Capturing the individuality of human beings is important for the expression of the Idea of humanity "because to a certain extent, the human individual as such has the dignity of an Idea of his own" (WWR I, 251).
As a counterbalance to most of the rest of the media (except for Rolling Stone, who published a pretty good bio article), we thought we'd give Bernie Sanders the respect and dignity of treating his ideas with the seriousness they deserve (but are not likely to get, if the first week is any indication).
This isn't easy though, which is why there is strength and dignity in letting go of ideas that are toxic, and it does get easier the more you do it.
The real threat to France is not anti-Americanism, which might at least have the dignity of an argument, an idea, and could at least provoke a grownup response, but what the writer Philippe Sollers has called the creeping "moldiness" of French life — the will to defiantly turn the country back into an enclosed provincial culture.
But at the most general level such content involves respect for the dignity of the person and the ideas associated with universal citizenship, limits on the power of the state to intrude into private lives and public accountability.
One might argue that the placement of dignity in the idea of social status and as historically malleable renders it less secure and more open to manipulation as social currents themselves change.
Parallel with individualism arose, as a favourite humanistic theme, the idea of the dignity of man.
Within the evangelical package came ideas of the dignity of human life, literacy, the strength to resist slavery, self-improvement.
This is fundamental: it shreds such sepia-tinted ideas as the "dignity of labour", and the notion – shared by both the old left and its reformist successors – that to toil is to express one's essential humanity.
