NDPR Karl Ameriks Kantian Dignity and its Difficulties

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2026.06.9 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Karl Ameriks, Kantian Dignity and its Difficulties, Oxford University Press, 2024, 242pp., $95.00 (hbk) ISBN 9780198917625.

Reviewed by Robert B. Pippin, University of Chicago

There are two major issues raised in Karl Ameriks’s book. The first concerns how Kant understands what human dignity is, its ground and scope, and how we should understand the proper way of acknowledging it—what Kant called “respect” for it. The second concerns a few specific ways in which more attention needs to be given to the surprising complexity—both good and bad—of the influence of some of Kant’s central concepts concerning issues such as race, religion, nationalism, colonialism and cosmopolitanism. (3) The range of those influenced is broader than is standard in the philosophical literature and focuses on those that...