> Accepting that others are vital to our self-perception is a corrective to the limitations of the Cartesian view. This brought to mind John Calvin's Institute

> Accepting that others are vital to our self-perception is a corrective to the limitations of the Cartesian view. This brought to mind John Calvin's Institutes. In the first chapter he suggests that knowledge consists primarily of two parts: knowledge of self and knowledge of God, and oddly, the best way to know oneself is to know God: > If, at mid-day, we either look down to the ground, or on the surrounding objects which lie open to our view, we think ourselves endued with a very strong and piercing eyesight; but when we look up to the sun, and gaze at it unveiled, the sight which did excellently well for the earth is instantly so dazzled and confounded by the refulgence, as to oblige us to confess that our acuteness in discerning terrestrial objects is mere dimness when applied to the sun. Thus too, it happens in estimating our spiritual qualities. So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods. But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of Being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, and wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence. In particular the concept of the Image of God has profound consequences for the way you think about dignity and human personhood. I recently watched Won't You Be My Neighbor, the documentary about Fred Rogers, and was struck by the way he treats an interacts with people, not as means to some end, but as ends in themselves, with real dignity and respect. It was counter-cultural at the time, but boy is it strange now. It feels like everything is outrage and disingenuousness. We treat people like tokens of their tribe, with pure contempt and toss them aside like their worthless and inhuman. Maybe Calvin was on to something.