Book Launch Reflections, Human Dignity: Its Roots and Challenges in Western Thought

John Loughlin‘s monograph, Human Dignity: Its Roots and Challenges in Western Thought, was recently launched at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, by Professor Tracey Rowland, winner of the Ratzinger Prize. Professor Rowland remarked on the night ‘if I were a bishop, I would make it compulsory reading by all the 6th formers in my schools and I would give autographed copies to any Catholic entering a university within the boundaries of my diocese. [It is a book] potentially as significant as MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality? It is not just excellent scholarship presented in an engaging style, it ticks all the boxes of something that is true, beautiful and good’.

Professor Loughlin argues that the Catholic understanding of human dignity is coherent, conceptually rich, and capable of being brought to bear on contemporary debates ranging from sexual ethics to social justice and artificial intelligence. But the book also seeks to explain why the Church understands dignity as she does. At the heart of that understanding lies the biblical affirmation that human beings are created in the “image and likeness” of God. This is not a marginal claim, but the foundation of a distinctive vision of the human person, developed over two millennia of reflection.

Further reflections will be published in an upcoming issue of the Catholic Herald.

Copies of John Loughlin’s Human Dignity: Its Roots and Challenges in Western Thought can be purchased at the link