The Seba library treats Dignity in 8 passages, across 7 authors (including Jung, Carl Gustav, Martha C. Nussbaum, Sacks, Oliver).
do not run after men, so that you do not soil the dignity of humanity—it is a rare good. A sad demise in dignity is better than an undignified healing.
Jung argues that treating persons as patients or sheep violates human dignity, elevating dignity above therapeutic outcome as the irreducible ethical ground of depth work.
, The Red Book: Liber Novus, 2009thesis
Need itself does not have dignity; it is only contingently linked to that which has dignity. This means that we do not think of the hunger of the body, its needs for shelter, for care in time of illness, and for love, as among the ingredients in its dignity.
Nussbaum exposes the Stoic-derived assumption that bodily need is undignified as a distortion that corrupts the ethics of care for vulnerable persons.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis
She was devastated, but conducted herself with great dignity. Dignity, ethical depth, was added at this time, to form a grave and lasting counterpoint to the light, lyrical self I had especially seen before.
Sacks presents dignity as an emergent psychological dimension—ethical depth catalysed by grief—that enriches and complicates an individual’s self-expression.
, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 1985thesis
Though the world of Hermes is not dignified, and indeed in its characteristic manifestations produces a definitely undignified and often enough dubious impression, yet—and this is truly Olympian—it is remote from vulgarity and repulsiveness.
López-Pedraza, following Otto, establishes that Hermes’ archetypal lack of dignity is itself Olympian, warning that a psychotherapist’s insistence on dignity forecloses Hermetic contact.
, Hermes and His Children, 1977thesis
the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no r
Frankl places dignity alongside love and deed as one of the three irreversible achievements stored in the past, making it a permanent existential accomplishment rather than a contingent social attribute.
, Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946supporting
Stoic politics is built, to a great extent, on ideas not of human incompleteness but of human dignity and self-government.
Nussbaum identifies Stoic universalism about dignity and self-government as the philosophical wellspring of rights discourse, while noting its blind spot regarding compassion.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
Is not the dignity of kingship sufficiently great in itself to make its possessor happy by simply seeing what he is? Does he need to be diverted from such thoughts like ordinary people?
Pascal uses the dignity of royal station as a test case for whether self-knowledge is a sufficient source of happiness, probing the tension between dignity as social rank and dignity as inward contemplation.
, Pensées, 1670supporting
these values our culture has let wither. If you would find d
Hillman gestures toward dignity in old age as a cultural value that modern retirement ideology has abandoned, framing its erosion as a symptom of the culture’s failure to honor character.
, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, 1999aside