Kind Of Dignity Research Articles

What Kind of Dignity?

We tend to think that "dignity" means that someone is sophisticated and well-mannered or that human dignity points to great achievements. There is, though, a special dignity in those who are vulnerable for they provide a focal point for love and generally respond enthusiastically to that love; they draw love out of others.

Comparison of the Concept of Patient Dignity in Islamic and Nursing Texts

Human dignity is regarded as the presupposition of respect for patients. Dignity is associated with different meanings in cultures. In this research was compared dignity in Islamic and nursing texts. Research was done in three stage; definition of dignity based on Islamic texts, definition of dignity based on nursing text, comparison between two definitions. finding showed; both Islam and nursing have Inherent dignity but the origin of dignity differs; in Islam was considered it because human beings were created by God, in nursing human beings are worthy because they are characterized by authority. In Islam Adventitious dignity is other kind of dignity that achieved as the result of obedience to God. Nursing texts consider such criteria as societies’ cultures, customs, age, sex, job and beliefs in defining other types of dignity. But, both perspectives take similar approaches that ethics must be based on Inherent dignity. Both perspectives argue that delving into other types of dignity in providing nursing services can create moral problems. Ultimately, nursing texts emphasize the practical aspects whereas the Islamic perspective is more abstract. Thus, we need to describe principles of performance based on the Islamic view to enhance nursing practice as per Islamic culture

A Truck Driver from West Virginia

He called himself Billy, although we knewhe had another name, him here telling ushow he hated white people, him as whiteas the white people we knew but crisscrossedover in his mind by the groove Appalachia makesup and down the back of this country. His blueswere made on the backs of folk more blue thanblack folk origins of the blues, Billy so loudhe could make loud hide itself in white shame,taking his breaks with us, waiting for his truckto be filled with what washed the dirty laundryof a country he believed did not believe in him,tipsy drunk as he was on the days he announcedto us he was a hillbilly, like a lone wolf howling,sitting on its back legs, lost in the woods, afraidof what to feel in a space empty of whiteness,filled with strange cruelties, this the holy spaceof who can look down at us. His arm in a cast,Billy broke a thing harder than he was, the thingthat tried to let him own a certain kind of dignity,the cab of his rig easing out of the truck yard,his baseball cap bouncing him back to the hills.

The Scientific Study of Religion and the Pillars of Human Dignity

A familiar theme in discussions of science and religion is the impact of scientific progress on our conception of ourselves. Of particular concern in understanding this impact is the question of how our view of human dignity is affected by scientific progress-or even influential scientific theories, whether or not they are ultimately well confirmed. I include here theories in the cognitive science of religion (CSR), but my concern is wider. It has been said that Darwin unseated our sense of our uniqueness in the biological realm and that Freud undermined our sense of rational self-control. Even supposing these claims are true and that they weaken or eliminate two of the pillars of human dignity, they do not by themselves undermine the possibility of justified theistic beliefs or other justified beliefs that support the view that human persons have a kind of dignity. Granted, the bare truth of theism does not imply that we are free and autonomous in the sense widely taken to be most relevant to human dignity, but some versions of theism-such as those implying that God would not have created persons who are not free and inherently valuable-tend to support the view that we have a kind of dignity. If, as many philosophers and others believe, scientific findings undermine both arguments for theism and, even apart from that, some cherished views about the uniqueness and rationality of human beings, the idea that human beings have dignity is deprived of one source of support. This paper will explore whether developments in CSR might threaten our positive selfconception and, independently of that, the idea that there is a rational basis for theism. Might the results and likely developments of CSR undermine the idea of human dignity as implying-in normal adult human beings- minimally, on the psychological side, free rational agency and a good measure of autonomy and, on the normative side, moral rights and a capacity for moral agency, i.e., roughly, for action based on moral judgment or cognition?1Scientists tend to presuppose, and philosophers widely agree, that our mental life depends on our neural life. Researchers in CSR tend to assume that their results can be accommodated by whatever is learned about the neural underpinnings of cognition, but most of them apparently proceed as if certain cognitive and broadly social-scientific concepts are adequate for scientific explanation of human behavior.2 This raises the question whether CSR is committed to the reducibility of the cognitive properties and laws crucial for its explanations to physical properties and correspondingly physicalistic laws. If not, it apparently presupposes a kind of autonomy on the part of those properties and laws. This, in turn, implies that the cognitive concepts and properties cmcial for religious expression and commitment might also have autonomous explanatory power, a kind that does not depend on taking them to be identical with any physical counterparts.Neutrality about reduction does not entail rejection of reducibility in principle. But it is not clear that anything essential in CSR precludes maintaining the irreducibility of psychological properties to physical ones (I hereafter assume that mentalistic concepts are not reducible to physicalistic ones and that in any case our main questions in this paper require considering reducibility only for properties and laws). If CSR does not entail such reducibility, then a kind of dualism important-even if not essential-for most religions cannot be attacked by naturalistic proponents of CSR as inconsistent with their scientific endeavors. If, however, CSR presupposes that physical (including neurobiological) properties and laws are explanatorily basic, it faces the problem of how to connect its own findings, at least in outline, with an underlying physicalistic theory. Section I will indicate some areas in which results in CSR bear on the issues sketched above. Section II will consider the relation between these results and a materialistic conception of the human person. …

Respecting One's Elders: In Search of an Ontological Explanation for the Asymmetry Between the Proper Treatment of Dependent Adults and Children

The infantilization of older adults seems morally deplorable whereas very young children are appropriate recipients of such treatment. Children, we argue, are not mentally capable of acting autonomously and reasoning clearly. However, we have difficulty reconciling this justification with the fact that many of the elders whom we respect are mentally deficient in those very same ways. In this paper, I try to make sense of this asymmetry between our justifications for infantilizing the young and our conviction that our elders ought to be respected. I argue that our intuitions against adult infantilization are non-consequentialist (i.e., deontic). I consider several candidates for the deontic factor that might explain the asymmetry of our judgments and practices. I argue that a very specific kind of dignity (one that is socially constructed and reified) grounds our disparate judgments and treatments of very young and very old persons with similar needs.

The four notions of dignity

This paper presents the theoretical model of dignity that has been created within the Dignity and Older Europeans (DOE) Project. The model consists of four kinds of dignity: the dignity of merit; the dignity of moral stature; the dignity of identity; and Menschenwurde.1) The dignity of merit depends on social rank and formal positions in life. There are many species of this kind of dignity and it is very unevenly distributed among human beings. The dignity of merit exists in degrees and it can come and go.2) The dignity of moral stature is the result of the moral deeds of the subject; likewise it can be reduced or lost through his or her immoral deeds. This kind of dignity is tied to the idea of a dignified character and of dignity as a virtue. The dignity of moral stature is a dignity of degree and it is also unevenly distributed among humans.3) The dignity of identity is tied to the integrity of the subject's body and mind, and in many instances, although not always, dependent on the subject's self‐image. This dignity can come and go as a result of the deeds of fellow human beings and also as a result of changes in the subject's body and mind.4) Menschenwurde is the universal dignity that pertains to all human beings to the same extent and cannot be lost as long as the person exists.

The varieties of dignity.

As a part of a research project on Dignity and Older Europeans (Fifth Framework (Quality of Life) Programme3) I explore in this paper a set of notions of human dignity. The general concept of dignity is introduced and characterized as a position on a value scale and it is further specified through its relations to the notions of right, respect and self-respect. I present four kinds of dignity and spell out their differences: the dignity of merit, the dignity of moral or existential stature, the dignity of identity and the universal human dignity (Menschenwürde). Menschenwürde pertains to all human beings to the same extent and cannot be lost as long as the persons exist. The dignity of merit depends on social rank and position. There are many species of this kind of dignity and it is very unevenly distributed among human beings. The dignity of merit exists in degrees and it can come and go. The dignity of moral stature is the result of the moral deeds of the subject; likewise it can be reduced or lost through his or her immoral deeds. This kind of dignity is tied to the idea of a dignified character and of dignity as a virtue. The dignity of moral stature is a dignity of degree and it is also unevenly distributed. The dignity of identity is tied to the integrity of the subject's body and mind, and in many instances, although not always, also dependent on the subject's self-image. This dignity can come and go as a result of the deeds of fellow human beings and also as a result of changes in the subject's body and mind.

Dignity and the care of the elderly.

The main purpose of this paper is to clarify some senses of dignity that are particularly relevant for the treatment and care of the elderly. I make a distinction between two quite different ideas of dignity, on the one hand the basic kind of dignity possessed by every human being, and on the other hand the dignity which is the result of a person's merits, whether these be inherited or achieved. Common to both these ideas is that having a dignity entails having a set of rights, in the case of basic dignity the set of rights which we call human rights, the rights which the United Nations, among others, has tried to determine. The dignities of merit also provide some rights, although normally rights with limited scope covering, for instance, a professional area. This observation gives my preliminary answer to the fundamental question of what distinguishes dignity from other high values that could be attached to humans. I discuss further a kind of value that might be mistaken for a kind of dignity, viz. what I call "public status." This status is to be distinguished from social status (the status of e.g. kings, governors, and officials) that I take to be a proper dignity of merit. The public status is the status gained solely via public perception and not directly via any merits on the part of the dignified. Finally, I turn to the topic of the dignity of the elderly and try to determine whether there is some dignity peculiar to the elderly, and which is over and above the basic Menschenwürde. My two preliminary proposals are the following: the elderly have a dignity of wisdom and they have a highly general dignity of merit, which results from their life-long efforts and achievements, and for this they deserve our gratitude.

Human Dignity and the Claim of Meaning: Athenian Tragic Drama and Supreme Court Opinions

I am going to bring together what may seem at first to be two extremely different institutions for the creation of public meaning, namely classical Athenian tragedy and the Supreme Court opinion.1 My object is not so much to draw lines of similarity and distinction between them, as a cultural analyst might do, as to try to capture something of what I believe is centrally at work in both institutions, in fact essential to what each at its best achieves. I can frame it as a question: How is it that the best instances of each genre (for I will be talking only about the best) work to resist the ever–present impulse to trivialize human life and experience–certainly well known in our own era-and instead confer upon the individual, and his or her sufferings and struggles in the world, a kind of dignity? I think that something like this is in fact the core of the most important achievements of both institutions, and that in both cases it is simultaneously imaginative (or literary) and political in nature.

Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650-1865 (review)

REVIEWS 113 The project is a useful one, and Empowering the Feminine contains some sharp critical insights. Yet it is seriously flawed by a pervasive sense of unsureness, suggested by its heavy reliance on the verb seems; by the author's irritating habit of explaining in advance, over and over, exactly what she proposes to do (and then doing no more); and especially by what I found a rather bizarre critical eclecticism. Virtually every recently fashionable critical name makes its appearance : Foucault, Bakhtin, Cixous, Irigaray, Lacan, Judith Butler, even Marjorie Garber. Ty explicitly justifies her reliance on "poststructuralist and feminist theories " by a slightly obscure claim that "as long as women and men assume their subjectivity through language that is gendered, then issues of identity, sexuality , and power remain problematic regardless of historical conditions" (p. ix). But her own lack of theoretical consistency makes her invocation of the disparate theories appear random reaching after authority. Thus Ty observes of one of Opie's heroines, "Her ability to make herself useful gives her a kind of dignity and power that puts the concept of the seduced maiden under 'erasure,' to use a Derridian term" (p. 142). One must wonder why she thinks she needs a Derridian term. Often the critic uses current terminology to evade critical difficulties . When, for example, on three successive pages she observes that the notion of the tale is "problematic," that the state of marriage is "problematic," and that ideals of femininty are "problematic for women" (pp. 148-50), she fails to explain the nature ofthe "problem" in any instance. I kept wishing for less rhetorical posturing and more of the direct exegesis that Eleanor Ty performs at her best. Patricia Meyer Spacks University of Virginia Susan C. Greenfield and Carol Barash, eds. Inventing Maternity: Politics , Science, and Literature, 1650-1865. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. viii + 274pp. US$35.00. ISBN 0-8131-2078-0. Motherhood is currently a "hot" topic. Witness the recent appearance of books on the subject by popular writers from Erica Jong to Cokie Roberts and of psychoanalytic works by French maternal theorists, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray, and by their American counterparts, Madelon Sprengnether and Marianne Hirsch. Complementing this work is the more historical research of scholars such as Patricia Meyer Spacks, Ruth Perry, Toni Bowers, and Felicity Nussbaum. Inventing Maternity is a welcome addition to cultural studies of motherhood. The essays analyse from eleven perspectives early modern constructions of maternity, procreation, and the gendered body. While almost half these articles have appeared elsewhere, they benefit from ajuxtaposition that defines the way in which the maternal body is culturally constructed for political purposes. Examining a wide variety of English, American, and Irish sources including religious and political tracts, medical texts, domestic conduct-books, cookbooks, and literature, together these pieces demonstrate that our respect for the devoted 114 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 12:1 maternal figure (which, ironically, may elevate women even as it restricts them) developed during the long eighteenth century. In her sweeping introduction, which is both useful and perceptive, Susan Greenfield argues that it was in the eighteenth century that "the still powerful image of the tender mother took root" (p. 1). Although Greenfield acknowledges critics such as Linda Pollock, who contend that maternal attachment was not a new phenomenon in the eighteenth century, this volume is informed by the work of Lawrence Stone and Randolph Trumbach, who, in the late 1970s, argued that during the long eighteenth century, full-time affectionate motherhood was "invented," along with companionate marriage and affective individualism. The mother-child bond intensified, as mothers, whose lives were increasingly defined by childbearing and rearing, became the central figures in the lives of their offspring. Such assumptions, which continue to be debated by scholars of family history, affect not only the title but also the organization of the volume. As a whole, the collection attempts to demonstrate the transition from a generative to a reproductive model of creation, as the emphasis shifted from lineage and patriarchal creation to maternal procreation, that is, from father to mother. Essays are arranged chronologically to cover the period 1650 to 1865, "when the idea of the...