This year’s Campion Lecture took place on the 14th May with Paolo Carozza, Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, who spoke on developing human dignity in the digital age.
In his introduction, Dr Patrick Riordan SJ, noted Prof Carozza’s work on the foundational and structural principles of human rights law such as human dignity and subsidiarity.
Prof Carozza began by imagining how St Edmund Campion might have used social media if it had been available in his time, and how the state would have responded with digital surveillance and tracking. While this was obviously fanciful it made the point that rapidly changing communications, and artificial intelligence, have had a profound impact on how individuals relate to each other in the digital era.
Catholic social thought (CST) has yet to engage very deeply or directly with the most daunting challenges of the current ecosystem of information technology yet the need to do so is urgent as we grapple more and more with the impact of new technologies on human development and the common good. The cornerstone of the Catholic social tradition is the recognition of the dignity of the human person, but how should our understanding of human dignity evolve in ways that respond to these emerging dangers and promises of our time?
The livestream video of the lecture is available here.
