Abstract: | In spite of the burgeoning philosophical literature on human dignity, Stephen Darwall's second‐personal account of the dignity of persons has not received the attention it deserves. This article investigates Darwall's account and argues that it faces a dilemma, for it succumbs either to a problem of antecedence or to the wrong kind of reasons problem. But this need not mean one should reject a second‐personal account. Instead, I argue that an alternative second‐personal conception, one I will call relational, promises to solve the dilemma by avoiding both the problem of antecedence and the wrong kind of reasons problem. More generally, distinguishing these two second‐personal conceptions of the dignity of persons is important to enrich the available philosophical accounts of human dignity. |