Abstract
I conducted my own comparative and empirical study on the presence, absence, and uses of dignity as a bioethical principle. My study revealed the difference between the Anglo-American region and Europe, as well as the internal diversity in the European countries, which demonstrated a lack of unity and consistency in both the scope and the perception of the concept. The information and analyses presented in this work confirm these observations and conclusions while highlighting the strong presence of the principle of dignity in the law almost everywhere in the world. However, this relative omnipresence of the notion of dignity is less evident in the field of bioethics (bio-law), which is my sole interest. All of which resulted in referring back to the words of Ruth Macklin “Dignity is a useless concept,” albeit in the form of a question: is dignity a useless, perhaps even harmful, concept, as it is a source of confusion and misunderstanding rather than of clarity?
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Notes
- 1.
The project launched in 2004 and the symposiums were held in Jerusalem, Rabat, Barcelona, and, finally, Vadstena (Sweden, 2007), with the active participation of local institutions, academies and universities, and under the initiative of the Association Internationale des Académies supported by the European Science Foundation and the UNESCO.
- 2.
Taken from internal documents circulated during the aforementioned symposiums.
- 3.
Andorno, R., “La notion de dignité humaine est-elle superflue en bioéthique?”, Revue Génér Droit Méd. 16, 2005.
- 4.
“But in reality we do not necessarily need to use these highly metaphysical notions and agree on the ultimate theoretical foundation of human dignity in order to recognize it in the practice of social life”. Andorno refers to the work by Lenoir, N. and mathieu, B. Les normes internationales de la bioéthique, (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998), 15. These authors assert that “the dignity of the human person” is “the cardinal principle of bioethical law”, stating: “The scope of freedom is not exclusively limited by the imperative of doing no harm to others. It can also come into conflict with the requirements of respect for the dignity of the person, an expression that is in some way derived from the spiritual value of the human being”.
- 5.
See Kant’s “small narratives” and, in particular, a text familiar to many legal experts, the Perpetual Peace (1795) (especially the supplements) which form the basis of the project on natural law rooted in a clearly finalistic conception of Nature seen as harmonious, peaceful and wise: an improbably counterfactual vision. Some (like Lucien Sève) claim that Kantian morality – and all the notions it includes – “holds up” perfectly with these assumptions. That is not my opinion (in particular when it is a matter of affirming intrinsic values like that of the dignity of a person).
- 6.
A “Grand Narrative” is understood to be one that gives meaning to the past and future human condition, such as, for example, History according to Christianity, which spans from Genesis to the End Times. The “Grand Narrative” can be secular, like History according to Marxism.
- 7.
Among these questions we find those of the status of the zygote, the embryo, the body (from the organs to the genes), the human genome, animals, nature, etc. or of the status of activities: we talk of the “dignity of sport” and of the way in which interventions in the natural processes of conception, pregnancy and birth are contrary to human dignity. On all these subjects, the reference to dignity claims to be decisive and usually prohibitive.
- 8.
Fukuyama, F. Our Post-human Future. Consequence of the Biotechnology Revolution. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
- 9.
“Factor X is the human essence, the most basic meaning of what it is to be human. If all human beings are in fact equal in dignity, then X must be some characteristic universally possessed by them”, ibid., 150.
- 10.
“Factor X cannot be reduced to the possession of moral choice, or reason, or language, or sociability, or sentience, or emotions, or consciousness, or any other quality that has been put forth as a ground for human dignity. It is all of these qualities coming together in a human whole that make up Factor X”, ibid., 171.
- 11.
“Profoundly egalitarian since everyone, regardless of social class, race or ethnicity has to play in it”, ibid., 157.
- 12.
“[…] contemporary capitalist liberal democratic institutions have been successful because they are grounded in assumptions about human nature that are far more realistic than those of their competitors”, ibid., 106.
- 13.
“It is only theology, philosophy or politics that can establish the ends of science and the technology that science produces”, ibid., 185.
- 14.
He has carried out two studies of human dignity: Bostrom, N. “Defense of Post-human Dignity,” Bioethics 19(3), 2005. Bostrom, N. Dignity and Enhancement, online at Bostrom’s website: www.nickbostrom.com (2007).
- 15.
Bostrom is inspired by the Hungarian-born philosopher Aurel Kolnai.
- 16.
“Does human enhancement threaten our dignity as some prominent commentators have asserted? Or could our dignity perhaps be technologically enhanced? […] this essay focuses on the idea of dignity as a quality, a kind of excellence admitting of degrees and applicable to entities both within and without the human realm. […] in a post-human world, dignity as a quality could grow”. (Dignity and Enhancement, op. cit., 1).
- 17.
Brave New World is not a tale of human enhancement gone amok, but is rather a tragedy of technology and social engineering being deliberately used to cripple moral and intellectual capacities – the exact antithesis of the transhumanist proposal” (In Defense of Post-human Dignity, op. cit., 206).
- 18.
Or of the “natural-cultural man”. I have, for a long time, used the term “natural-cultural man” to refer to a human procreated by exclusively natural methods and “raised” – educated – by exclusively symbolic means – techniques. The technique considered to be “natural to mankind” par excellence or the “ultimate human” technique is language. The bio-conservatives are perhaps less attached to nature than to language; they would certainly be worthy of the name “logo-conservatives” on account of their concern for tradition and because language is for them not only the principal legitimate tool for the “raising of man by man”, but more than a simple tool, the essence of mankind, this “symbolic animal”, this “speaking being” (zoon logon echon).
- 19.
The example of the tranquillizer: why would it be degrading to take a tranquillizer to control one’s emotions and behave in a more dignified manner? Why would an individual whose sang froid is innate or acquired by symbolic techniques be more dignified, when all he has done is to benefit from a less emotional nature or a more restrictive upbringing? If taking a tranquillizer is a measured and voluntary act, one could even say that the dignity thus gained is more an expression of individual autonomy than having a natural sang froid: “The deliberate employment of some enhancement technology could be more authentically ours than a trait that we possessed from birth or that developed in us independently of our own agency” (Dignity and Enhancement, op. cit., 9).
- 20.
Discours de la Méthode, sixth part.
- 21.
Singer, P. “All Animals are Equal”. In Ethics in Practice, ed. H. La Follette. Boston: Blackwell, 1997.
- 22.
This universal intrinsic value of mankind cannot be rationally justified. If we take the risk of justifying dignity by a property or quality, we see that in some cases, animals have “more dignity” than humans. And Singer refers to “nursing mothers, the mentally ill, psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, etc.”. We should note that Switzerland introduced the notion of the “dignity of the creature” to its Constitution, and many wish to include human dignity within a much broader dignity – with frankly eco-theological connotations: the “dignity of the Creation”, on the basis of which any trans-genesis is, a priori, reprehensible. Schäfer-Guignier, O. “Dignité de l’humain et dignité de la diversité”. In Anti-destin. Patrimoine génétique et Droits de l’humanité, ed. F. Gros and G. Huber. Paris: Odile Jacob, 1992.
- 23.
Indeed, to conduct this international study, a working protocol (and a workshop) was developed by many scholars included in this book to define the subject of this project most efficiently, particularly in view of the different positive laws.
- 24.
These questions were taken from the joint working protocol developed for this collective research project.
- 25.
An approach inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who suggests distancing ourselves from the powerful essentialist tradition, too often dogmatic, in favor of a more empiricist approach, more common in Anglo-Saxon thinking than in the philosophy of continental Europe. How does Wittgenstein see the question of defining the meaning of words? He takes, for instance, the example of the word “game”. What is a game? In the illusory desire to discover the Concept or the essential meaning, Wittgenstein replaces the most modest recognition – tolerant, pluralist and open – of a family of usages. The author notes that under the root term of “games”, once can see a variety of examples, cases, contexts, usages, and that it is useless to want to repeat the Platonic gesture consisting of claiming to see behind or beyond this diversity, the uniqueness of one idea, one essential trait common to all. It is not, observes Wittgenstein, because a single fiber runs along the entire length of the rope that it is resistant. It is the collection of several fibers of limited length that makes its sturdiness. See Wittgenstein, L. Philosophische Untersuchungen-Philosophical Investigations, (Paris: Gallimard, 2004): aphorisms no. 66 and following.
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Hottois, G. (2018). The “Reality” of the Principle of Human Dignity: A Critical Philosophical Approach. In: Feuillet-Liger, B., Orfali, K. (eds) The Reality of Human Dignity in Law and Bioethics. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 71. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99112-2_19
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