Inherent Human Dignity: A Philosophical Meditation

by Glenn Hughes, James Greenaway (Foreword by)

Overview

Inherent Human Dignity explores the philosophical and existential foundations of what it means to be human.

Inherent Human Dignity is a philosophical meditation and defense of the value of being human. Glenn Hughes explores the existential foundations of these concepts in this structured and accessible study about the experience of being human.

Hughes locates human dignity within the philosophical, political, and historical horizons of human culture. Guided by Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, literary and artistic examples, key moments of our modern era, and his own scholarship on the religions of the world, Hughes unfolds and accounts for human dignity’s place in our world. He additionally utilizes key moments of our modern era to frame our understanding of human dignity, paying close attention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was created by the United Nations following World War II. Ultimately, Hughes’s meditation is concerned both with exploring the maximally differentiated set of insights into the meaning of being human and with articulating why the discovery of the inherent equal dignity of every person—without exception—is a profound and unique achievement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268209957
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	08/15/2025
Series:	The Beginning and the Beyond of Politics
Pages:	152
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.35(d)

About the Author

Glenn Hughes (1951–2024) was professor emeritus at St. Mary’s University. He was the inaugural holder of the St. Mary’s Chair in Catholic Philosophy. He was the author of several books including From Dickinson to Dylan: Visions of Transcendence in Modernist Literature and Transcendence and History: The Search for Ultimacy from Ancient Societies to Postmodernity.

James Greenaway is the San José-Lonergan Chair in Catholic Philosophy at St. Mary’s University. He is the author of A Philosophy of Belonging: Persons, Politics, Cosmos.

Read an Excerpt

Questioning finds satisfaction in the discovery of meanings and the identification of values, with values understood as moral meanings: meanings understood and affirmed to be genuine “goods.” For the present, let meanings stand for: all that is intelligible; all that has being; and all that is truly good.

Through my ongoing, and self-correcting, discovery of many types of meaning—concerning objects, persons, emotions, events, relationships, cause and effect, social practices, tools, institutions, obligations, etc.—I have enjoyed (and at times been frightened by) an ever-expanding horizon of understanding. That horizon of understanding is mainly constituted by inherited meanings. Language both oral and written, the behaviors of others, tools, and much else have conveyed to me an enormous treasure of human insights and ingenuities; and these inherited meanings and values have been supplemented by the results of my efforts to make sense of my own experiences, feelings, encounters, and behavior.

Early on, I came to recognize that my questions about reality extend far beyond my capacities to understand. In fact, in its full scope, my questioning—like all human questioning—intends absolutely all meanings. My desire to know, in other words, is unrestricted. It is a desire to know everything about everything (and, finally, to love everything that is good).

As Bernard Lonergan remarks, the reason why I don’t effectively will to know everything about everything is because I discovered soon in life that it is so troublesome to reach even a few answers that the prospect of seeking all answers to all questions became thoroughly disheartening.

Nevertheless, it is because my desire to know is unrestricted that I still wonder: what is the whole process of reality?

I find that, from my perspective of participation, I am capable only of some kind of heuristic answer. Whatever reality as a whole is, it is in its totality the completeness of all intelligible meanings in their being and their value: all the meanings that have been, are, and will be.

When I consider such a completeness of meaning, and wonder about my role in its process, I take into account the fact that being a person (me) has its own peculiar kind of meaning and value. I have been “me” through all the adventures of my personal growth. If a teacher asks me, “What did you do last summer?”, he means by “you” the person I have been, am now, and will be as long as I exist: a unity-identity who has developed through time while remaining myself through all my changes and growth.

What kind of meaning and value is this? What happens when I try to explain who I am to a new friend?

(excerpted from chapter 2)

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Part 1. Preliminaries

1. Honesty

2. Meaning & Value

3. The Cosmos

4. Belonging

5. The Desire to Know

6. Myth

7. The World of Space and Time

8. Science

9. Misunderstanding Human Nature

10. Constants of Human Nature

Part 2. The Idea of Inherent Human Dignity

11. Inherent Human Dignity

12. Inherent Dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (I)

13. Inherent Dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (II)

14. Persons, Rights, and Dignified Living

15. Digression: The Universal Search for Dignified Living

16. The Challenge of Respecting Inherent Dignity

17. Transcendent Mystery and Shakenness

18. Eclipsing Transcendent Mystery

19. Inherent Dignity as Both Concept and Mythic Symbol

20. The Refusal to Understand Inherent Dignity

21. Inherent Dignity and Ideaology

Epilogue: Love and Inherent Dignity

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Hughes shows us the way to reclaim our inherent dignity within a world of meaning. This book promises to be the go-to volume that concisely explains not just that we should affirm inherent dignity for all human beings, but how and why we must.” —John von Heyking, author of Comprehensive Judgement and Absolute Selflessness

“Inherent Human Dignity fills a need for a thoroughgoing philosophical defense of the notion of inherent human value and dignity.” —David Baggett, co-author of The Moral Argument

From the Publisher