Human dignity: A challenge to contemporary philosophy

This paper cannot and must not attempt a full-fledged philosophy of human dignity. All I propose to offer are prolegomena for such a philosophy. Specifically what I want to show is: 1. that the idea of human dignity plays a decisive role in today’s social and political thought and action, even more so than commonly realized; 2. that this idea in its present sense is relatively new; 3. that our ordinary way of talking about it is confused and vague to the point of contradictoriness; 4. that the idea of human dignity is vulnerable to attack; 5. that the philosophical treatment of the idea thus far is inadequate; 6. that the way to a better philosophy of human dignity requires certain basic distinctions such as those between dignity in itself and the grounds of dignity; 7. that human dignity in itself is a phenomenon within our experience; 8. that the basis for human dignity can lie in several grounds related to different philosophies.