Dignity as the Absence of the Bestial: A Genealogy

Abstract

The legal and moral importance of human dignity has obscured the distinctiveness of dignity simpliciter as a behavioural and anthropological phenomenon. Precisely those aristocratic connotations of dignity that appear dissonant within democratic discourse — social elevation, grace and forbearance — are crucial to understanding how dignity has served to identify the difference between animals and humans. From the taxonomic and symbolic significance of the upright gait to Victorian propriety, dignity has correlated a perceived absence of animal characteristics with normative demands for self‐controlled, upright behaviour. Accordingly, this article posits a genealogy of dignity, a history of dignity as one means by which humans have articulated the absence of the bestial. However, it is suggested that this genealogy cannot be insulated from the metaphysics that underpins human dignity: the reification of humanity and the assumption of a qualitative difference between human and animal.