Author: Mahnaz Yousefzadeh
Beginning with contemporary evocations of the notion of dignity within international institutions (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), bioethics (stem-cell research and end-of-life care), and socio-economics (the Indignant movement), this class moves to trace distinct and often-conflicting conceptions of the term “dignity.” It investigates the ways in which the notion and experience of human dignity has come under assault in the modern world system– with its corresponding economic, social, and cultural practices— as well as the implications for the pursuit of equality, justice, and a rich understanding of humanity. The expression of “loss” of human dignity by modernist writers and artists, and the post-war appropriation of the term by international institutions and national bioethics commissions, have led to a conceptual confusion provoking the backlash from the scientific community that “dignity” is an incoherent, useless and “stupid” notion. Dignity, a concept elaborated for its emancipatory potential by Giovanni Pico (16th c.) and Immanuel Kant (18th c.), has come to serve contrary political ends. A series of historical investigations into philosophical definitions, artistic (visual and literary) expressions, key official documents as well as contemporary personal narratives, will lead the class to ask what, if anything, of this notion the contemporary period may recover or conserve, for emancipatory practices in our evolving world system.
The course will introduce dignity with an evocation of indignation within slave narratives. Our genealogy will begin with an examination of dignity as sovereignty in Shi Jing and Ferdowsi in King Wen poems and Shahnameh respectively. Dignity as rank within the works of Thomas Aquinas, will be followed by Pico’s revolutionary “unhinging” of man from the medieval chain of being, and his elaboration of the dignity of the Liberal Arts as intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual practice. Hobbes’s Natural Laws, which in the aftermath of religious wars in Europe liquidated all innate dignity of man, replacing it with a concept based on market value as the negative space of ‘right’ and ‘liberty’, and Immanuel Kant’s attempt to rescue dignity from the vicissitudes of market forces through his notion of self-legislation, will be followed by a study of Baudelaire and other modernist writers, sociologists. Fanon and Al-e-Ahmad will introduce students to post-colonial and nationalist contexts and stakes of dignity. This philosophical and literary itinerary will create the conceptual framework for discussing key institutional documents from major events of the post-war and contemporary era: these essays, artworks, and narratives will point to ways we may recover possible ethical and emancipatory notions of dignity across national cultures. Finally, we will discuss the implications of our understanding of the term “dignity” for contemporary debates over the legalization of prostitution, end-of-life care, and policies of economic austerity.
Click here for Dr. Yousefzadeh’s description of the project and selections of student responses: