Dignity one lop5/2/2023 Interactions with the indigenous people of the New World required European law and theology to come to grips with the moral and legal status of real humans, a sharp departure from the medieval discourse on "monstrous" races and people. The meaning might not have always been the same, but the term has persisted. The notion of "the" or "a" dignity of man surfaced in the Renaissance, and later, in Kant's influential philosophy. People were expected to behave with dignity and to accept the grace of the Church and her teachings but they did not hear about any treatment owed them solely because all human beings had dignity. For many centuries, this move rendered dignity or Imago Dei irrelevant as a moral property of all humans. Christianity taught that original sin blemished human dignity and that only Christian grace offers some restoration. It happened in the Jewish Bible and in Stoic philosophy. At a certain moment in the history of ideas, dignity became attached to "humanity", and acquired a foundational moral value. Like love, friendship, hope and faith, it is a cluster concept (philosophically) and a very thick concept (anthropologically) whose nebulous core is ubiquitous in all known human cultures. Dignity is one of the building blocks of our human abstract vocabulary.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |