Overcoming Exclusion in Eastern Orthodoxy: Human Dignity and Disability from a Christological Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-509
Author(s):  
Petre Maican
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Cognitive Disabilities ◽  
Specific Capacity ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Eastern Orthodoxy ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Constant Source ◽  
Dignified Life

‘The Russian Orthodox Church’s Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights’ has been a constant source of controversy since its release in 2008. While most scholars debated the document for its political implications, little attention has been paid to its anthropological consequences, particularly those deriving from linking a dignified life with the ethical use of freedom. The article highlights that if the sole criteria for living a dignified life is freedom then the most vulnerable categories in society (persons with severe cognitive disabilities or those struggling with addictions) can claim only basic dignity. Engaging constructively with the work of Romanian theologian Dumitru Stăniloae, it will be argued that the source of human dignity is not a specific capacity, but the recapitulation of all human beings in Christ’s death and resurrection. The dignity that belongs to Christ is transferred through recapitulation to all humans irrespective of their abilities or sins. In fact, what changes with the use of freedom is not the dignity of the person, but our ability to perceive that dignity.

Secondary-Cause Autonomy and Divine Motivation

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Christian Schröer
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Autonomy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Theoretical View ◽  
Human Autonomy ◽  
The Voice

An act-theoretical view on the profile of responsibility discourse shows in what sense not only all kinds of technical, pragmatic and moral reason, but also all kinds of religious motivation cannot justify a human action sufficiently without acknowledgment to three basic principles of human autonomy as supreme limiting conditions that are human dignity, sense, and justifiability. According to Thomas Aquinas human beings ultimately owe their moral autonomy to a divine creator. So this autonomy can be considered as an expression of secondary-cause autonomy and as the voice of God in the enlightened conscience.

Kant on the Ground of Human Dignity

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Apaar Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Human Constitution ◽  
The Law

Abstract Kant interpreters have contrasting views on what Kant takes to be the basis for human dignity. Several commentators have argued that human dignity can be traced back to some feature of human beings. Others contend that humans in themselves lack dignity, but dignity can be attributed to them because the moral law demands respect for humanity. I argue, alternatively, that human dignity in Kant’s system can be seen to be grounded in the reciprocal relationship between the dignity of the moral law and the dignity inherent in the human constitution. The latter includes the dignity of personhood, construed as rational inner purposiveness, and the dignity of giving oneself the law and striving to follow it.

The Public Image of Eastern Orthodoxy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather L. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Crimean War ◽  
The West ◽  
Eastern Orthodoxy ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
The Public ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Public Relations Campaign

Focusing on the period between the revolutions of 1848 to 1849 and the First Vatican Council (1869–1870), this book explores the circumstances under which westerners, concerned about the fate of the papacy, the Ottoman Empire, Poland, and Russian imperial power, began to conflate the Russian Orthodox Church with the state and to portray the Church as the political tool of despotic tsars. As the book demonstrates, in response to this reductionist view, Russian Orthodox publicists launched a public relations campaign in the West, especially in France, in the 1850s and 1860s. The linchpin of their campaign was the building of the impressive Saint Alexander Nevsky Church in Paris, consecrated in 1861. The book posits that, as the embodiment of the belief that Russia had a great historical purpose inextricably tied to Orthodoxy, the Paris church both reflected and contributed to the rise of religious nationalism in Russia that followed the Crimean War. At the same time, the confrontation with westerners' negative ideas about the Eastern Church fueled a reformist spirit in Russia while contributing to a better understanding of Eastern Orthodoxy in the West.

scholarly journals URBAN VIOLENCE, PRISON CONDITIONS AND HUMAN DIGNITY

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Barcellos
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Current Level ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Brazilian Society

The paper deals with a situation that perhaps represents one of the most radical and profound challenges to the claim that contemporaneous western societies – and Brazilian society in particular – share the values concerning equality and essential or ontological dignity of mankind. It is an attempt to investigate how Brazilian society, immersed in a context of fear as a result of urban violence, deals with its prison population. This paper is divided into three main parts. Part one deals with a situation of fact: traditional, ongoing, generalized, serious and practically institutionalized violation of the fundamental rights of prison inmates in Brazil. This situation of fact easily leads one to conclude that inmates in Brazil are not treated like human beings (and are probably not even considered as human beings). Part two is an attempt to examine some possible explanations of why this situation exists. In part three, the paper tries to suggest that there is a connection between how prisoners are treated and the current level of urban violence in Brazil as a contributing factor. Considering that neither the principle of human dignity nor the actions of the legal system have been able to change the scenario that has built up in recent decades, perhaps it would be useful to suggest that inhumane treatment of inmates is not just a problem restricted to prisons: society as a whole receives the effects of this policy in the form of more violence. 

scholarly journals URBAN VIOLENCE, PRISON CONDITIONS AND HUMAN DIGNITY

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Barcellos
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Current Level ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Urban Violence ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Brazilian Society

The paper deals with a situation that perhaps represents one of the most radical and profound challenges to the claim that contemporaneous western societies – and Brazilian society in particular – share the values concerning equality and essential or ontological dignity of mankind. It is an attempt to investigate how Brazilian society, immersed in a context of fear as a result of urban violence, deals with its prison population. This paper is divided into three main parts. Part one deals with a situation of fact: traditional, ongoing, generalized, serious and practically institutionalized violation of the fundamental rights of prison inmates in Brazil. This situation of fact easily leads one to conclude that inmates in Brazil are not treated like human beings (and are probably not even considered as human beings). Part two is an attempt to examine some possible explanations of why this situation exists. In part three, the paper tries to suggest that there is a connection between how prisoners are treated and the current level of urban violence in Brazil as a contributing factor. Considering that neither the principle of human dignity nor the actions of the legal system have been able to change the scenario that has built up in recent decades, perhaps it would be useful to suggest that inhumane treatment of inmates is not just a problem restricted to prisons: society as a whole receives the effects of this policy in the form of more violence. 

From Imago Dei to Mutual Recognition: The Evolution of the Concept of Human Dignity in the Light of the Defence of Religious Freedom

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Dellavalle
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Alternative Proposal

Within the Western tradition the concept of human dignity is related to the idea of human beings as ‘imagines Dei’. Yet this connection does not guarantee any suitable basis for the principle of the defence of religious freedom. Therefore, modern rationalism developed an alternative proposal, centred on the notion of religious tolerance. This approach, however, proves to be as inadequate as the belief-based vision in order to provide for a convincing foundation of a concept of religious freedom understood not only as a ‘negative freedom’ but as an essential element of the self-realization of humans. To overcome the deficits of both approaches, a third understanding is explored in which the experience of faith is recognized as an essential enrichment of social life and ‘tolerance’ is substituted by ‘mutual recognition’, paving the way to a positive acknowledgement of difference.

Würde des Menschen: Restoring Human Dignity in Post-Nazi Germany

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Goos
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Mothers And Fathers ◽  
Value Assignment ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
Legal Term ◽  
Subordinate Role

Historical considerations have so far played a rather subordinate role in the interpretation of Article 1 German Basic Law. This is unfortunate, because the records of the proceedings of the Parliamentary Council show clearly that the famous dictum on Würde des Menschen as a ‘non-interpreted thesis’ (Theodor Heuss) was neither meant to be a carte blanche for any arbitrary interpretation nor an evidence for the impossibility of all kinds of interpretation. The ‘mothers and fathers of the Basic Law’ discussed the meaning of the legal term Würde des Menschen intensely. They agreed that it was neither a more or less vague value assignment nor just the sum of the following basic rights but a real capacity of human beings that had been proven highly vulnerable during the Nazi regime: the inner freedom of man.

Dignity at Work

2018 ◽  
pp. 68-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Gilabert
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Labour Rights ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter offers a justification of labour rights based on an interpretation of the idea of human dignity. According to the dignitarian approach, we have reason to organise social life so that we respond appropriately to the valuable capacities of human beings that give rise to their dignity. That dignity is a deontic status in accordance with which people are owed certain forms of respect and concern. Dignity at work involves treatment of people that enacts the ideal of solidaristic empowerment as it pertains to their life as workers. This requires that we generate feasible and reasonable social schemes to support each other in the development and exercise of our valuable capacities to produce in personally and socially beneficial ways. The spectrum of dignitarian justice goes from basic rights to decent working conditions to maximal rights to flourish in working practices that are free from domination, alienation, and exploitation.

Humanism

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 452-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIERAN SETIYA
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Disabilities ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Relevant Fact

ABSTRACTI defend a form of humanism on which we have reason to care about human beings that we do not have to care about other animals, and human beings have rights against us that other animals lack. Humanism respects the equal worth of those born with severe congenital cognitive disabilities. I address the charge of speciesism and explain how being human is an ethically relevant fact.

Reality-congruence, emancipatory politics and situated knowledge in International Relations: a process sociological perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-224
Author(s):  
André Saramago
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Orientation Process ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Emancipatory Politics ◽  
Process Sociology

Recent discussions of the epistemological and political implications of the situatedness of knowledge in International Relations (IR) have raised important questions regarding the future development of the discipline. They pose the challenge of understanding under what conditions human beings develop more or less reality-congruent knowledge about world politics and what are the implications of such knowledge for emancipatory political activity. This article argues that process sociology should be understood as a relevant complement to these discussions. Assuming a fundamentally ‘realist’ orientation, process sociology provides a sociologically informed analysis of the material, ideational and emotional forces shaping the development of knowledge. As such, it can help those concerned with the implications of the situatedness of knowledge in IR reinforce their capacity to both understand the social conditions under which it is possible to develop more detached and reality-congruent knowledge about the world and better identify and explain the historically emergent values that should orientate the emancipatory transformation of world politics.

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