The Rise and Fall of Human Dignity

Abstract

Human dignity has a long history in philosophy, theology, politics and jurisprudence. Broadly speaking, there are important distinctions to be drawn between classical, patristic, medieval, reformed, liberal and postmodern approaches to the concept. In the development of ideas about human dignity, three key questions have emerged. First, there is the question whether dignity is an attribute of certain privileged classes of human beings or an attribute of all human beings without distinction. Second, there is the question whether human dignity is necessarily associated with the possession or exhibition of certain virtues or qualities of character. Third, there is the question of the extent to which dignity is an attribute of human persons conceived as autonomous and atomized individuals or as persons embedded in an array of associations and communities. This article will explore the implications of classical, patristic, medieval, reformed, liberal and postmodern approaches to the concept of human dignity for each of these three questions. It will do so by focusing on the views of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Gregory of Nyssa, Leo the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Johannes Althusius, Pope Paul VI, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. It will be argued that while the older classical conception of dignity understood it to be an attribute that set some classes or groups of human beings apart from others, the idea was transformed under the influence of Stoic philosophy and especially Christian theology into an attribute possessed by all human beings by virtue of their created nature. In the patristic, medieval and reformed perspectives, human dignity was understood to be an attribute of all human persons, conceived not as autonomous and atomized individuals, but as embedded in a great variety of associations and communities. As a consequence, dignity was considered to be something that can never be separated from one’s moral responsibilities as a human being called upon to perform the duties associated with one’s particular calling and station in life. In modern liberal conceptions of human dignity, however, the idea became disassociated from the qualities of one’s character and from the associations and communities in which human beings are naturally embedded. Defining human dignity solely in terms of human freedom and autonomy has resulted in a hollowing, flattening and atomizing of human dignity, culminating in the postmodern thought of Friedrich Nietzsche in which human dignity is reduced to the ‘will to power’, a condition in which ‘man in himself … possesses neither dignity, nor rights, nor duties’.