Rethinking the Value of Humanity

It is widely agreed that to treat some human beings as less worthy of concern and respect than others is to lose sight of their humanity. But what does this moral blindness amount to? The essays in this volume offer a wide range of competing, yet overlapping, answers to this question. Some essays appeal to distinctively human capacities. Others argue that our obligations to one another are ultimately grounded in self-interest, or certain shared interests, or our natural sociability. This rich selection of proposals encourages us to rethink some of our own deepest assumptions about the moral significance of being human.