Article Text
PDFReview essay
Making sense of dignity
Abstract
In this review of Leon Kass’s Life, liberty and the defense of dignity and Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword’s Human dignity in bioethics and biolaw. I consider the prospects for a theory of dignity as a basis for bioethics research. I argue that dignity theories are worth exploring in more detail, but that research needs to consider both “antitheory” accounts of the language of bioethics, and to give more weight to accounts of dignity as an outcome of holding positive liberties and as something that has a psychological dimension.
- dignity
- jurisprudence
- theory of ethics
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Whose dignity? Resolving ambiguities in the scope of “human dignity” in the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights
- What moral work can Nussbaum’s account of human dignity do in the context of dementia care?
- Global bioethics at UNESCO: in defence of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights
- Care for well-being or respect for dignity? A commentary on Soofi’s ‘what moral work can Nussbaum’s account of human dignity do in the context of dementia care?’
- Human rights and bioethics
- Human dignity and human tissue: a meaningful ethical relationship?
- Theoretical resources for a globalised bioethics
- Will international human rights subsume medical ethics? Intersections in the UNESCO Universal Bioethics Declaration
- Can we justify eliminating coercive measures in psychiatry?
- How should doctors approach patients? A Confucian reflection on personhood