Random Nietzsche Quote

While visiting a used bookstore last week, I picked up a copy of Nietzsche's The Use and Abuse of History, one of the few things of his I had not read.  Now I have and was fascinated by how much it anticipates much of his later philosophy but also presents many important ideas not found in his other works.  Speaking as a non-historian, it strikes me that it should be required reading for any serious student of history.  In any case, one passage jumped out at me as worth sharing because of its humor:
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The Greeks, the famous people of a past still near to us, had the "unhistorical sense" strongly developed in the period of their greatest power.  If a typical child of his age were transported to that world by some enchantment, he would probably find the Greeks very "uneducated."  And that discovery would betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture to the laughter of the world.  For we moderns have nothing of our own.  We only become worth notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions, and sciences; we are wandering encyclopedias, as an ancient Greek who had strayed into our time would probably call us.  But the only value of an encyclopedia lies on the inside, in the contents, not in what is written outside, on the binding or the wrapper.  And so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints something like this on the cover: "Manual of internal culture for external barbarians."

From Schiller to Smith

Glancing through Schiller's "On Grace and Dignity" and "Dignity" this evening, I was struck by how similar it sounded to some points Adam Smith makes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  In particular, Schiller claims that the union of grace and dignity in a person represents our highest ideal.  For Smith, it's the union of the amible and respectable virtues.  The latter of these are "the great, the awful and respectable, the virtues of self-denial, of self-government, of that command of the passions which subjects all the movements of our nature to what our own dignity and honour, and the propriety of our own conduct require ..."  This is very much in line with Schiller's conception of dignity.  I fear, however, that comparing Schiller's notion of grace and Smith's conception of the amiable virtues might be forced.  Sorting all this out be a good Capstone project for any of you WSU students out there.

Dignity and Utilitarianism

In Utilitarianism, Mill explains our privileging the higher pleasures by appeal to our sense of dignity:  "but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them."  (Notice that he does not say that the degree of dignity varies with our higher faculties; only our sense of dignity does.)  And yet it can be charged that utilitarianism is fundamentally at odds with the notion of dignity, as suggested by many of the objections that have been raised against it.  In asking whether it is permissible to enslave another, for example, the champion of dignity will argue that utilitarian considerations are entirely out of place.  At bottom, what this comes to is whether any sort of value monism assumed by utilitarianism can accommodate a notion like dignity.

Dignity--Australopithecines, Humans, and God

In his book Human Dignity, George Kateb writes, “The core idea of human dignity is that on earth, humanity is the greatest type of beings—or what we call species because we have learned to see humanity as one species in the animal kingdom, which is made up of many other species along with our own—and that every member deserves to be treated in a manner consonant with the high worth of the species."

An interesting thought experiment.  Suppose first of all that there were not such a gulf between us and the other animals.  Suppose, in other words, that there still lived a continuum of hominids between us and, say, the australopithecines.  What might that do to our conception of dignity?  Push this idea even further.  Suppose there existed (either currently or in past times) a hominid species both cognitively and morally superior to us.  How might that affect our conception of dignity?

From a theological perspective, of course, our dignity comes from being in some way(s) like God.  But if you remove God from the picture and put in God’s place a superior, yet flawed species, would we still assert our dignity, based on our similarity to them?  Or is the whole comparison issue beside the point?  I would suspect that so long as the members of a species have a sense of self-worth (dare I bring in the notion of respect here?), they would have a conception of something like dignity.

Introducing My Blog

Hi everyone,
My name is Bob Fudge, and I'm an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Weber State University.  I'm currently on sabbatical and am doing research on the nature of dignity.  I hope this blog will be a way to stay in touch with some of my students, as well as draw in researchers from around the country who might also be interested in the topic.  I'll be posting specific things shortly.  Cheers!