsL. Nandi Theunissen 10. Are We of Equal Moral Worth?Andrea Sangiovanni 11. The Normative Significance of HumanityPeter Railton 12. Finding the Humean Value in Humean HumanityDon Garrett 13. Other PeopleKieran Setiya 14. Learning from Love: Reasoning, Respect, and the Value of a PersonKyla Ebels-Duggan 15. The Invention of Value and the Value of HumanityElijah Millgram 16. The Human Foundations of our Political Ideals: An Essay on Gandhi's Political RadicalismAkeel Bilgrami Index

Some philosophers hold, with Kant, that humanity (and perhaps only humanity) has priceless value. This special worth, they claim, underwrites the importance of morality. But precisely what is this value? How do we acquire knowledge of it? This collection offers a rich discussion of Kant's framework, pre-Kantian conceptions of value, and a wide range of post-Kantian and contemporary theories. It should be essential reading for all students of ethics.