Human Dignity and Political Criticism

Few deny the political importance of the value of human dignity, but many today are sceptical that it has more than rhetorical significance. This book retrieves the idea of human dignity as a vital political value, and shows how, and in what form, it is at stake in politics.

Many, including Marx, Rawls, and the contemporary ''Black Lives Matter'' movement, embrace the ambition to secure terms of co-existence in which the worth of people''s lives becomes a lived reality rather than an empty boast. This book asks whether, as some believe, the philosophical idea of human dignity can help achieve that ambition. Offering a new fourfold typology of dignity concepts, Colin Bird argues that human dignity can perform this role only if certain traditional ways of conceiving it are abandoned. Accordingly, Bird rejects the idea that human dignity refers to the inherent worth or status of individuals, and instead reinterprets it as a social relation, constituted by affects of respect and the modes of mutual attention which they generate. What emerges is a new vision of human dignity as a vital political value, and an arresting vindication of its role as an agent of critical reflection on politics.