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DIGNITY AS A MORAL CONCEPT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2014

Colin Bird
Colin Bird*
Affiliation:
Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law, University of Virginia
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Abstract

Although dignity figures prominently in modern ethical discourse, and in the writings of moral and political philosophers writing today, we still lack a clear account of how the concept of dignity might be implicated in various forms of moral reasoning. This essay tries to make progress on two fronts. First, it attempts to clarify the possible roles the concept of dignity might play in moral discourse, with particular reference to Hart's distinction between positive and critical morality. Second, it offers a new typology of dignity concepts and mobilizes it to, on the one hand, criticize some familiar construals of “human dignity” and, on the other, to advertise the possible virtues of an unfamiliar way of thinking about dignity as a moral concept.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 30 , Issue 1-2 , January 2013 , pp. 150 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2013 

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Footnotes

*

I am extremely grateful to Daniel Silvermint, Houston Smit, Steve Wall, Peter De Marneffe, Sam Fleischacker, David Estlund, Julia Driver, Laurence Thomas, Thomas Porter Sinclair, Douglas Rasmussen, Carmen Pavel, and an anonymous referee for advice on earlier versions of this essay.

References

1 Waldron, Jeremy, Dignity, Rank, and Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 One might find the suggestion that caring about dignity could depress welfare strange. But see Pinker, Stephen, “The Stupidity of Dignity,” http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/The%20Stupidity%20of%20Dignity.htm, for some telling examples (New Republic, May 28, 2008, 28–31)Google Scholar. The Buddhist doctrine of annatta, according to which the “conceit I am” is a source of suffering, if sound, is likely to imply that the self-assertion involved in much dignitarian discourse undermines happiness. For useful discussion of the Buddhist background, see Collins, Steven, Selfless Persons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 30Google Scholar.

4 Stephen Pinker, “The Stupidity of Dignity,” 2http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/The%20Stupidity%20of%20Dignity.htm.

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14 Nietzsche's notion of an “order of rank” is important here. It is particularly worth stressing that Nietzsche frequently speaks of an “order of rank” among values. This suggests, as with the view I am pushing here, that valuation is one thing, and ranking (in the sense of, for example, dignifying) another. One could think that the ranking of values is a matter of “self-glorification” without thinking that the values that are ranked are themselves simply willful creations of those engaged in the ranking. Indeed, this seems close to Nietzsche's considered view.

15 The connection between dignity and “gravity” is no mere pun. See also Kolnai, Aurel, “Dignity,” Philosophy 51, no. 197 (1976): 255CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Margalit, Avishai, The Decent Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 43Google Scholar.

16 Stephen Pinker, “The Stupidity of Dignity,” http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/The%20Stupidity%20of%20Dignity.htm.

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19 Gewirth, Self-Fulfillment, 167

20 Against the suggestion of an anonymous referee, metaethical issues about “moral realism” and epistemic access to nonnatural properties are not in point here. Questions about what “moral dignity” refers to, how we recognize it, etc., would still arise whether or not moral realism is true.

21 For discussion, see Waldron, Jeremy, God, Locke, and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 76ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society, 62ff.

22 Does Rawls's suggestion that the relevant traits are “range-properties” help? Not much. Rawls's idea was that although some people are (say) more rational than others, these differences are immaterial if virtually all members of the human species fall within a range on that scale. But it is not only the equality of persons, but also the weight of their claim to respect, that is at stake. By itself, the fact that all agents possess the relevant properties does not automatically explain how B-dignity has a moral significance that takes overriding priority over other considerations (e.g., utilitarian ones).

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24 Alan Gewirth, Self-Fulfillment, 168–9. A similar argument is hinted at in Lomasky, Loren, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar and also in Dworkin, Ronald, Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 204Google Scholar. Rawls's infamously cryptic description of moral persons as “self-authenticating sources of valid claims” points in a similar direction.

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27 This seems to me to be the best way to reach the account of hate speech as a dignitarian harm suggested by Waldron, Jeremy, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 105–143CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I say that I endorse his account of the nature of the relevant dignitarian harms. I have no settled view of whether that account justifies the restrictions on hate speech that Waldron himself defends.

28 Velleman, David, “Beyond Price,” Ethics 118 (2008): 191–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, Harvard University Press, 1971), 181Google Scholar.