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4 December, 2019<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Fe\u0301lix_Parra_-_Fray_Bartolome\u0301_de_las_Casas_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg\" "\\"Feature")
<\/p>\nIn the shocked aftermath of the Second World War, members of the United Nations began to draft what became (in 1948) the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). \u201cAll human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights\u201d states the first of its 30 articles. The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, on the UN Committee, reported that one of its members demanded how on earth this list of rights could ever have been agreed on by the representatives of such vehemently opposed ideologies. The answer was, \u201cYes, we agree on the rights, but on condition that no one asks us why.\u201d To which Maritain objected, \u201cThat \u2018why\u2019 is where the argument begins.\u201d\u00a0 What it is that justifies and generates rights in the first place, he argued, needs to be determined before considering which rights to advocate.<\/p>\n
Are human rights, then, dependent on \u201chuman dignity\u201d\u2014and what does \u201chuman dignity\u201d even mean?<\/p>\n
In the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer dismissed the expression \u201cdignity of man\u201d as a \u201cshibboleth\u201d for \u201cempty-headed moralists\u201d; Marx declared its usage to be a ruse by the powerful for keeping the underdog content with his dismal lot. In the 21st century, the term \u201chuman dignity\u201d has been branded \u201cuseless\u201d by the medical ethicist Ruth Macklin, while the scientist-cum-philosopher Steven Pinker claims that it is a \u201cdangerous ploy\u201d by reactionary Catholics, for instance, to obstruct debate on euthanasia or on bio-technological extensions of human life. How ironic that those opposing euthanasia appeal to the idea that human dignity will be undermined if humans can be \u201cput down\u201d like dogs, while those in favour of it equally vehemently invoke the idea of \u201cdying with dignity\u201d, and have given the name \u201cDignitas\u201d to the organisation for assisted suicide. That irony illustrates the intrinsic ambiguity of \u201cdignity\u201d. No wonder that, almost 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it remains a contested concept. <\/p>\n
The 13 essays in Human Dignity in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition<\/i> variously span theology, philosophy, ethics and history, as well as Renaissance art and sacred music. They originated as a series of lectures at the Catholic Las Casas Institute (in Oxford), and include, as the subtitle promises, \u201cOrthodox, Anglican and Protestant perspectives\u201d, though not Judaic, despite the book\u2019s title. The aim of the lecture series, writes the editor John Loughlin in his preface, was to be a \u201csynthesis\u201d of biblical interpretation with history and philology. Discussion of what is meant by God \u201ccreating man in his own image and likeness\u201d (which some of the theologians take as the source of our notion of dignity) alternates and combines with examining the word \u201cdignity\u201d itself, the way it developed, and whether, and to what extent, its current association with human rights and autonomy is owed to Classical, Christian or Enlightenment thought.<\/p>\n
The Latin word dignitas<\/i> originally stood for high social status. Cicero often used it in that sense in his orations; with one important exception\u2014where he contrasts humans to animals. Whereas animals\u2019 \u201conly thought is for bodily satisfactions . . . man\u2019s mind is developed by study and reflection\u201d; from which \u201cwe may learn that sensual pleasure is unworthy of the dignity of the human race\u201d. In their respective essays, Loughlin, Josef L\u00f6ssl and John Milbank vary over the significance to be accorded this one-off usage; and L\u00f6ssl accuses Michael Rosen, one of the few philosophers to tackle the subject of dignity, of \u201ca certain vagueness . . . about both Cicero\u2019s and the early Christian position\u201d, and about how far the former influenced the latter. But it is a vagueness of which he too is guilty, and which is surely unavoidable. <\/p>\n
The etymological development of \u201cdignity\u201d is, I would suggest, similar to that of many of our terms for virtue or excellence of character (\u201cnoble\u201d, \u201chonourable\u201d, \u201cgentle\u201d). Each of these terms was initially used to designate someone as being of aristocratic descent, social rank being the unique criterion for respect and admiration. They increasingly and surreptitiously came to refer, however, not to being highly born, but to having the qualities associated with high birth; (by the same principle as, in medieval times, \u201cvillein\u201d became \u201cvillain\u201d). Oddly, the process could be compared to that of a sacrament (which St Augustine defined as \u201can outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace\u201d) but in reverse. The transmutation, over centuries, of \u201cdignitas\u201d went in the opposite direction\u2014from outward to inward: an attribute of worldly, external rank, and the respect for it, became internalised, so that it came to apply to spiritual, inner worth. <\/p>\n
L\u00f6ssl and Loughlin don\u2019t explicitly make this point. They do, however, reluctantly imply that the accrued meanings of \u201cdignity\u201d are self-contradictory. Originally a way of contrasting the superiority of the highly- as opposed to the lowly-born, it was intrinsically comparative, specifically ranking one human entity in contradistinction to another. Which is why when Cicero applied it to the \u201chuman race\u201d, the only way to postulate the high worth of humans was by distinguishing us from the lowlier rank of other creatures; opposing the uncontrolled hedonism of animals to humans\u2019 lofty reflectiveness and reason. There is an essential contradiction in preaching that \u201cthe human race has dignity\u201d while in practice abiding by conventional social rankings\u2014a contradiction similar to that captured by Orwell\u2019s melancholy joke about how, despite all the efforts to equalise, some animals on the farm turned out to be \u201cmore equal than others\u201d. Can there be degrees of dignity if all humans have it? Or is the hidden dignity of each at odds with the dignity they are actually afforded? In which case, what does their \u201cintrinsic dignity\u201d amount to? The contradiction is compounded, as L\u00f6ssl and Loughlin demonstrate, by Christ\u2019s declaration that \u201cthe first shall be last, and the last first\u201d, which relied, as the word \u201cdignity\u201d inevitably does, on retaining the original meaning along with the newer metaphorical one derived from it\u2014but they clash. <\/p>\n
It is, in Christianity, a rather beautiful discordance\u2014what other religion has at its emblem a man suffering a slave\u2019s punishment, bleeding to death on a cross? Timothy Verdon\u2019s essay describes how, in the portrayal of Christ as royal bridegroom in Giotto\u2019s altarpiece, \u201cBlessing of Christ\u201d, the blood on Christ\u2019s open palm recalls the wound of the nails in the crucifixion, thereby \u201cinvesting [Christ\u2019s] dignity with vulnerability\u201d. Certainly it would be hard to imagine a Hindu representation of a god or Brahmin cleaning out a latrine as one of the untouchables would do. Advocates for the right to die may say that to refuse assisted suicide to someone protractedly dying in pain, incontinence and confusion is to abrogate their dignity. But euthanasia\u2019s opponents can respond that this is just a form of aesthetic discrimination: as if to say that the person suffering is less than human, since their dignity only consisted in being a human at their flourishing best. <\/p>\n
The thread that L\u00f6ssl, Loughlin and Milbank discern as being common to the ancient world, Christianity and the Enlightenment is the insistence that dignity is a factor of having free will and rationality. But what about when a human\u2014demented, paralysed, incontinent\u2014has neither? And what about if a woman, or a human of low caste, or of a different race, is considered never to possess them to the same degree as a Brahmin, or a white, or a man of any class or caste? In the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (the Islamic version of the UDHR), women are pronounced to have \u201cequal dignity\u201d (with men) but not equal rights. <\/p>\n
The conception of human rights was perhaps anticipated in Roman law and in Christian doctrine, but was actually articulated by Locke, Kant and other thinkers of the Enlightenment\u2014a movement which, until recently, the Catholic Church has been wary of, as both Loughlin and Milbank still seem to be. Both criticise Kant\u2019s argument about what the individual is entitled to, but their criticism is based on a misreading. Kant did not, as Loughlin claims, \u201cargue that human beings should always be treated by other human beings as \u2018ends\u2019 and never as a \u2018means\u2019\u201d. Rather he recognised that we constantly use one another as means to ends, with one another\u2019s connivance\u2014but urged that we should never treat one another \u201csimply as a means\u201d. If, for instance, your taxi-driver (who is the means, with her consent, of getting you to Paddington station) suddenly has a heart-attack, she thereby ceases to be the means that was intended; but you have to treat her as an important aim in herself who requires medical attention\u2014you cannot just hop out and hail another taxi. Milbank says that \u201cto treat oneself or another human being as an \u2018end\u2019, as the goal of an endeavour, is much more sinisterly objectifying\u201d than treating either as a means, because \u201can end is an objective full stop\u201d. But then so should be the person blocking the exit in an emergency; the point is that he, and not the exit, should be the arresting focus of your attention; only if he is dead can you step over him. <\/p>\n
The essays in Human Dignity<\/i> are a sometimes arduous, often fascinating read, but I was left little the wiser as to what is meant by human dignity. Still, in debating whether or not dignity engenders rights, or rights engender dignity, it is important to remember that the Las Casas Institute (where the lectures that became these essays were originally given) is named after the 16th-century Dominican friar Bartolom\u00e9 de las Casas, surely one of the first advocates of human rights. He persuaded Spanish rulers and the Catholic Church that the conquered indigenous people of Latin America had souls, and therefore deserved to be treated with dignity. In that 16th-century case, at least, the notion of dignity really did precede and give rise to rights.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Human Dignity in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition:
\nCatholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Protestant Perspectives
\n<\/b>Edited by John Loughlin
\n<\/i>Bloomsbury Academic, 283pp, \u00a385<\/p>\n<\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/a>
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