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.

• Acknowledgments and Provenance


• Introduction


• Part I. Construction and Revision


• 1. Constructing Subjects


• 2. Socializing Harry


• 3. Revising Our Pasts


• 4. Regret, Luck, and Identity


• Part II. Value and Humanity


• 5. Individuals, Citizens, Persons


• 6. Dignity and Self-Creation


• 7. A Morality of Crime and Punishment


• Part III. Collective Subjects


• 8. Collective Personhoods


• 9. Sanctioning Corporations


• 10. Freedoms of Collective Speech


• Index

Meir Dan-Cohen is Milo Reese Robbins Chair in Legal Ethics, School of Law and Affiliated Professor, Department of Philosophy, at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Rights, Persons, and Organizations (2nd Edition 2016), and Harmful Thoughts: Essays on Law, Self and Morality (2002).