Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as Persons, and What That Means for Our Future (Religion and Contemporary Culture Series)

Peter Augustine Lawler

ISBN 10: 1935191896 / ISBN 13: 9781935191896

Published by ISI Books, 2010

Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G1935191896I3N10

Synopsis:

How have advances in science, technology, and especially biotechnology shaped our understanding of human dignity? Political philosopher Peter Augustine Lawler, who served on President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, shows that the modern view denies what’s good about who we are by nature, understanding human dignity as either autonomy (moral freedom from nature) or productivity (the transformation of nature through industrious ingenuity). The American understanding of dignity is more elevated, drawing from modern, Christian, and classical sources and maintaining that personal significance has a natural foundation. But this American view is now under assault from intellectual and cultural forces that deny our natural and creaturely dignity. ‘Modern and American Dignity’ draws out the personal significance of the ongoing threats to human dignity in an anxious and aging society open to the promises of cosmetic surgery and neurology, psychopharmacology, and the detachment of sex from reproduction. Drawing on Socrates, Solzhenitsyn, Tocqueville, Chantal Delsol, Chesterton, and many other thinkers, Lawler offers an indispensable guide to the moral dimension of conservatism today, and to who—as opposed to what—each of us is.

About the Author:

Peter Augustine Lawler, who served on President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, is the author of Homeless and at Home in America, Stuck with Virtue, Aliens in America, and several other books. He is Dana Professor of Government at Berry College and the executive editor of the acclaimed scholarly quarterly Perspectives on Political Science. The 2007 recipient of the Richard Weaver Prize in Scholarly Letters, he lives in Georgia.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as ...
Publisher: ISI Books
Publication Date: 2010
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket