Ron Highfield traces the genealogy of the modern self from Plato, Descartes and Locke to Charles Taylor's landmark Sources of the Self. What emerges is a stark portrait of the modern ideal of self-governance and the crisis it provokes for a Christian view of human identity, freedom and dignity found in God.

Although countless books have been devoted to the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., few, if any, have focused on King's appropriation of, and contribution to, the intellectual tradition of personalism. Emerging as a philosophical movement in the early 1900s, personalism is a type of philosophical idealism that has a number of affinities with Christianity, such as a focus on a personal God and the sanctity of persons. Burrow points to similarities and dissimilarities between personalism and the social gospel movement with its call to churchgoers to involve themselves in the welfare of both individuals and society. He argues that King's adoption of personalism represented the fusion of his black Christian faith and his commitment not only to the social gospel of Rauschenbusch, but most especially to the social gospelism practiced by his grandfather, father, and black preacher-scholars at Morehouse College. Burrow devotes much-needed attention both to King's conviction that the universe is value-infused and to the implications of this ideology for King's views on human dignity and his concept of the "Beloved Community." Burrow also sheds light on King’s doctrine of God. He contends that King's view of God has been uncritically and erroneously relegated by black liberation theologians to the general category of "theistic absolutism" and he offers corrections to what he believes are misinterpretations of this and other aspects of King’s thought. He concludes with an application of King’s personalism to present-day social problems, particularly as they pertain to violence in the black community. This book is a useful and fresh contribution to our understanding of the life and thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. It will be read with interest by ethicists, theologians, philosophers, and social historians.

The concept of human dignity has been stripped from its traditional context in Christian thought, becoming "a moral trump frayed by heavy use," but a compelling alternate vision has not yet emerged. "God and Human Dignity" offers a fresh restatement of the nature and scope of human dignity in Christian perspective. Theologians, ethicists, and biblical scholars from around the world here examine the dimensions of human worth in the light of sacred Scripture, doctrine, and ecclesial practice. In contrast to modernity's often monochromatic accounts of human dignity in terms of freedom or rationality, these essays argue that human dignity in Christian perspective is a "many-splendored thing" reflecting humanity's participation in the divine drama of creation, redemption, and new creation. Representing disciplines across the academic spectrum, the essays in "God and Human Dignity" offer systematic and scriptural perspectives on human dignity that connect to a host of pressing contemporary issues. Contributors: C. Clifton Black, Russell Botman, Don Browing, J. Kameron Carter, Elaine Graham, Robert W. Jensen, James L. Mays, M. Douglas Meeks, Esther Menn, Peter Ochs, John Polkinghorne, Hans Reinders, Gerhard Sauter, Christoph Schwvbel, R. Kendall Soulen, Fraser Watts, Michael Welker, and Linda Woodhead.D

In this Book David L. Schindier and Nicholas J. Healy Jr. promote a deeper understanding of the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom - Dignitatis Humanae - which Pope Paul VI characterized as one of the greatest documents of Vatican II. In addition to presenting a new translation of the approved text of the Declaration, they make available for the first time in English the five schemas (drafts) of the document that were presented to the Council bishops leading up to the final version. The book also includes an original interpretive essay on Dignitatis Humanae by Schindier and an essay on the genesis and redaction history of the text by Healy. Book jacket.

True Freedom On Protecting Human Dignity and Religious Liberty Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York Are American liberties on the endangered species list? In this eBook original, the Archbishop of New York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issues a plea for all citizens to reject the cynicism of the day and foster a culture in which religious freedom and all human life are infinitely valued. Religion and the dignity of human life are under attack by a variety of threats in the modern world including abortion, infanticide, eugenics, misuse of artificial reproductive technologies, an unjust distribution of economic resources, war, the arms trade, drugs, and human trafficking. What can be done to stop this? Cardinal Timothy Dolan explains the need for all Americans to embrace a new culture rooted in what Blessed John Paul II called the Gospel of Life where the sacredness of all human life, and the freedoms that are their birthright, are upheld, respected and protected by law.

From Human Dignity to Natural Law shows how the whole of the natural law, as understood in the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition, is contained implicitly in human dignity. Human dignity means existing for one’s own good (the common good as well as one’s individual good), and not as a mere means to an alien good. But what is the true human good? This question is answered with a careful analysis of Aristotle’s definition of happiness. The natural law can then be understood as the precepts that guide us in achieving happiness. To show that human dignity is a reality in the nature of things and not a mere human invention, it is necessary to show that human beings exist by nature for the achievement of the properly human good in which happiness is found. This implies finality in nature. Since contemporary natural science does not recognize final causality, the book explains why living things, as least, must exist for a purpose and why the scientific method, as currently understood, is not able to deal with this question. These reflections will also enable us to respond to a common criticism of natural law theory: that it attempts to derive statements of what ought to be from statements about what is. After defining the natural law and relating it to human or positive law, Richard Berquist considers Aquinas’s formulation of the first principle of the natural law. It then discusses the love commandments to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself as the first precepts of the natural law. Subsequent chapters are devoted to clarifying and defending natural law precepts concerned with the life issues, with sexual morality and marriage, and with fundamental natural rights. From Human Dignity to Natural Law concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the natural law.

In everything from philosophical ethics to legal argument to public activism, it has become commonplace to appeal to the idea of human dignity. In such contexts, the concept of dignity typically signifies something like the fundamental moral status belonging to all humans. Remarkably, however, it is only in the last century that this meaning of the term has become standardized. Before this, dignity was instead a concept associated with social status. Unfortunately, this transformation remains something of a mystery in existing scholarship. Exactly when and why did "dignity" change its meaning? And before this change, was it truly the case that we lacked a conception of human worth akin to the one that "dignity" now represents? In this volume, leading scholars across a range of disciplines attempt to answer such questions by clarifying the presently murky history of "dignity," from classical Greek thought through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present day.

In Volume 1 of Christianity and Freedom, leading historians uncover the unappreciated role of Christianity in the development of basic human rights and freedoms from antiquity through today. These include radical notions of dignity and equality, religious freedom, liberty of conscience, limited government, consent of the governed, economic liberty, autonomous civil society, and church-state separation, as well as more recent advances in democracy, human rights, and human development. Acknowledging that the record is mixed, scholars document how the seeds of freedom in Christianity antedate and ultimately undermine later Christian justifications and practices of persecution. Drawing from history, political science, and sociology, this volume will become a standard reference work for historians, political scientists, theologians, students, journalists, business leaders, opinion shapers, and policymakers.

The concept of 'human dignity' has become central to politics, law and theology but is little understood. This book presents a wide-ranging collection of edited essays from specialists in law, theology, politics and history and defines the main areas of current debates about the concept in these disciplines.

Dignity is a fundamental aspect of our lives, yet one we rarely pause to consider; our understandings of dignity, on individual, collective and philosophical perspectives, shape how we think, act and relate to others. This book offers an historical survey of how dignity has been understood and explores the concept in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. World-renowned contributors examine the roots of human dignity in classical Greece and Rome and the Scriptures, as well as in the work of theologians, such as St Thomas Aquinas and St John Paul II. Further chapters consider dignity within Renaissance art and sacred music. The volume shows that dignity is also a contemporary issue by analysing situations where the traditional understanding has been challenged by philosophical and policy developments. To this end, further essays look at the role of dignity in discussions about transhumanism, religious freedom, robotics and medicine. Grounded in the principal Christian traditions of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Protestantism, this book offers an interdisciplinary and cross-period approach to a timely topic. It validates the notion of human dignity and offers an introduction to the field, while also challenging it.