Deconstructing Dignity
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Deconstructing Dignity
Author: Scott Cutler Shershow
language: en
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date: 2014-01-10
The right-to-die debate has gone on for centuries, playing out most recently as a spectacle of protest surrounding figures such as Terry Schiavo. In Deconstructing Dignity, Scott Cutler Shershow offers a powerful new way of thinking about it philosophically. Focusing on the concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of life, he employs Derridean deconstruction to uncover self-contradictory and damaging assumptions that underlie both sides of the debate. Shershow examines texts from Cicero’s De Officiis to Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals to court decisions and religious declarations. Through them he reveals how arguments both supporting and denying the right to die undermine their own unconditional concepts of human dignity and the sanctity of life with a hidden conditional logic, one often tied to practical economic concerns and the scarcity or unequal distribution of medical resources. He goes on to examine the exceptional case of self-sacrifice, closing with a vision of a society—one whose conditions we are far from meeting—in which the debate can finally be resolved. A sophisticated analysis of a heated topic, Deconstructing Dignity is also a masterful example of deconstructionist methods at work.
Deconstruction
An accessible introduction to a concept often considered impossibly abstruse, demonstrating its power as a conceptual tool in the twenty-first century. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a clear and concise introduction to a topic often considered difficult and abstruse: deconstruction. David Gunkel sorts out the concept, terminology, and practices of deconstruction, not to defend academic orthodoxy, or to disseminate the thought of Jacques Derrida--the fabricator of the neologism and progenitor of the concept--but to provide readers with a powerful conceptual tool for the twenty-first century. Gunkel explains that deconstruction is not simply the opposite of construction--the "deconstructed" jacket hanging in your closet is not, strictly speaking, accurately named--or synonymous with destruction. It is a way to think beyond the construction/destruction dichotomy and all other conceptual dichotomies and logical oppositions. After describing what deconstruction is not, and developing an abstract and schematic characterization derived from Derrida, Gunkel offers examples in (rather than of) deconstruction, including logocentrism (the speech/writing dichotomy) and virtuality (the ruling philosophical binary of real/appearance), remix (the original/copy distinction), and the posthuman figure of the cyborg (the human/machine conceptual pairing). Finally, Gunkel discusses the costs and benefits of deconstruction, considering the many things deconstruction is good for and identifying potential problems, including Eurocentrism, relativism, difficulties in communicating the concept, and reappropriation.
Happily Even After
Is happily-ever-after a myth—or can you experience something even better? Couples don’t ride off into the sunset after their honeymoon. The truth is marriage is hard. Maybe you’re in a place where you’re feeling that. You might even feel like this is the end. Bob and Dannah Gresh have been there. But they decided to participate in God’s redemption story. Together they discovered something better than romance: a love that endures. Whether your relationship is suffering from pornography, addiction, an affair, or just years of unhappiness, Jesus Christ can help you redeem the broken places of your marriage. In Happily Even After, Dannah is a friend who walks beside you and helps you: stop pretending everything is okay strengthen yourself in the Lord fight for your husband instead of with him discover 7 essential beliefs every marriage needs to survive broken places participate in your husband’s redemption story Dannah demonstrates how to forgive, live with joy, and hold your head high while you participate in His redemption story for your husband. You may feel like your story is over, but no one writes better—or happier—endings than Jesus.