Overview

To treat some human beings as less worthy of concern and respect than others is to lose sight of their humanity. But what does this moral blindness amount to? What are we missing when we fail to appreciate the value of humanity?The essays in this volume offer a wide range of competing, yet overlapping, answers to these questions. Some essays examine influential views in the history of Western philosophy. In others, philosophers currently working in ethics develop and defend their own views. Some essays appeal to distinctively human capacities. Others argue that our obligations to one another are ultimately grounded in self-interest, or certain shared interests, or our natural sociability. The philosophers featured here disagree about whether the value of human beings depends on the value of anything else. They disagree about how reason and rationality relate to this value, and even about whether we can reason our way to discovering it. This rich selection of proposals encourages us to rethink some of our own deepest assumptions about the moral significance of being human.

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9780197539361

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Some philosophers hold, with Kant, that humanity (and perhaps only humanity) has priceless value. This special worth, they claim, underwrites the importance of morality. But precisely what is this value? How do we acquire knowledge of it? This collection offers a rich discussion of Kant's framework, pre-Kantian conceptions of value, and a wide range of post-Kantian and contemporary theories. It should be essential reading for all students of ethics. * Richard Kraut, author of Against Absolute Goodness * This book presents major authors addressing a central topic in ethics. The essays range creatively over the value of persons, love and respect, dignity and moral standing, reasons and rights, consent and sovereignty, and a multitude of philosophers important for these topics. These rich and insightful essays—many contributing significantly to the history of ethics—illuminate Kant, as well as earlier figures and later authors as different as Nietzsche and Gandhi. * Robert Audi, John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame *

Some philosophers hold, with Kant, that humanity (and perhaps only humanity) has priceless value. This special worth, they claim, underwrites the importance of morality. But precisely what is this value? How do we acquire knowledge of it? This collection offers a rich discussion of Kant's framework, pre-Kantian conceptions of value, and a wide range of post-Kantian and contemporary theories. It should be essential reading for all students of ethics. * Richard Kraut, author of Against Absolute Goodness * This book presents major authors addressing a central topic in ethics. The essays range creatively over the value of persons, love and respect, dignity and moral standing, reasons and rights, consent and sovereignty, and a multitude of philosophers important for these topics. These rich and insightful essays-many contributing significantly to the history of ethics-illuminate Kant, as well as earlier figures and later authors as different as Nietzsche and Gandhi. * Robert Audi, John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame *

Author Information

Sarah Buss is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. She is the author of articles on autonomy, moral responsibility, practical rationality, respect for persons, and various issues in ethics, and co-editor of The Contours of Agency: Essays on Themes from Harry Frankfurt (2001). Nandi Theunissen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. She works on foundational topics in ethics, with a focus on the nature of value, and is the author of The Value of Humanity (OUP, 2020), as well as essays on Kant's moral philosophy, regress arguments, moral realism, and the nature of well-being.

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