Appeals to “human dignity” are on the middle of some of the such a lot contentious social and political problems with our time. yet those appeals recommend diverse and every now and then even contradictory methods of figuring out the time period. Is dignity anything all of us proportion both, and for this reason the explanation all of us must be taken care of as equals? Or is it what distinguishes a few better and extra admirable humans from the remaining? What idea of human dignity may still tell our inner most judgments and our public life?

In Neither Beast Nor God, Gilbert Meilaender elaborates the philosophical, social, theological, and political implications of the query of dignity, and indicates a direction throughout the thicket. Meilaender, a famous theologian and a well-known voice in America’s bioethics debates, lines the ways that notions of dignity form societies, households, and person lives, and incisively cuts via a few universal confusions that cloud our considering on key ethical and moral questions. the consideration of humanity and the respect of the individual, he argues, are detailed yet deeply connected—and basically by means of greedy them either do we locate our technique to a significant realizing of the human condition.