Concilium

2003 / 2

The Discourse of Human Dignity

Introduction: For Dignity

Regina Ammicht-Quinn, Maureen Junker-Kenny and Elsa Tamez

The film, ‘The Strategy of the Snail' by Colombian director, Sergio Cabrera, ends with the phrase ‘for dignity’. It tells of the spectacular, middle-of-the-night mobilization of the tenants of a large old house after having received an eviction notice which also orders them to have the house repainted. These poverty-stricken people, women, men, old, and young, managed to dismantle the house completely from the inside without anyone noticing. Walls, ceilings, doors, and windows were all removed, leaving only the façade. At the moment of entrance by the legal owners the façade collapsed. Behind it was a mural with a drawing of a house and a sign which stated: ‘here is your son-of-a-whore painted house’. A journalist, not understanding this ‘epic’ struggle, questioned one of the tenants:

‘What was all this for?’

‘Well, for dignity,’ was the answer. ‘Don’t you know what "dignity" is?’

This incensed reply was the end of the film.

That which may seem foolishness for some is for others a question of life or death, of dignity. It is difficult to affirm oneself as a worthy person in the face of the day-to-day humiliating treatment of an unequal society. A society in which some are considered to be worthy at birth by their position, culture, gender, race, while others are forced to struggle constantly to prove their value as a person. Dignity can be the equivalent of a magic word ‘for resurrection’, or it may simply be something to be bought and sold.

However, the deep significance of human dignity is not as clear as it might seem. For instance, a rich woman may opt to die of hunger rather than lose the dignity befitting a woman of her class by sitting down to share food with her servants. In practice, it seems that human dignity has little to do with national or international declarations of political constitutions. It’s significance criss-crosses cultural and social constructs and at the same time, profound human sentiment.

Today the connotations are widening and the confusion over this term is [8] deepening. Human dignity, linchpin of the modern self-understanding of the human person, is claimed as a value by many interested positions today. Violations of human dignity, despite the striving for tolerance and the influence of cultural relativism, are still acknowledged within political argumentation. In bio-medical ethics proponents as well as opponents of voluntary euthanasia argue for their view with reference to human dignity. Embryo-wasting research for future therapies is both defended and objected to in the name of dignity. In some ecclesial discourses the ‘dignity’ of the woman is played off against her equality. Is this plea towards human dignity an ideology, a category of protection or of exclusion? This political-ideological concept par excellence will be investigated in four respects, the analytical, the historical, the philosophical-theological, and the practical-political:

1. In what areas is the issue of dignity being raised today, and what do these different loci and questions have in common? From which concepts does human dignity need to be distinguished — equality, self-esteem, autonomy?

2. What challenges caused its content to change historically from the exterior respectability of antiquity to the inherent designation of being an end in oneself in modernity? With regard to which ‘other’ was it specified in which eras?

3. How do its philosophical and its theological foundations relate to each other?

4. In which places of praxis is it claimed? When is referring to the experience of dignity beyond question, and when is it rightly criticized as a ’conversation stopper’? Can ‘human dignity’ function as a uniting formula in a pluralistic, polycentric world? And if it can, what status does it have — an empirical one as the common denominator of an overlapping consensus, a transcendental one as the unconditional foundation of the anticipatory recognition of potential freedom, or a practical-advocatory status as a sign (cipher) standing in for the respective endangered other?

In Part I, Patrick Verspieren’s analysis of the concept as a reference point in political and bioethical debates comes to the conclusion that its most recent reservation for agents distinguished by certain qualities goes back behind the universal attribution to every human being which it acquired in the course of its religious and philosophical development, to the antique sense of honour, decency and decorum befitting only the notables.

[9] The historical perspectives treated in Part II on changes in the cultural concepts of dignity extend from antiquity to the present age where Christian and secular humanisms struggle with ‘posthumanistic’ self-understandings and with the technological fascination of machines replacing people. ‘How much earth does a human being need to be able to live in dignity?’ Tolstoy’s question becomes the point of departure for the sociologist and social philosopher Oskar Negt, whose overview spans reflections from Cicero to Kant in which freedom, autonomy and dignity elucidate each other. Regina Ammicht-Quinn sees the contemporary point of departure for the question of dignity in present popular culture with its approximation of human being and machine. Thus human vulnerability, the ability to be injured, acquires a central position in reflection and praxis.

In Part III, which explores dignity as a philosophical and theological category, Paul Valadier proposes a similar shift in the foundation of dignity: Our common ‘indignity’, experiences of human vulnerability and the respect arising from seeing humanity disfigured should be taken as the starting point. The Hebrew Bible’s image of the suffering servant of God and Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan show in their critique of ’anthropological correctness’ that the concept needs to be understood as becoming aware of the ‘equal dignity’ of the injured. Discussing philosophical and theological foundations of dignity, Maureen Junker-Kenny locates the contribution of the Christian faith against the background of current proposals to go beyond the concepts of human nature and of a common humanity. Christianity needs to offer political and theoretical resistance both to practical violations and to the ways in which the concept is being emptied of its meaning, a task which comprises the formation and mediation of values. Juan Jose Tamayo-Acosta covers the major biblical and theological milestones in which dignity and liberation converge in the human being’s encounter with God. In a striking contrast to the typically Western traditions of secular and religious thinking treated so far, Linda Hogan and John D’Arcy May explore if and how the concept is constituted in Eastern religions. The hermeneutical issues such interreligious dialogue raises extend to the very foundations of thinking, e.g., about the possibility of a notion of self or personhood, and shows what interpretive tasks lie ahead if dignity is to become accepted as the universal category it claims to be.

In Part IV, experiences of dignity are examined in their different settings. For Enrique Dussel dignity, the basis of all values, is found to have been denied. Using the discourse of the Zapatistas, he analyses the struggle for the recognition of dignity and its affirmation for reproducing life, freedom, [10] and democracy. The experience of disability is the background from which Eva Kittay questions the standard philosophical criteria of dignity. Recognizing that every human being is ‘a mother’s child’ lays the foundations of dignity deeper than the level of cognitive structures: It is founded on the constitutive human experience of original relatedness in which the intrinsic worth of care becomes evident. The new interpretation of the origins of dignity which she puts forward as a philosopher and as the mother of a disabled daughter finds resonance in Valadier’s and Ammicht-Quinn’s emphasis on vulnerability for a contemporary access to dignity. Leocir Pessini compares the secular and theological understanding of dignity in the context of bio-medical ethics, more specifically with regard to assisted euthanasia. In her response, Maureen Junker-Kenny summarizes the points of agreement that have emerged across the different articles and identifies questions for theological argumentation.

In Part V, by way of conclusion, the three editors exchange their afterthoughts from their different settings on the process of ‘editing dignity’.