Friday, January 7, 2011
Human dignity and personal dignity
I haven't spent a whole lot of time this holiday season thinking about human dignity (unless you count the affront to a parent's dignity that accompanies spending $21 for their child's meal at Disney World). I did, however, just read Gilbert Meilander's wonderful Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person. It's an easy and relatively quick read, but it is brimming with insights. What I take to be his starting point is the apparent contradiction between statements on murderers by Aquinas ("A man who sins deviates from the rational order, and so loses his human dignity.") and John Paul II ("Not even a murderer loses his personal dignity."). The path of reconciliation is to unpack two different concepts of dignity: human dignity and personal dignity. I confess to finding the labels a little confusing as applied in the book, but the underlying ideas are on-target. He's basically trying to distinguish dignity as an attribute to be cultivated from dignity as intrinsic worth. The book is well worth your time.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/01/human-dignity-and-personal-dignity.html
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Rob,
I see what you're getting at, but see it perhaps from a different angle. By our constitution, while we live we carry the imprint of Jesus' image and likeness, and the dignity that goes with it. So John Paul asserts our human dignity. We are at the same time capable of violating and rejecting that dignity. We are capable of choosing death. So Aquinas accurately characterizes the substance of the choices of some. They are choosing death and the loss of everything including their human dignity.
So while life remains, the possibility of contrition and reform remain, but we give thanks to Thomas for having so clearly and forcefully framed the issue, and the need for repentance. There is no dignity in Hell, either human or any other kind.