Name any valued human trait--intelligence, wit, charm, grace, strength--and you will find an inexhaustible variety and complexity in its expression among individuals. Yet we insist that such diversity does not provide grounds for differential treatment at the most basic level. Whatever merit, blame, praise, love, or hate we receive as beings with a particular past and a particular constitution, we are always and everywhere due equal respect merely as persons.
But why? Most who attempt to answer this question appeal to the idea that all human beings possess an intrinsic dignity and worth--grounded in our capacities, for example, to reason, reflect, or love--that raises us up in the order of nature. Writer rejects this predominant view and offers a radical alternative.
To understand our commitment to basic equality, Humanity without Dignity argues that we must begin with a consideration not of equality but of inequality. Rather than search for a chimerical value-bestowing capacity possessed to an equal extent by each one of us, we ought to ask: Why and when is it wrong to treat others as inferior? Sangiovanni comes to the conclusion that our commitment to moral equality is best explained by a rejection of cruelty rather than a celebration of rational capacity. He traces the impact of this fundamental shift for our understanding of human rights and the norms of anti-discrimination that underlie it.
SPOILER içerir...
First, I wanna provide a brief summary of the book then I will share my comments on it:
Humans defeated famine, plague and war (starvation, epidemics and violence)
Humanities new targets are immortality, happiness and divinity by using artificial intelligence, big data, biotechnology, genetic engineering, regenerative medicine and nanotechnology and thus upgrading Homo Sapiens to Homo Deus.
Imminent dangers are climate change, global warming, pollution
Humans domesticated more than 90% of all large animals and thus conquered the world.
But humans are no different than animals since we have no soul, consciousness, mind or free will. Our sensations, emotions, desires and thoughts are biochemical data processing algorithms
What makes humans more special than animals are not our soul, mind or consciousness but our ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers by creating ‘fictional myths’ such as money, corporation, state, gods. Fictions enable us to cooperate better and without fiction no complex human society can function.
Scientists study how the world functions, but there is no scientific method for determining how humans ought to behave. So, countries cannot function on the basis of scientific theories alone. They require some religion or ideology to maintain order.
Humanism (the worship of humankind which sanctifies life, happiness and power of Homo Sapiens) became the dominant world religion for the last 300 years.
Humanism split into three main branches, all of which believe that human experience is the supreme source of authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways: Orthodox Humanism (Liberal humanism or simply as liberalism), Socialist Humanism (Communism, leftists), Evolutionary Humanism (Racism, Fascism
