Reverentia Dignitatis Cuiusque — Reverence for the Dignity of Each

Stuart K. Hayashi

 

The writer Hannah Eason asked me if I knew if there already existed a special term for a particular philosophic idea. There is a role, she thinks, for reverence for some very important values and institutions, a reverence that is comparable to what is found in religious worship. Instead of being for some supernatural being, though, that reverence would be for the dignity of the individual. The idea is that you don’t have to justify your existence by obeisance to some supernatural being, or servitude to some institution. No, your right to your own existence, peaceably, is its own justification and has its own dignity. Is there already a word for that?

I had to admit to Hannah that I didn’t know of such a word. Her idea sounds very consistent with the sort of philosophic trends to emerge from the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. Even then, I am unaware of the thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment using a single word or even a short phrase to delineate precisely what she has in mind. I suggested that we might need to invent our own term for it.

At first I tried to come up with some single-word neologisms. But later I thought that maybe a short phrase of two or three words might suffice. After all, laissez faire and laissez-nous faire are each more than one word. I thought that perhaps our new short phrase could be in Latin. As legal scholars, biologists, and Renaissance philosophers have long noticed, an idea sounds fancier and more impressive when said in Greek or Latin.

I went to Google Translate. On the input side I entered in English, “reverence for dignity.” On the output side, Google Translate said that the Latin for this is reverentia dignitatis. When I re-enter reventia diginatis, this time on the input side, the output side says that in English this is “respect for dignity.”

I tried again. For the input side, I entered “reverence for the individual’s dignity.” A few times, the output side would spit out, once again, reverential dignitatis. But later it said in Latin this could be reverentia dignitatis cuiusque. That last word is pronounced KOO-yoos-kway. When, for the input side, I entered reventia dignitatis cuiusque, the output side said that the English translation is “Respecting the dignity of each.”

We could benefit from paying mind to reverentia dignitatem cuiusque — reverence for the dignity of each.

My Words at Dad’s Funeral

Stuart K. Hayashi

 

These are the words I spoke at Dad’s funeral today.

_________________

There are many unforgettable things about our dad. One of them was that he was a real original, and walked his own path. He was left-handed but he played the guitar right-handed. He wrote with his right hand and drew with his left. He had a keen eye for rare plants and would take an interest in them even if no one else around did. He liked to talk about philosophy. If everyone else thought his ideas were strange, that didn’t bother him. Our mom was her own person, too, and Dad really loved that about her.

I remember once he told me that when he was going about his music, someone asked him if he wanted to be the next Leonard Bernstein. Dad replied, “I want to be the first Stanley Hayashi.” And he was. There will never be someone else like Dad. He inspires me, and I miss him. Thank you, Dad.

And on behalf of our family, thank you for coming and for being a part of Dad’s life.