Modern and American Dignity

Because time is running out when it comes to getting the prepublication deal of $17.79, I thought I’d remind you in a characteristically shameless and self-promotional way to buy MY new book. Here are most of the words that will appear on the beautiful dust jacket:

An Indispensable Guide to Our Most Pressing Moral and Political Debates

The horrors of the twentieth century exposed the insufficiency of speaking of human rights. In intending to extinguish whole classes of human beings, the Nazis and Communists did something much worse than violating rights; they aimed to reduce us all to less than who we really are. As political philosopher Peter Augustine Lawler shows in this illuminating book, rights are insecure without some deeper notion of human dignity.

The threats to human dignity remain potent today—all the more so for being less obvious. Our anxious and aging society has embraced advances in science, technology, and especially biotechnology—from abortion and embryonic stem-cell research to psychopharmacology, cosmetic surgery and neurology, genetic manipulation, and the detachment of sex from reproduction. But such technical advances can come at the expense of our natural and creaturely dignity, of what we display when we know who we are and what we’re supposed to do. Our lives will only become more miserably confused if we cannot speak confidently about human dignity.

In Modern and American Dignity , Lawler, who served on President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, reveals the intellectual and cultural trends that threaten our confidence in human dignity. The “modern” view of dignity, as he calls it, denies what’s good about who we are by nature, understanding human dignity to mean moral autonomy (freedom from nature) or productivity (asserting our mastery over nature by devising ingenious transformations). This new understanding of dignity stands at odds with the “American” view, which depends on the self-evidence of the truth that we are all created equally unique and irreplaceable. The American view, which is indebted to classical, Christian, and modern sources, understands that free persons are more than merely autonomous or productive beings—or, for that matter, clever chimps. It sees what’s good in our personal freedom and our technical mastery over nature, but only in balance with the rest of what makes us whole persons—our dignified performance of our “relational” duties as familial, political, and religious beings.

Modern and American Dignity explores these topics with wit and elegance. To make sense of contemporary political and moral debates, Lawler draws on a wide range of thinkers—from Socrates to Solzhenitsyn, from Tocqueville to Chesterton, from John Courtney Murray to our philosopher-pope Benedict XVI. In revealing the full dimensions of these debates, he exposes the emptiness of glib pronouncements—such as President Obama’s—that our bioethical conflicts can be resolved by a consensus of scientific experts. As the experience of the Bush Bioethics Council demonstrated, there is no scientific consensus about who a human being is.

Lawler has provided an indispensable guide to today’s complex political, bioethical, and cultural debates.

Peter Augustine Lawler, who served on President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, is the author of Homeless and at Home in America , Stuck with Virtue, Aliens in America , and other books. He is Dana Professor of Government at Berry College and the executive editor of the acclaimed scholarly quarterly Perspectives on Political Science. In 2007 he received the Richard Weaver Prize in Scholarly Letters. Lawler lives in Georgia.


Praise for Modern and American Dignity

“A wondrous reflection on the most marvelous of God’s creations, the human person, who, as Jacques Maritain put it, ‘transcends the stars and all the world of nature.’”
—Michael Novak

Praise for Peter Augustine Lawler

“One reads [Lawler] to witness the unfolding of a subtle mind grappling with the most profound issues facing modern America in light of the most profound ideas that have shaped the American soul.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer

“As conservatives ponder why and how to resist the temptation to reach for all good things in this life, they would be well advised to do so with Lawler by their side.”
— First Things

“Lawler has established himself as a noteworthy voice in the debate over reason and revelation in contemporary political life.”
— Claremont Review of Books

“Lawler’s combination of political and philosophical analysis and uniquely discursive mode of presentation make his important intellectual imprint resistant to casual categorization.”
— Perspectives on Political Science

“Peter Lawler continues to produce more memorable lines per page than any other professor.”
—Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World magazine