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Dignity, Esteem, and Social Contribution: A Recognition‐Theoretical View
Author(s) -
Jütten Timo
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of political philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1467-9760
pISSN - 0963-8016
DOI - 10.1111/jopp.12115
Subject(s) - dignity , politics , sociology , art history , library science , media studies , law , computer science , art , political science
What are the social conditions of living a dignified life? Even though it is a common belief, shared by most people for many different reasons, that all human beings possess dignity in virtue of being human, most people also believe that one can succeed or fail to live a dignified life or a life with dignity. Posing the question of the social conditions of living a dignified life shifts the focus from conceptual and ontological considerations about what exactly dignity is and why all human beings possess it to phenomenological and sociological considerations about what it means to live a life with a sense of one’s own dignity as an experiential quality. In this paper I argue for the recognition-theoretical view that living a dignified life requires two forms of social recognition: respect and social esteem.1 Whereas respect recognises the personhood of the individual subject and is equally owed to every subject, esteem recognises a particular quality of an individual subject and is owed to all and only those subjects who possess the esteemed quality.2 My argument in this paper is that the form of esteem that matters for dignity is social esteem, that is, the recognition of particular qualities of individuals insofar as these qualities can be recognised as capacities and achievements that contribute to socially shared goals.3 As a result, even though all human