Dignity, Rank, and Rights (The Berkeley Tanner Lectures) Reprint Edition

This book is Waldron's Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in 2009. He introduces the notion of Dignity as high ranking status featured in all humans, a status that provides the content for humans as moral agents and as bearer of rights in law. So the topic pertains to both moral philosophy and jurisprudence.In lecture one "Dignity and Rank", he begins a survey of the way the term "dignity" is used in philosophy and law. Waldron points out the term is commonly and loosely used in many legal or human rights documents without a precise notion. Sometimes, it is used as the content of rights, and, other times as ground of rights. So he calls for a general definition of the term to tighten its concept. Then, he addresses the moral foundation of the term dignity. He finds a,15th century writer, Pico Della Mirandola's idea of dignity as human capacity to be "that which he wills", I.e., normative agency. The idea is that humans have the highly valued status of normative agent as the telos of rights, while human rights are a means to normative agency as ends. Hence, dignity is connected to morality as a human capacity of normative agency. From this Mirandola's notion, Waldron also finds the idea of dignity as a kind of status to be useful. How should one understand the idea of "status"? Waldron draws attention to historical usage of status of people having different ranks depending of their status in society such as royalty, nobility, and commoners. Waldron proposes a modern notion of human dignity as a general upward equalisation of rank so that one can accord to every human the dignity or high rank of that of nobility based on universal human equality.In the second lecture, "Law, Dignity, and Self-control", Waldron moves on to develop his notion of dignity as a legal concept. He uses dignity as being a right bearer in Hart and Feinberg. A right bearer is not just an object of rights but is in a position to demand legal requirements due him from the law and any concerned party. In terms of the connection between dignity and the procedure of law, Waldron uses the inner morality of law in Fuller according to which humans are responsible agents to understand how to follow rules and procedure. A departure from the law's inner morality is an affront to human dignity. This ties back to the moral idea of dignity to normative agency. Waldron suggests also self-application of law as an important aspect so that law's application is not just a coercive power to manipulate subjects. This self-application is Waldron's idea of "self-command" in dignity which relies on people's ability to fine-tune his behaviour gracefully and effectively according to legitimate expectations upon him. One might views it as an Aristocratic virtue as someone with dignified self-control.The book also includes reactions from Michael Rosen, Don Herzog, and Wai Chee Dimock. Waldron definitely offers an original and significant contribution to the concept of dignity. As with his typical presentation style, he runs through a survey of many different views and examples before offering his making it to be an interesting learning experience for this often used but inadequately tightened concept.