Description: Combining constructivist and hermeneutical themes, this book explores normative aspects of human self creation seen as a matter of fixing and elaborating the values and norms that shape human identity, individually and collectively. The book focuses especially on a conception of dignity as the value that accrues to us qua authors of the meanings constitutive of human life.
Review Quotes: "Professor Dan-Cohen is one of the deepest and most interesting thinkers in the academy. Interweaving law, philosophy, and sociology, his work is always stimulating and constructively provocative. Dan-Cohen has a distinctive and highly independent point of view, engagement with which leads the reader to consider matters in a different way than the standard frames pursued within the literature. This fascinating collection will significantly enhance the field." -- Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice, UCLA
"Meir Dan-Cohen's book is challenging and philosophically rich in all the best ways. Its more ethereal Kantian aspects are leavened by his lawyerly knowledge, and its sensible humanism is deepened by his capacity for trenchant philosophical analysis. One hopes that its essays will provide opportunities for careful critique and its book-like qualities will invite ambitious philosophical theory constructors in years to come." --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"Professor Dan-Cohen is one of the deepest and most interesting thinkers in the academy. Interweaving law, philosophy, and sociology, his work is always stimulating and constructively provocative. Dan-Cohen has a distinctive and highly independent point of view, engagement with which leads the reader to consider matters in a different way than the standard frames pursued within the literature. This fascinating collection will significantly enhance the field." -- Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Professor of Philosophy and Pete Kameron Professor of Law and Social Justice, UCLA
"Meir Dan-Cohen is one of the most interesting and exciting legal philosophers of our time. His work is a breath of fresh air in a field that can get too rarified and too caught up in its own intramural disputes. The essays collected in this volume are classic Dan-Cohen: smart, provocative, different, influential, and original. They reframe old debates in new light." -- Ethan J. Leib, Professor of Law, Fordham Law School
"Meir Dan-Cohen's book is challenging and philosophically rich in all the best ways. Its more ethereal Kantian aspects are leavened by his lawyerly knowledge, and its sensible humanism is deepened by his capacity for trenchant philosophical analysis. One hopes that its essays will provide opportunities for careful critique and its book-like qualities will invite ambitious philosophical theory constructors in years to come." --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews