This working paper was discussed at the Council's
December 2005 meeting.
It was prepared by staff solely to aid discussion, and does not
represent the official views of the Council or of the United States
Government.
Staff Working Paper
Bioethics and Human Dignity
By Adam Schulman, Ph.D.
Senior Research Consultant
“Human dignity”: is it a useful concept in bioethics,
one that sheds important light on the whole range of bioethical
issues, from embryo research and assisted reproduction, to biomedical
enhancement, to care of the disabled and the dying? Or is it, on
the contrary, a useless concept—at best a vague substitute
for other, more precise notions, at worst a mere slogan that camouflages
unconvincing arguments and unarticulated biases?
Although the Council has itself made frequent use of this notion
in its writings, it has not undertaken a thematic exploration of
human dignity, its meanings, its foundations, and its relevance
for bioethics. In the meantime, at least one critic, noting that
“appeals to human dignity populate the landscape of medical
ethics,” has recently called into question whether human dignity
has any place in bioethical discourse at all.1
It would seem timely, then, for the Council to take up the question
of human dignity squarely, with the aim of clarifying whether and
how it might be a useful concept in bioethics.
The purpose of this working paper is to help the Council focus
its discussion of human dignity and its proper place in bioethics.
To that end, it will first give some examples of how human dignity
can be a difficult concept to apply in bioethical controversies.
It will then explore some of the complex roots of the modern notion
of human dignity, in order to shed light on why its application
to bioethics is so problematic. Finally, it will suggest, tentatively,
that a certain conception of human dignity—dignity understood
as humanity—has an important role to play in bioethics,
both now and especially in the future.
1. The problem of human dignity in bioethics: some examples
That human dignity might be at least problematic as a bioethical
concept is suggested by the many ways it gets invoked in bioethical
debates, often on different sides of the same issue. Consider, for
example, a question raised in the Council’s recent exploration
of ethical caregiving at the end of life:2
Is it morally acceptable for an elderly patient, diagnosed with
early Alzheimer’s disease and facing an inexorable decline
into dementia and dependency, to stop taking his heart medicine,
in the hope of a quicker exit, one less distressing to himself and
his family? One possible answer discussed in our report is that
it is morally permissible (and perhaps even admirable) for such
a patient, who finds the prospect of years of dementia humiliating
or repellent and who is reluctant to become a burden to his family,
to forgo medication and allow heart disease to carry him off in
a more dignified and humane way. Another possible answer
is that it is morally impermissible, because deliberately hastening
the end of one’s life, even by an act of omission, is incompatible
with the equal dignity and respect owed to all human life.
A third answer is that respect for the dignity and autonomy
of all persons requires us to defer to the personal choice
of a competent individual in such intimate matters, regardless of
how he or she might decide. Note that all three answers (and perhaps
others that could be given) are grounded in part in some appeal
to human dignity, though they reach quite different conclusions.
Or, to take an example from the beginning of human life, consider
a question that might arise in a neonatal intensive care unit: What
medical interventions are appropriate to save the life of a critically
ill premature infant who is likely to survive, if at all, only with
severe mental defects? One possible answer is that, because human
dignity rests on our higher mental capacities, it is wrong
to bring a person into the world burdened with a devastating lifelong
mental incapacity. Another answer might be that every reasonable
measure should be taken, because the equal dignity of all human
life forbids us to declare some lives “not worth living.”
Yet a third answer might be that, out of respect for their dignity
and autonomy, the parents must be left free to resolve this
moral dilemma for themselves.
Or, again, consider an example of biomedical “enhancement”
examined in the fifth chapter of Beyond Therapy:3
If science were to develop memory-blunting drugs that could free
us from the emotional burdens of intrusive and painful memories,
would it be ethically permissible to give such drugs freely to people
who have suffered grievous disappointments or witnessed horrifying
events? One answer might be that such an invention, with its promise
of liberating miserable people from the emotional tyranny of past
misfortunes, ought to be embraced as an unqualified enhancement
to human freedom, autonomy, and dignity. But another answer
might be that human integrity and dignity require of us
that we confront our painful memories and learn to deal with them
(if possible) and not just “flush” them away by taking
a pill. A third answer would be that this decision is properly left
to the individual, whose dignity and autonomy entail the
right of voluntary, informed consent.
In each of these examples, a variety of strong convictions can
be derived from powerful but conflicting intuitions about what human
dignity demands of us. Little wonder, then, that some bioethicists
are inclined to wash their hands of “dignity” entirely,
in favor of clearer and less ambiguous ethical concepts.
2. The tangled sources of human dignity
If human dignity seems a malleable concept of uncertain application
in bioethics, that is partly because the idea of human dignity comes
to bioethics from several disparate sources. Each of these sources
contributes something of value for bioethics; yet each source also
brings its own peculiar difficulties to the application of the concept
of human dignity to bioethical controversies. At least four such
sources of human dignity seem worth mentioning:
a. Classical antiquity: The word “dignity”
comes to us, via the Latin dignus and dignitas, from Greek
and Roman antiquity, in whose literature it means something like
“worthiness for honor and esteem”. This classical notion
of dignity as something rare and exceptional retains some of its
power even in our egalitarian age: witness the admiration we bestow
on outstanding athletic and musical performance, on heroism in war,
on courageous statesmanship, or on the selflessness of those who
make sacrifices or undergo hardships for the sake of their young
children, or their aging parents, or their neighbors stricken by
misfortune or tragedy. But if dignity implies excellence and distinction,
then to speak of “human dignity” raises the question,
what is it about human beings as such that we find distinctive and
admirable, that raises them in our estimation above other animals?
Is there some one attribute or capacity that makes man worthy of
respect, such as reason, or conscience, or freedom? Or is it a complex
of traits, no one of which is sufficient to earn our esteem? These
are not easy questions to answer; yet most would acknowledge that
there must be something about humankind that entitles us
to the special regard implicit in this sense of human dignity.4
One problem with the classical notion of dignity that has only
grown more acute in our age of rapid biomedical progress is the
complicated relationship between technology and human dignity (understood
as grounded in excellence). Is the dignity of the soldier enhanced
by the invention of modern weapons? Is the dignity of the athlete
enhanced by drugs that improve his performance, or even by his reliance
on trainers, nutritionists, and other experts? Some might argue
that new technologies (“bio” and otherwise) serve human
dignity by augmenting those traits that make human beings worthy
of esteem; yet others might view such inventions as undermining
human dignity, by making our excellence depend too much on the artifice
of others.
A second problem with dignity in its classical sense is that it
lends itself to invidious distinctions between one human being and
another; it is not fully at home in democratic times, where it keeps
uneasy company with the more characteristic democratic ideals of
equality, freedom, easygoingness, and tolerance.5
Now for that very reason one might argue that human dignity is especially
vulnerable and worth defending in democratic times. But to make
the case for human dignity as a robust bioethical concept for our
age, one would have to show that dignity can be something universal
and accessible to all human beings as such.
There was in fact a school of philosophy in ancient Greece and
Rome, the Stoics, who believed in dignity as a genuine possibility
for all human beings, regardless of their circumstances, social
standing, or accomplishments. For the Stoics, human beings have
dignity because they possess reason, and the best life, the life
according to nature, is available to anyone who chooses to live
in a thoughtful or reflective way. And what our reason dictates,
above all, is that everything necessary for our happiness and peace
of mind is within our control; despite poverty, illness, or oppression
it is always possible to live in a dignified way. Nothing that anyone
can say or do to you can rob you of your dignity and integrity.
For the Stoics, dignity is a profoundly democratic idea, in that
it is just as likely to be found among the wretched as among the
lofty: as possible for the slave Epictetus as for the emperor Marcus
Aurelius.6
Yet while dignity as the Stoics conceived it is a universal possibility
for all human beings everywhere, it nonetheless sets a rigorous
and exacting standard that few of us, in practice, manage to attain.
And while the Stoic teaching of indifference to bodily suffering
might well prove to be a valuable discipline for those who have
to live with pain, illness, or infirmity, the Stoic attitude of
detachment from the things of this world—embodied in the principle
that “nothing that can be taken from you is good”—means
that particular bioethical questions are ultimately of little significance
from the Stoic point of view.
b. Biblical religion: Another powerful source of a broader,
shared notion of human dignity is the Biblical account of man as
“made in the image of God.” This teaching, together
with its further elaborations in Jewish and Christian scripture,
has been interpreted in many different ways, but the central implication
seems to be that human beings, because they are in some respects
godlike, possess an inherent and inalienable dignity. One part of
that dignity, suggested by the Book of Genesis, has to do with the
special position of man in the natural world: within that realm
man is like God in having stewardship or dominion over all things,
because he alone can comprehend the whole and he alone concerns
himself with the good of the whole.7
In this sense, “being made in God’s image” could
even be taken to imply a special responsibility on our part to perfect
nature in order to finish God’s creation. Interpreted in this
way, the idea of human dignity could lend support not only to the
practice of healing and medicine in general, but also, some might
argue, to a defense of such activities as in vitro fertilization
or even cloning, here understood as fixing nature in a godlike way.
Yet if man’s mastery of nature has some sanction in the Biblical
teaching on human dignity, that teaching also points in another,
humbler direction: for although made in God’s image, we are
not ourselves divine; we are creatures, not creators. In this sense,
“made in God’s image” has the implication that
all human beings, not only those healthy and upright but also those
broken in body or soul, have a share in this God-given dignity.
Dignity in this sense would give ethical guidance to us in answering
the question of what we owe to those at the very beginning of life,
to those at the end, to those with severe disability or dementia,
and even to tiny embryos. Seeing human beings as created in the
image of God means, in some sense, valuing other human beings in
the way a just or loving God would value them. It means seeing dignity
where some might see only disability, and perhaps seeing human life
where others might see only a clump of cells.
Yet because the Biblical account of human dignity points in different
directions, its implications for bioethics are not always clear
and unambiguous. In the controversy over stem cell research, for
example, would the inherent dignity of man mean that human life
at every stage is sacred, and that the destruction of human embryos
is therefore forbidden? Or would it mean that healing and preserving
human life is our preeminent duty, justifying all kinds of otherwise
morally questionable research?
Some will argue that a concept of human dignity derived from the
Bible (or other religious texts) is inherently unreliable, a mask
for religious dogmas that have no legitimate place in secular bioethics.
Thus Ruth Macklin, who advocates banishing the term “dignity”
from medical ethics entirely, suspects that religious sources, especially
Roman Catholic writings on human dignity, may explain why so many
articles and reports appeal to human dignity “as if it means
something over and above respect for persons or for their autonomy.”8
More recently, Dieter Birnbacher has suggested that the idea of
human dignity, when invoked (as it has been in the cloning debate)
to defend the natural order of human procreation against biotechnical
manipulation, is nothing more than camouflage for a theological
tradition that sees “the order of nature as divinely sanctioned.”9
Yet, while it might be problematic to rely on religious texts for
authoritative guidance on bioethical questions, such texts
may still be quite valuable in helping all of us—whether believers
or not—to articulate and think through our deepest intuitions
about human beings, their distinctive powers and activities, and
the rights and responsibilities we believe them to possess. Furthermore,
those who would dismiss all religious grounds for the belief in
human dignity have the burden of showing, in purely secular terms,
what it is about human beings that obliges us to treat them with
respect. If not because they are “endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights,” then why are all men entitled
to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?10
c. Kantian moral philosophy: A daring attempt to set universal
human dignity on a strictly rational foundation was made in the
eighteenth century by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant’s
primary purpose was to show how moral freedom and responsibility
could still be possible in a world governed by the laws of mathematical
physics. For Kant, in agreement with the Stoics, dignity is the
intrinsic worth that belongs to all human beings and to no other
beings in the natural world. All men possess dignity because of
their rational autonomy, i.e., their capacity for free obedience
to the moral law of which they themselves are the authors. Kant’s
doctrine of human dignity demands equal respect for all persons
and forbids the use of another person merely as a means to one’s
own ends. Kant’s celebration of autonomy and his prohibition
of the “instrumentalization” of human subjects have
certainly had a lasting impact on modern ethical thought and on
bioethics in particular (especially in the ethics of human experimentation
and in the principle of voluntary, informed consent). And it cannot
be denied that Kant’s account of what the moral law demands
of us (his various formulations of “the categorical imperative”)
has a certain austere majesty and logical economy that compel grudging
respect if not wholehearted allegiance. Yet the application of Kant’s
moral theory to bioethics remains problematic for a number of reasons.
First, Kant’s achievement in reconciling morality with mathematical
physics was won at a great price: in locating human dignity entirely
in rational autonomy, Kant was forced to deny any moral significance
to other aspects of our humanity, including our family life, our
loves, loyalties, and other emotions, as well as our way of coming
into the world and all other merely biological facts about the human
organism.11
His exclusive focus on rational autonomy leaves Kant with a rather
narrow and constricted account of our moral life, one that has precious
little to say about the moral significance of a whole range of biomedical
interventions that currently arouse ethical controversy. If the
rational will alone is the seat of human dignity, why should it
matter if we are born of cloned embryos, or if we enhance our muscles
and control our moods with drugs, or if we sell our organs on the
open market?
Second, the doctrine of rational autonomy itself, clear and unambiguous
though it may be in theory, can be difficult to apply in practice,
especially in a biomedical context. Consider these examples: If
dignity depends on the rational will, must we conclude that those
human beings who do not yet have the powers of rational autonomy
(infants), or who have lost them (those with dementia), or who never
had them (those with congenital mental impairment) are beneath human
dignity? How far can a person go in the use of mood- and mind-altering
drugs before rational autonomy is compromised? Are choices made
under the influence of such drugs less than free? On such basic
questions in bioethics Kant’s account of human dignity does
not offer clear moral guidance.
Third, Kant’s moral philosophy has bequeathed to later ethical
thought a deplorable legacy in the form of the rigid distinction
between deontology and consequentialism, i.e., between a morality
(such as Kant’s) of absolute imperatives and one (such as
utilitarianism) that considers the good and bad results of our actions.
Nowadays, if human dignity is invoked in the discussion of some
bioethical issue, the first question that is usually raised is whether
the term is being used as a categorical moral principle (e.g., “human
cloning is wrong in principle, because it violates some inalienable
right of the child”) or as an argument based on consequences
(e.g., “human cloning is wrong because of the degrading effects
it is likely to have on the child, the family, and society at large”).
Bioethics in practice requires a healthy measure of old-fashioned
prudence and is not well served by a dogmatic adherence to the artificial
division between an ethics of principles and an ethics of consequences.
d. 20th century constitutions and international declarations:
Finally, another prominent yet problematic source for the introduction
of “human dignity” into contemporary bioethical discussions
is the frequent use of that phrase in national constitutions and
international declarations ratified in the aftermath of the Second
World War. By proclaiming a belief in “human dignity”,
such documents would seem, at first blush, to point beyond the prosaic
safeguarding of “rights” advocated in the American founding
(“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) or in
the writings of John Locke (“life, liberty, and property”)
and other modern natural right theorists.
The preamble to the Charter of the United Nations (1945)
begins:
We the people of the United Nations, determined
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which
twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity
and worth of the human person, in the rights of men and women
and of nations large and small…. [emphasis added]
In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), recognition
“of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable
rights of all members of the human family” is said to be “the
foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.” At
least thirty-seven national constitutions ratified since 1945 refer
explicitly to human dignity, including the Basic Law (Grundgesetz)
of Germany (1949), which begins: “Human dignity is inviolable.
To respect and protect it is the duty of all state authority.”12
As Doron Shultziner has emphasized,13
while human dignity in these documents plays the role of a supreme
value on which all human rights and duties are said to depend, the
meaning, content, and foundations of human dignity are never explicitly
defined. Instead, the affirmation of human dignity in these documents
reflects a political consensus among groups that may well have quite
different beliefs about what human dignity means, where it comes
from, and what it entails. In effect, “human dignity”
serves here as a placeholder for “whatever it is about human
beings that entitles them to basic human rights and freedoms.”
This practice makes a good deal of sense. After all, what mattered
most after 1945 was not reaching agreement as to the theoretical
foundations of human dignity but ensuring, as a practical
matter, that the worst atrocities inflicted on large populations
during the war (i.e., concentration camps, mass murder, slave labor),
would not be repeated. In short, “the inviolability of human
dignity” was enshrined in at least some of these documents
chiefly in order to prevent a second Holocaust.
Yet because of its formal and indeterminate character, the notion
of human dignity espoused in these constitutions and international
declarations does not offer clear and unambiguous guidance in bioethical
controversies.14 Certainly the fact that human dignity is mentioned
prominently in these documents is to be welcomed as an invitation
to explore the question, “What is the ground of human dignity?”
And the sensible idea of invoking universal human dignity in order
to establish a baseline of inviolable rights—in effect, a
floor of decency beneath which no treatment of human beings should
ever sink—may well prove to be of some value in holding the
line against the most egregious abuses of the new biotechnologies
(e.g., the deliberate creation of animal-human chimeras). Yet if
we are content to regard human dignity as nothing more than an unspecified
“Factor X”15
in virtue of which we are obliged to treat all persons with respect,
then some bioethicists have wondered why we should bother invoking
it at all. Why not dispense with dignity and simply spell out precisely
what “respect for persons” demands of us? Ruth Macklin
adopts this viewpoint, arguing that respect for persons is a sufficient
principle for bioethics, one that entails “the need to obtain
voluntary, informed consent; the requirement to protect confidentiality;
and the need to avoid discrimination and abusive practices.”16
Her approach may have the virtue of simplicity, but it does not
explain why all persons are entitled to respect;17
and it is far from clear that all present and future controversies
in bioethics can be resolved merely by providing informed consent,
honoring confidentiality, avoiding discrimination, and refraining
from abuse.
e. Summary: To recapitulate the findings of this section:
Important notions of human dignity are to be found both in classical
antiquity and in Biblical scripture, each with lasting influence
on modern thought. Yet the classical conception of dignity (in the
general sense of human worth, grounded in excellence) is of problematic
relevance to present-day bioethics, in part because of its ambiguous
relationship to technological progress and in part because of its
aristocratic and inegalitarian tendencies; while the specifically
Stoic notion of human dignity is of limited use in bioethics both
because of the severe and exacting standard it sets and because
of the basic Stoic attitude of indifference to the external world,
including the suffering of the body. And although the Biblical teachings
on human dignity are rich and evocative, they have ambiguous implications
for bioethics, pointing both toward godlike mastery of nature and
toward humble acknowledgment of the sanctity of human life in all
its forms. Turning to the modern era, both the moral philosophy
of Kant and various constitutions and international declarations
of the twentieth century appear to provide support for a belief
in the equal dignity of all human beings. Yet Kant’s idea
of human dignity carries certain theoretical baggage that limits
its utility for bioethics, while the recently ratified constitutions
and declarations tend to invoke dignity without clearly specifying
either its ground or its content, suggesting that the concept itself
might well be superfluous. On the other hand, it is hard to see
how ethical standards for the treatment of human beings can be maintained
without relying on some conception of what human beings are and
what they therefore deserve.
3. Dignity understood as humanity—an indispensable concept
for bioethics?
Having disentangled some of the roots of the modern concept of
human dignity, can we make a compelling case for the usefulness
of this concept in present-day and future bioethics? Only a tentative
answer to this question can be hazarded here.
There is a strong temptation to say no, for the following reason.
The fundamental question we have alluded to several times in this
paper—the question of the specific excellence or dignity of
man—has proved sufficiently daunting that a long line of great
modern thinkers, from Hobbes and Locke to the American founders,
have found it prudent, for political purposes, to assert that all
human beings have rights and freedoms that must be respected equally,
without spelling out too clearly the ground of that assertion.18
And such deliberate reticence as to the foundation and content of
human dignity has arguably served liberal democracy well, fostering
tolerance, freedom, equality, and peace. In the particular context
of medical ethics, it must be acknowledged that for a long time
the liberal principle of “respect for persons”—including
the rights of voluntary, informed consent and confidentiality, as
well as protection from discrimination and abuse—has proved
serviceable in resolving many (though by no means all) ethical problems.
But in this extraordinary and unprecedented era of biotechnological
progress, whose fruits we have scarcely begun to harvest, the campaign
to conquer nature has at long last begun to turn inward toward human
nature itself. In the coming decades we will increasingly acquire
the power to isolate and modify the biological determinants of human
attributes that hitherto have been all but immune to manipulation.
For example, we are learning to control the development of human
embryos in vitro, and this may one day make possible the cloning
of human beings, the creation of animal-human chimeras, and the
gestation of human fetuses in animal or artificial wombs. We are
assembling a growing arsenal of psychoactive drugs that modulate
not only behavior but also attention, memory, cognition, emotion,
mood, personality, and other aspects of our inner life. We are acquiring
the ability to screen out unwanted gene combinations in preimplantation
embryos and may in future be capable of direct germline genetic
modification. We may one day be able to modify the human genome
so as to increase resistance to diseases, optimize height and weight,
augment muscle strength, extend the lifespan, sharpen the senses,
boost intelligence, adjust personality, and who knows what else.
Some of these changes may amount to unobjectionable enhancements
to our imperfect nature; but surely not all forms of biomedical
engineering are equally benign and acceptable.
Our ever-increasing facility at tinkering with human nature itself
poses an acute challenge to any easygoing agnosticism on the question
of the ground and content of human dignity. As we become more and
more adept at modifying human nature at will, it may well prove
impossible to avoid a direct confrontation with the question posed
by the Psalmist, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?”
That is, among all the features of human nature susceptible to biotechnological
enhancement, modification, or elimination, which ones are so essential
to our humanity that they are rightly considered inviolable? For
example, if gestation of fetuses in artificial wombs should become
feasible, would it not be a severe distortion of our humanity and
an affront to our dignity to develop assembly lines for the mass
production of cloned human beings without mothers or fathers? Would
it not be degrading to our humanity and an affront to human dignity
to produce animal-human chimeras with some human features and some
features of lower animals? Would it not be a corruption of our humanity
and an affront to human dignity to modify the brain so as to make
a person incapable of love, or of sympathy, or of curiosity, or
even of selfishness?19
In short, the march of scientific progress that now promises to
give us manipulative power over human nature itself—a coercive
power mostly exercised, as C. S. Lewis presciently noted, by some
men over other men, and especially by one generation over future
generations20
—will eventually compel us to take a stand on the meaning
of human dignity, understood as our essential and inviolable humanity.
If the necessity of taking that stand is today not yet widely appreciated,
there will come a time when it surely will be. With luck, it will
not be too late.
___________________________
References
1.
Ruth Macklin, “Dignity is a useless concept,” BMJ
327: 1419-1420, 2003. Dieter Birnbacher, another skeptic on the
usefulness of human dignity as a bioethical concept, observes that
there is a “nearly worldwide consensus that reproductive cloning
is incompatible with human dignity and should be prohibited by law.”
See his “Human cloning and human dignity,” Reproductive
BioMedicine Online 10(Suppl. 1): 50-55, 2005.
2.
The President’s Council
on Bioethics, Taking Care: Ethical Caregiving in Our Aging Society,
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2005, chapter 4, pp.
154 ff.
3. The President’s
Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the
Pursuit of Happiness, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 2003, chapter 5, pp. 214 ff.
4. Of course there are some
sophisticated thinkers who, in the name of animal rights, assail
the very idea of a special status for man as an expression of naïvely
anthropocentric “speciesism,” a word coined by analogy
with racism and sexism. See Peter Singer, Animal Liberation,
2nd edition, New York: Avon, 1990; see also Bernard Williams, Ethics
and the Limits of Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1985.
5. That “dignity”
retains an aura of Roman exclusivity even in modern times is suggested
by a quotation attributed to humorist James Thurber: “Human
Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely
splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an
achievement of the majority.”
6. That the Stoic conception
of human dignity might not be entirely incompatible with our lax
American culture is suggested by the recent popular success of the
Ridley Scott movie Gladiator (2000) and the Tom Wolfe novel
A Man in Full (1998), both of which explore Stoic responses
to misfortune. Consider also the example of Admiral James Stockdale,
whose education in Stoic principles helped him survive with dignity
through seven harrowing years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
7. See Leon Kass, The
Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: The Free Press,
2003), pp. 36 ff.
8. Ruth Macklin, “Dignity
is a useless concept.”
9. Dieter Birnbacher, “Human cloning
and human dignity.”
10. Whether the rights
proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence rest ultimately on
a religious or a secular foundation is, of course, a complex question
that cannot be settled here.
11. One will not, for example,
find much hint of human dignity in Kant’s definition of marriage
as “the association of two persons of different sex for the
lifelong reciprocal possession of their sexual faculties.”
[quoted from Part I of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797).]
12. See Teresa Iglesias,
“Bedrock Truths and the Dignity of the Individual,”
Logos 4: 1, 114-134, 2001.
13. See Shultziner’s helpful review
article, “Human dignity—functions and meanings,”
Global Jurist Topics 3:3, 2003.
14. UNESCO’s recently
adopted (though still provisional) Universal Declaration on Bioethics
and Human Rights refers to “human dignity” or “the
dignity of the human person” (in close conjunction with “human
rights” and “fundamental freedoms”) eleven times
but does not spell out what that dignity is or why human beings
have it. Reflecting its status as a consensus statement among many
nations, the draft suggests that “due regard” should
be paid to “cultural diversity and pluralism,” but not
so as to infringe upon or limit the scope of “human dignity,
human rights and fundamental freedoms.” The text of the Declaration
may be found online at www.unesco.org/shs/bioethics.
15. See Frank Fukuyama,
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), chapter 9, “Human
Dignity.”
16. Ruth Macklin, “Dignity
is a useless concept.”
17. One recognizes, in the
various principles of autonomy or “respect for persons”
that populate contemporary bioethics, the remote and enfeebled descendants
of Kant’s categorical moral imperative; yet the devotees of
autonomy today are seldom willing to embrace anything like the metaphysical
system Kant felt obliged to supply as the ground for his moral principles.
18. Hobbes, however,
was somewhat less reserved than the others: in chapter 13 of Leviathan
(1651) he indicates that our equal rights are derived ultimately
from our roughly equal ability to kill one another. Note that, for
Hobbes, dignity is not intrinsic to human beings but is merely “the
public worth of a man, which is the value set on him by the Commonwealth.”
(Leviathan, ch 10).
19. In the novel White Noise (1985)
by Don DeLillo, a drug is invented whose specific effect on the
human brain is apparently to suppress the fear of death. Would it
be compatible with human dignity for all of us to start taking such
a drug?
20. C. S. Lewis, The
Abolition of Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943), chapter
3: “From this point of view, what we call Man’s power
over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other
men with Nature as its instrument…. There neither is nor can
be any simple increase of power on Man’s side. Each new power
won by man is a power over man as well. Each advance leaves him
weaker as well as stronger. In every victory, besides being the
general who triumphs, he is also the prisoner who follows the triumphal
car.”
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