Dignity, Politics, and the Community of Being

Abstract

Eric Voegelin’s four partners in being — individual, society, the world (nature), and the divine — have become ever more differentiated both from each other and within themselves. With regard to the individual, this has led, in part, to the to the subject; an increasing emphasis on the sanctity of personhood; the rise of the importance of ideas of inherent and equal universal human dignity and rights; and various, sometimes insalubrious, forms of individualism. Clarifying the notions of, and making the distinction between, equal inherent human dignity, on the one hand, and the achievement of dignified living, on the other, helps one to recognize that respect for persons based on the former cannot be concretely actualized or meaningful without politically addressing the creation or sustaining of opportunities for all persons that assist them to realize the latter. A philosophically sound stance that seeks to advance realistic assistance toward the common good in this last regard requires recognizing 1) that the ongoing and increasing conceptual differentiation between individual and society involves no ontological divorce between these two partners, just as there is no ontological divorce between persons, society, and the divine, even as the differentiating insights advance; and 2) that the universal promotion of the achievement of dignified living in a society, based on the recognition of universal and equal inherent dignity, can, in some respects, only be achieved through the organized policies and political actions of government, understood as existentially representative of the members of society; and thus that the only way to fulfill the Gospel message of loving one’s neighbor and caring for the other — a message that constitutes a key basis of the idea of human dignity — is to encourage and implement certain governmental policies that advance the rights and dignity of all persons. These clarifications in turn provide a basis for a critique of “individualism” in its more nefarious ideological manifestations.