Humanity without Dignity

Andrea Sangiovanni

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780674977426
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Name any valued human trait—intelligence, wit, charm, grace, strength—and you will find an inexhaustible variety and complexity in its expression among individuals. Yet we insist that such diversity does not provide grounds for differential treatment at the most basic level. Whatever merit, blame, praise, love, or hate we receive as beings with a particular past and a particular constitution, we are always and everywhere due equal respect merely as persons.But why? Most who attempt to answer this question appeal to the idea that all human beings possess an intrinsic dignity and worth—grounded in our capacities, for example, to reason, reflect, or love—that raises us up in the order of nature. Andrea Sangiovanni rejects this predominant view and offers a radical alternative.To understand our commitment to basic equality, Humanity without Dignity argues that we must begin with a consideration not of equality but of inequality. Rather than search for a chimerical value-bestowing capacity possessed to an equal extent by each one of us, we ought to ask: Why and when is it wrong to treat others as inferior? Sangiovanni comes to the conclusion that our commitment to moral equality is best explained by a rejection of cruelty rather than a celebration of rational capacity. He traces the impact of this fundamental shift for our understanding of human rights and the norms of anti-discrimination that underlie it.

PART I

FOUNDATIONS

1

AGAINST DIGNITY

“DIGNITY” WAS INCLUDED almost by accident in the original UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Penned by Jan Smuts, the South African prime minister at the time, the original preamble to the Charter listed a series of objectives that the UN was to pursue. The UN was “to re-establish faith in fundamental human rights, in the sanctity and ultimate value of human personality, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.”¹ Virginia Gildersleeve, part of the US delegation and dean of Barnard College, proposed a revision, which was accepted (without comment) by the drafting committee. The final and definitive version reads: “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” In Gildersleeve’s version, “dignity” took the place of “sanctity”; the rest stayed mostly the same. The rapporteur mentioned, as a motivation for the revision, the need to “awaken the imagination of the common man,” but the revision did not trigger any further discussion at the time.

Yet today the idea of dignity is widely invoked as the animating foundation of human rights—the value through which our commitment to such rights can be ultimately explained and justified. Since the adoption of the UDHR, the concept of dignity is used regularly across domestic, regional, and international jurisdictions. Courts around the world routinely refer to the protection of human dignity in important cases involving the beginning and end of life, prostitution, free speech, disability, forced labor, war crimes, genocide, adverse possession, and many others.² And dignity appears as a central value in numerous international legal instruments, including the two major human rights covenants, the Geneva Conventions, the Helsinki Accords, the American Convention on Human Rights, the African (Banjul) Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

But can the concept of dignity bear so much normative weight? In this chapter, I will argue that it cannot. This may seem like a setback for a theory of human rights. In the rest of the book, I will contend that, when appropriately understood, it need not be.

DESIDERATA

Most skepticism about dignity has been motivated by the shapelessness of the term, or, similarly, by the fact that there is such a variety of (correct) uses of the term that it can seemingly be deployed to defend almost any conclusion.³ This is not the charge that I will bring. All evocative and powerful values have a variety of meanings and uses to which they can be put. Think, for example, of liberty, equality, or autonomy. This is not surprising: concepts like these have formed not one but many battlefields on which myriad political, social, and cultural struggles have unfolded. Philosophically articulated conceptions, therefore, must reflect that history and must be understood as particular positions within that history (whether consciously or not). So the fact that dignity is such a historically contested term, and that it therefore carries many latent, incompatible, and open-ended possibilities within it, is no objection at all. It is an invitation to further reflection and an invitation to see in what guise it can best do battle.

My argument will therefore be another one. I will claim that the major traditions in which the value has played a central role cannot meet two desiderata.

1. The account must explain the sense in which we are equal in dignity. (Equality)
2. The account must explain why and in virtue of what we have dignity. (Rationale)

Let us explore each one in more detail. As I will elaborate in greater depth later on, human rights are egalitarian in an important and often overlooked sense.⁴ They are not egalitarian merely in the sense that all human beings have the same rights. For example, all human beings might have the same right to enslave prisoners of war, yet no one would say that such a right was compatible with the commitment to moral equality at the heart of human rights. The egalitarianism of human rights is a substantive rather than merely formal constraint. This is why the most prominent theories of dignity might seem to offer a promising foundation for the moral egalitarianism of human rights. Kantian theories of dignity, for example, assert that we are moral equals in virtue of being equal in worth. This worth is of a type that calls for, indeed commands, a certain kind of respect from all rational beings. From this point of view, enslaving prisoners of war is wrong because and insofar as it is a fundamental violation of the respect owed to a person’s humanity—the dignity qua worth of their capacity for rational choice.

Rationale is also important. Any plausible theory of dignity should be able to explain why some psychological capacity or set of capacities gives beings that bear it an absolute and unconditional worth that is not only higher but also incommensurable with the value of all other things in the world. Or, as we will see in particular with certain types of contemporary Kantianism, the theory should be able to ground our obligation to treat others with dignity (or, equivalently, in accordance with their dignity) as a necessary presupposition of an activity—such as mutual address or mutual justification—that we cannot but engage in.⁵ If the theory cannot provide this basis, then it cannot provide a rationale for which human rights we ought to respect and why.

In this chapter, I discuss three different traditions of thinking about dignity: Aristocratic, Kantian, and Christian. These are traditions in the broadest sense of the term: structured patterns of argument, each with a particular history, organized around a central theme and displaying many internal variations. My aim is to identify the central theme that animates each one and to demonstrate that none of them can meet both desiderata. I have chosen these three traditions because of their importance in our contemporary understanding of dignity. They are not meant to be logically exhaustive. But if I am right that none of them can meet our desiderata, then it might be worthwhile to look elsewhere for a theory of moral equality that can undergird human rights, if such a theory exists.

THE ARISTOCRATIC TRADITION

In the Aristocratic tradition, dignity is used to refer to three aspects of an elevated role or position. First, dignity can refer to the elevation of the role in question. A role that has dignity, or someone who is a dignitary, has a high rank, and deserves respect in virtue of that rank. Today, for example, we might speak of the dignity of a judge. In the Renaissance, we might speak of the dignity of a prince or courtier. Second, dignity can refer to the duties, attitudes, virtues, and bearing that ought to characterize those who occupy the higher-ranking role. According to this usage, the dignity of a prince, for example, will include the duties, attitudes, bearing, and virtues that flow from his higher position and are definitive of it. So a prince can act below his dignity, or “outside” or “against” his dignity. This would imply that he has violated a role obligation or duty, or acted without virtue in some domain connected to his role, or failed to act in a way that is appropriate to his rank. Third, dignity can refer to the higher value or worth of the office itself or of the actions performed in accordance with it. This is closely connected with ideas of rank and desert.⁶ The rank is higher not only because it involves, let us say, authority over others, but also because the role requires actions and virtues that both are more demanding than other, lower-ranking roles and serve greater or more worthy ends. So when someone acts with dignity in this sense, one acts in accordance with the demands of a higher rank or position. One then deserves esteem as a result of one’s virtue or action in accordance with the role, which is seen as especially valuable because of its demandingness, difficulty, worthiness, or rarity.

The language of Aristocratic dignity was born in the crucible of late classical antiquity, especially via Cicero, and formed and shaped into our contemporary usage by the Renaissance and its courtly life. In this tradition, it was Aristotle, and in particular Aristotle’s discussion of the “great-souled man,” or megalopsychos, that set the terms for the discussion. The great-souled man⁷ is the man “who thinks himself worthy of great things—and is indeed worthy of them.” The most important among those great things, Aristotle claims, will be public honors worthy of his greatness, the “prize for the noblest achievements.” He will always aim for those honors that are truly worthy, and that are therefore sought by the most worthy, and never because they are merely popular. He will aim to set himself apart and therefore show disdain for things that only people less worthy desire or can attain. He will show resolve and courage in the face of great dangers and never face a trivial danger if he can avoid it. He helps others readily but rarely asks for anything. Frank and open, he shows great self-command and is never servile or dependent on others, quickly forgetting harm that has been done to him but never overlooking the good. Even though he pursues honors as the crown for his virtue, he will take bad and good fortune in his stride and have a measured attitude toward wealth, power, or influence. He will therefore seek honor—which depends not only on his own worth but also on external circumstance—without either grasping for it or relying on it. Those who exhibit greatness of soul will, in turn, invariably be those who are well-bred, since being well-bred instills in one the desire for superiority and equips one with the external goods required for it. The great-souled man, in other words, is a man of dignity, the kalos kagathos, or gentleman. It is no surprise then, that in the most widely read medieval Latin translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Robert Grosseteste translates one who “deems himself worthy of great things” (or megalon auton axioun) as qui magnis se ipsum dignificat.⁸

But no book had greater influence on the ethics of the gentleman (and indeed ethics generally), and hence on our modern conception of dignity, than Cicero’s De Officiis, in which classic themes regarding greatness of soul, the relation between the honorable and the beneficial, justice, and so on, are treated within a mainly Stoic frame. De Officiis, dedicated to his young son Marcus (see also I.78), was in many ways a book for educating the Roman gentleman into the civic and political duties that his social standing (his dignitatis⁹—or dignity in the first sense) required of him. The parts that are most relevant to our theme are the ones on greatness of soul and on decorum, or “seemliness.” The chapters on greatness of spirit share much with Aristotle, though with a typically Stoic emphasis on the disdain for externals, such as money, influence, and power. The great-souled man seeks only what is honorable and does “not yield to [any] man, not to agitation of spirit, nor to fortune.” Though he seeks glory, his desire for it does not overrun his imperturbability and restraint. What most distinguishes Cicero’s treatment, however, is his concern with the greatness of soul required of those who seek and maintain public office. And here Cicero is anxious to identify the dangers of public rule, and what it takes to be worthy, or dignus, of that elevated office. He asks, for example, whether the “great-spirited and courageous” statesman should be angry with his opponents and responds that “nothing is more to be praised, nothing more worthy of a great and splendid man [nihil magno et praeclaro viro dignius] than to be easily appeased and forgetting” (I.88). What we have here, once again, is an identification of the duties, attitudes, and bearing (dignity in the second sense) required of the man who is worthy (dignity in the third sense) to play an elevated public role (dignity in the first sense). The same usage is prevalent throughout his discussion of decorum, which lays out the demands of “seemliness.”¹⁰ Here Cicero discusses, among other things, the kind of house appropriate to a man of standing, maintenance of one’s external appearance, and the art of civilized conversation—all standards of conduct and appearance for the gentleman.

In both the Latin Aristotle and Cicero, therefore, the idea of dignity was closely associated with the virtues, attitudes, actions, and bearing of those who have an elevated social standing. But there is one (very Stoic) passage in particular that might suggest a more universalist reading—a reading that might seem to bring Cicero closer to the understanding of dignity implicit in our modern conception of human rights.

It is a part of every enquiry about duty always to keep in view how greatly the nature of a man surpasses domestic animals and other beasts. They perceive nothing except pleasure, and their every instinct carries them to it. A man’s mind, however, is nourished by learning and reasoning; he is always enquiring or acting, he is led by a delight in seeing and hearing. And furthermore, even if anyone is a little too susceptible to pleasure (provided that he is not actually one of the beasts, for some are men not in fact, but in name only), but if he is a little more upright than that although captivated by pleasure he will deceitfully conceal his impulse for it because of a sense of shame. From this we understand that bodily pleasure is not sufficiently worthy [dignius] of the superiority [praestantia] of man and that it should be scorned and rejected.¹¹

In this passage, Cicero argues that our capacity to reason, to wonder and inquire, and to act in accordance with a conception of what is good gives us a special, and more elevated, position in the universe, and in particular with respect to other animals.¹² But this notion of our superiority does not give rise, in Cicero, to any rights that we possess merely in virtue of our humanity. And nor does it give rise to the idea that all human beings actually have more worth than animals (hence his joke about some human beings being human “in name only”). All it says is that our nature as rational and intelligent generates a duty to act in accordance with the order we perceive in the natural world—a duty, in short, to act in accordance with nature (and hence our own nature). This is a classic piece of Stoicism and is well reflected in Cicero’s earlier discussion of the origin of the four categ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Epigraph
• Introduction
• Part I: Foundations
• Part II: Human Rights
• Notes
• References
• Index