The “Reality” of the Principle of Human Dignity: A Critical Philosophical Approach

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?