Dignity

Re Nussbaum on dignity, perhaps updated since...

Nussbaum is a biocentric individualist. Her discussion focuses on individual organisms, not species. She typically only focuses on moving and sentient beings.

Move beyond her individualism and reliance on 'families of concepts' such as respect, dignity and wonder. Nussbaum's argument is that dignity and wonder are needed for respect. Are these concepts too flimsy and too human, too luxurious, too condescending?

Instead, rely on distributed, processual phenomena such as knowledge and innovation to derive respect. Interconnected capabilities that are doing well enough without humans. Nonhumans do not need human charity and human wonder to persist, cf. microbial life. It is humans that need to be less ignorant, behave less like toddlers.

Comim, Flavio. “From Humans to All of Life: Nussbaum’s Transformation of Dignity.” In Capabilities, Gender, Equality: Towards Fundamental Entitlements, 175–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.