## 1. A Historical Primer



In the opening sentence of its preamble, the 1948 Declaration of Human
Rights affirms the "inherent dignity" and "equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family" as the
"foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world"
(UN 1948). This claim would surprise our modern ancestors. Until about
1830-1850, neither the English term "dignity," nor
its Latin root *dignitas*, nor the French counterpart
*dignite*, had any stable currency as meaning "the
unearned status or worth of all persons", let alone the grounds
of universal rights or equality. Instead, in everything from
Hobbes's *Leviathan* (1651) to Samuel Johnson's
*Dictionary* (1755) to Webster's *Compendious
Dictionary* (1806), "dignity" was primarily used with
a conventional merit connotation--something like the "rank
of elevation" that Johnson officially gave it.



How did this sea change in meaning come about? The UN Declaration
makes clear that dignity's moral-political meaning had become
normalized by 1948. But what happened before 1948 that explains this
transformation? These are not easy questions to answer. Although
theorists often include historical remarks in their inquiries, they
are just as often brief and subservient to some further,
non-historical point. The result is a great many half-told stories
about dignity's past.



There are some notable exceptions. For some time, legal theorists have
been etching out the details of dignity's historical role in law
and jurisprudence, especially in connection to rights. Second,
theological inquiries into human dignity often engage an older history
of ideas, especially the Renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola or
scholastic debates about the biblical doctrine of *imago Dei*.
Third, there is a considerable body of literature on the Enlightenment
luminaire, Immanuel Kant, and his famous claim that humans do not have
a "price", only a distinctive and incomparable worth or
*Wurde*--usually translated as "dignity"
(see, e.g., Korsgaard 1986; Meyer 1987; Hill 1992; Kofman 1982 [1997];
Wood 1999; Kain 2009). Let us turn to these various exceptions, and
their challenges.


### 1.1 The legal history of dignity



The connection between law and dignity strikes many as socially and
morally urgent. It is thus unsurprising that some serious history of
this connection already exists, especially in relation to rights
theory (see, e.g., Eberle 2002 or Barak 2015). Nevertheless, the bulk
of this history does not look back very far.



For example, Lewis (2007) gives a wonderful overview of the idea of
dignity in international law, but his focus is on the writing of, and
reaction to, the 1945 UN Charter and 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.
Or consider McCrudden's impressive 2013 edited volume,
*Understanding Human Dignity.* The historical chapters of this
volume make important contributions, but again the focus is largely
the twentieth century. Scott's chapter (2013), for example,
begins by observing that the 1848 French decree to abolish slavery
motivates itself from the consideration "that slavery is an
assault upon human dignity (*la dignite humaine*)"
(2013: 61). She then nicely explores the idea of dignity in the
context of post-slavery Louisiana c.1862-96. However, the
chapter then jumps forward to a comparison with Brazilian society
c.1970-2012. Moyn's chapter (2013) examines early and
middle twentieth century constitutional debates to show that the
concept of dignity labors under poorly appreciated debts to a
specifically Christian conception of democracy, and for this reason,
Moyn argues, we should be skeptical about the long-term utility of
dignity for secular rights theory. And Goos's chapter (2013)
offers a close examination of the role of dignity in German thought,
but the focus is on post-World War II interpretation of the German
*Grundgesetz* (Basic
 Law).[1]



A longer legal history can be found in McCrudden (2008), whose concise
review of dignity reaches back to classical Roman thought. McCrudden
argues that we can trace the merit connotation of dignity as
"elevated social rank" to the Roman idea of
"*dignitas homini*" (2008: 656); but also, and
crucially, he argues that we can trace our contemporary
moral-political notion of the "basic worth or status of human
persons" to this same period, when Cicero introduced the idea of
"the dignity of the human race" (see also, Cancik 2002).
This claim about Cicero is echoed in Michael Rosen's 2012,
*Dignity: Its History and Meaning*, which is another important
entry into dedicated history that focuses on legal connections.
Rosen's history is mostly from a bird's eye view, but,
like McCrudden's, Rosen's history has the virtue of taking
a long view that stretches back to antiquity. Moreover, Rosen offers
some nuanced reflections on eighteenth and nineteenth century
connections, including Kant's influence on the writing of the
German *Grundgesetz*.



Finally, when it comes to legal history, Darwall (2017) offers a
sophisticated analysis of dignity's connections to western
Enlightenment conceptions of jurisprudence stretching back to the
sixteenth century. Importantly, however, Darwall's history
challenges McCrudden's and Rosen's appeal to Cicero as a
key source. We will return to this scholarly disagreement and
Darwall's competing proposal below
 (SS1.2.2
 and
 SS1.2.4).


### 1.2 Four Origin Stories



Given the present popularity of studying dignity, we should not only
expect the historical contours of dignity to become clearer in coming
years, but also for them to be occasionally redrawn. A few important
platitudes have already been challenged.


#### 1.2.1 The revolutionary platitude



The western creed of human dignity stems from the wisdom of
eighteenth-century revolutionary thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson,
Alexander Hamilton, or Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette. At
the founding of new liberal states like America, or the reformation of
existing ones like England or France, political sages like these
propounded the inviolable value of individual human beings.



In reality, one looks in vain for dignity in the founding documents of
these new republics. The term appears a few times in the English Bill
of Rights (1689), but not with our contemporary moral-political
meaning. It appears once in the French *Declaration des
Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen* (1789), but the connotation
is of the privileges that attend public or political office. And for
all its fiery rhetoric about equality and the
"inalienable" rights of man, the US Declaration of
Independence does not mention human dignity at all. Nor does the US
Constitution. In fact, it is not until the Mexican Constitution of
1917 and the 1919 Weimer Constitution, that the term appears in a
constitutional context *possibly* with its moral-political
connotation (McCrudden 2008; Debes 2009 and 2017b). To this corrective
evidence, we should add the testimony of an entirely different set of
historical voices--from Sojourner Truth, David Walker, Anna
Wheeler, and William Thompson, to Susan B. Anthony, Frederick
Douglass, James Rapier, and Ida B. Wells--who remind us that the
revolutionary platitude was contradicted by the lived reality
*within* these new republics. These voices decried the
systematic oppression and often bloody inhumanity that stained the
supposedly egalitarian societies in which they lived.


#### 1.2.2 The Kantian platitude



The early modern concept of dignity originates with Immanuel Kant, who
in his 1785 *Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals*, argued
that all persons have an inherent value, or dignity, in virtue of
their rational autonomy. This value commands a distinct kind of moral
respect, which we express by abiding by certain limits in our
treatment of others. Thus, Kant argued that we have a categorical duty
to treat persons always "as an end" and "never merely as
a means" (*Groundwork*, 4:429).



This is the greatest dogma about dignity in philosophy. But there are
good reasons to rethink it in favor of a more complicated history of
ideas. First, although it is well known that Kant is indebted to
Rousseau in various ways (see especially Beiser 1992), recent
scholarship suggests that when it comes to his ideas about
"humanity" and "dignity", the debt runs deeper
than is generally understood (James 2013; Hanley 2017; Sensen 2017).
Sensen also argues that it is a longstanding interpretive mistake to
think that Kant *grounds* the obligation to respect others on
any "absolute inner value" that humans possess; and that
"dignity" is not the name Kant gave to such a value anyway
(Sensen 2011 & 2017; see also Meyer 1987). Relatedly, Debes (2021)
argues that contemporary philosophers have greatly overestimated
Kant's influence on the historical development of our notion of
moral respect for persons.



On top of these corrections, Darwall (2017) argues that the conceptual
link between dignity and rights does not originate with Kant.
According to Darwall, only certain conceptions of dignity will support
the kind of inferences about respect that could justify using dignity
to ground human rights. Namely, those conceptions that render dignity
as a kind of authoritative standing to make
"second-personal" claims--that is, claims by one
person *to* another. However, the original insight for this
crucial point, Darwall further argues, comes from the natural lawyer
Samuel Pufendorf (see also Darwall 2012).



Writing a century before Kant, Pufendorf argued that human beings have
perfect natural rights (rights owed to one another) in virtue of a
certain moral "standing" that we assign to each other as a
constitutive part of being sociable. Whenever we address another
person directly--e.g., with a claim like "You must allow me
to speak"--we implicitly treat them as an accountable,
responsible being. Otherwise, why address them at all? And the same is
true when they address us. In other words, according to Pufendorf,
being sociable implicitly involves a *reciprocal* assumption of
basic moral status--us of them, them of us--whenever we
interact, and even if the address is one that offends the equal
standing of the other. Indeed, this is precisely when
"dignity" becomes most urgent. Thus, Pufendorf writes:



> 
> 
> There seems to him to be somewhat of *Dignity*
> [*dignatio*] in the appellation of **Man**: so
> that the last and most efficacious Argument to curb the Arrogance of
> insulting Men, is usually, *I am not a Dog but a Man as well as
> yourself*. (1672: I.VII.I [2003]: 100)
> 
> 
> 


#### 1.2.3 The *imago Dei* platitude



The moralized concept of dignity does not originate in the early
modern era. It was celebrated as early as the Renaissance, in Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola's 1486 *Oration on the Dignity of
Man*. Moreover, Pico's oration is drawn from the older,
medieval Christian doctrine of *imago Dei* (based on Genesis
1:26 and Wisdom 2:23), which tells us that we are made in "in
the image of God", and that this likeness grounds our
distinctive moral worth or status.



This story about dignity is to Christian theology what the Kantian
dogma is to philosophy. However, these claims are usually misleading
if not false. For example, Copenhaver (2017) flatly contradicts the
claim that Pico was talking about human dignity in a sense akin to our
contemporary moral-political notion. First, Copenhaver notes that the
title of the work, which draws our attention, postdates Pico (who
never published it). More substantively, Copenhaver argues that
Pico's speech was a public failure in large part because it was
entangled with Kabbalah mysteries for how humans can escape the body
to *increase* their status by becoming angels. Finally,
Copenhaver points out that Pico uses the Latin *dignitas* only
twice; and



> 
> 
> In neither case does *dignitas* belong to humans, except
> aspirationally, and neither justifies "dignity" as a
> translation, with all the Kantian baggage of the modern English word.
> (2017: 134-5)
> 
> 
> 



Adding to this reversal of fortunes, Kent (2017) marshals extensive
evidence from the scholastic tradition against the *imago Dei*
platitude more generally. Although she confirms that both dignity and
the doctrine of *imago Dei* were widely discussed by medieval
Christian scholars in the Latin West, she convincingly demonstrates
that these discussions did not intersect in a way that supports an
inference to our contemporary moral-political notion of the
"basic worth or status of humans". This said, not all
interpretations of the Christian tradition, including the doctrine of
*imago Dei*, are beholden to this historical platitude. And the
*imago Dei* line of inquiry on dignity has a somewhat different
life in the Jewish
 tradition.[2]


#### 1.2.4 The Ciceronian platitude



"Dignity" derives from the Latin *dignitas*. And
while most Romans used *dignitas* only in its merit sense, a
few, and Cicero in particular, had a proleptic understanding of
*dignitas* that anticipated today's moral-political
sense.



This historical view has attracted more attention lately, as evidenced
by its earlier noted endorsement in McCrudden (2008) and Rosen (2012a)
(see also, Englard 2000). However, it has been challenged on both
philosophical and interpretive grounds. For example, Miriam Griffin
(2017) carefully demonstrates that the textual support for this view
is very thin. She argues that straightforward lexical analysis of
Roman sources offers sparing evidence for connecting *dignitas*
to our contemporary moral-political concept. Moreover, even if we
branch out to other ancient Roman concepts to see if dignity might be
hiding under different terminology, we run into a fundamental
challenge: "Stoics and Roman moralists", Griffin explains,
"think in terms of *officia*, obligations or duties or
functions that our nature, properly understood, imposes on
*us*". Correspondingly, "[t]he entitlements and
rights of those at the *receiving end* of our actions is not a
prominent aspect of their thinking" (2017: 49).



Admittedly, Griffin allows that in some cases these obligations or
duties entail a kind of treatment of others that *accords* with
our contemporary notion of human dignity. Still, this result does not
depend on any right that persons have in virtue of "the worth of
a human being per se" (2017: 64; see also Meyer 1987; and Lebech
2009, especially p. 46 n. 22.)



To these challenges, Darwall (2017) adds another problem for the
Ciceronian platitude. Borrowing from the exact quotations that
McCrudden and Rosen use to defend attributing a moral-political notion
of human dignity to Cicero, Darwall argues:



> 
> 
> *Human* dignity for Cicero is nothing that could be established
> by conventional patterns of deference. It is the idea, rooted in the
> ancient notion of a great chain of being, that distinctive capacities
> for self-development "by study and reflection" give human
> beings a "nature" "superior" to that of
> "cattle and other animals". Other species are motivated
> only by sensory instincts, whereas human beings can "learn that
> sensual pleasure is wholly unworthy of the dignity of the human
> race", and be guided by this understanding.
> 
> 
> 
> [Consequently] nothing in the Ciceronian notion of human dignity
> requires, or even leads naturally to, basic human rights. The
> proposition, for example, that "sensual pleasure" is
> "unworthy" of human dignity is less a thesis about what
> human beings are in a position to claim from one another by virtue of
> their dignity than it is an ethical standard to which we are to live
> up. (2017: 182-3; Cicero quotations cited in McCrudden 2008: 657, and
> Rosen 2012a: 12)
> 
> 
> 



To be fair, Darwall's critique hangs on two assumptions about
the concept of dignity: (1) that a satisfactory account of dignity
will involve a connection to, if not a grounding for, rights claims;
and (2) that dignity is in no way an achievement. Both assumptions
resonate strongly with contemporary moral-political talk of dignity.
Nevertheless, identifying these assumptions should remind us that we
have not yet clearly formulated a concept of dignity. So, let us turn
to that
 task.[3]


## 2. Formulating Dignity



There is no single, incontestable meaning of dignity. In fact, there
are so many possible meanings that it has become commonplace in the
literature to worry about the expansive variety of conceptions, and in
turn to worry whether dignity is or has become essentially ambiguous.
And while its defenders find ways to mitigate or explain away this
ambiguity, the concept of dignity has its share of detractors. But we
will return to skeptical worries at the end of this entry. For now,
and granting the *prima facie* force of the ambiguity worry,
four broad categories of meaning stand out across context and
history:


1. Dignity as *Gravitas:* a poise or grace
associated with behavioral comportment; e.g., the sophisticated
manners or elegant speech of nobility, or outward composure in the
face of insult or duress.
2. Dignity as *Integrity:* the family of ideas
associated with living up to personal or social standards of character
and conduct, either in one's own eyes or the eyes of
others.
3. Dignity as *Status*: noble or elevated social
position or rank.
4. Dignity as *Human dignity*: the unearned worth or
status that all humans share equally (either inherent or
constructed).



This "general schema" is rough and ready. Scholars divide
the conceptual space in different ways, often advocating intersections
between the foregoing four categories, making elaborations on them, or
noting wrinkles within them.



For example, Kolnai (1976) argues that the primary function of the
concept is descriptive, not evaluative. Dignity is a quality of
persons, which is the fitting object of a set of pro-attitudes related
to both moral appreciation *and* aesthetic appreciation. Thus,
to be dignified is to comport oneself in a way that is not simply a
reflection of authority, rank, moral uprightness, or a regimented or
serious adherence to codes of conduct, but instead reflects something
of "the beautiful". As Kolnai puts it, our response to
dignity is characterized, at least in part, by "our devoted and
admiring appreciation for beauty" (1976: 252). Hence the
distinction between
 (1)
 and
 (2)
 above (see also Brady 2007).



By contrast, although Rosen (2012a) notes that the Latin term
*dignitas* was once part of a critical vocabulary of classical
art and rhetoric, used "to characterize speech that was weighty
and majestic, in contrast to discourse that was light and
charming" (2012a: 13), Rosen largely blends categories
 (1)
 and
 (2)
 into a single strand of meaning, which he identifies as
"dignity as behavior, character or bearing that is
dignified" (2012a: 54). Rosen then accepts
 (3)
 and
 (4)
 but adds his own further category, which he calls "dignity as
treatment": "To treat someone *with dignity*
is...to *respect* their dignity" (2012a: 58). As we
will see more fully in a moment, this addition reflects a common
observation by scholars about a tight connection between dignity and
its recognition (although, it is not common to claim that the proper
recognition of dignity is a separate category of dignity).



Meanwhile, Kateb (2011) stresses the need to distinguish between human
dignity *qua* individual humans, and human dignity *qua*
human species. According to Kateb, both have dignity. But whereas the
dignity of individuals can be described as a special kind of
"status"--as in category
 (4)
 above--the dignity of the human species requires a further
concept, namely, of "stature". He writes, "In
comparison to other species, humanity has a stature beyond
comparison" (2011: 6). To be clear, Kateb does not think that
the human species has an existence above and beyond its members: it is
not a natural kind. However, he argues that the interdependence of
humans is,



> 
> 
> so extensive, so deep, and so entangled...that for certain
> purposes we might just as well make the human species a unified entity
> or agency, even though we know it isn't. (2011: 6)
> 
> 
> 



Correspondingly, we can sensibly talk about the "dignity"
of the species. This conclusion cuts against some positions that
maintain dignity "proper" can only belong to individuals
(Stern 1975; Gaylin 1984; Egonsson 1998).



A more recent schema is offered by Killmister (2020). Killmister
proposes three "strands" of dignity: personal, social, and
status. To have personal dignity, Killmister argues, is to take
oneself to be subject to personal "dignitarian" norms. And
to have social dignity is to be subject to social
"dignitarian" norms. What are dignitarian norms?
Dignitarian norms are norms that either the person themself, or
society at large, take to be "ennobling" to uphold, or
whose transgression the person or society consider to be
"disgraceful or debasing" (2020: 25, 29). Like Rosen,
then, Killmister effectively blends categories
 (1)
 and
 (2),
 while at the same time drawing attention to a different
organizational distinction one might make, namely, between the
personal and the social. As for "status dignity",
Killmister argues that explaining this category of dignity requires a
distinctive concept of respect. And her argument is worth elaborating
because it exemplifies and fleshes out two closely related points
shared by many existing theories:


1. that any satisfactory theory of dignity must explain what it means
to *recognize* dignity; and
2. that this recognition is best described as a kind of
*respect*.



So, consider: Dignitarian norms, according to Killmister, can
typically be redescribed as articulating the grounds of
respect--either self-respect (in the case of personal dignity) or
respect from others (in the case of social dignity). Moreover, the
kind of respect relevant to personal and social dignity, she argues,
is what Stephen Darwall (1977) influentially named "appraisal
respect". This kind of respect is a positive evaluative
*attitude* or *feeling*, which we express towards
ourselves or others, for some merit of character. In this sense,
respect is akin to esteem. Killmister writes:



> 
> 
> to be highly personally dignified is to be such that, by our own
> lights, we ought to hold ourselves in high esteem...to be highly
> socially dignified is to be such that, by the light of our community,
> they ought to hold us in high esteem. (2020: 23)
> 
> 
> 



By contrast, Killmister connects status dignity to what Darwall
called, "recognition respect". Recognition respect is a
way of *thinking* about oneself or others. To recognize-respect
someone (at least as Darwall first explained it) is to give
appropriate weight to some fact about them in our practical
deliberations, and to restrict our choices or actions accordingly.



Killmister thus argues,



> 
> 
> We come to have *status* dignity, when we fall within a
> particular [social] category, membership in which commands respectful
> treatment from others in our community. (2020: 22)
> 
> 
> 



She elaborates,



> 
> 
> status dignity does not call on others to *esteem* us, but
> rather to *treat* us in ways appropriate to the kind of thing
> we are. (2020: 23, emphasis added)
> 
> 
> 



Correspondingly, human dignity ends up as "an especially
important instance" of status dignity. And all humans deserve
recognition respect in virtue of the "fact" of their
membership in the category "human" (2020:
129-30).



This said, Killmister's conclusion diverges from Darwall's
own account of human dignity, which is tied to a revision he made to
his theory of recognition respect, which connected recognition respect
to the reciprocal "authority" of second-personal address,
as discussed in the earlier historical reflection on Pufendorf (see
 SS1.2.3
 above; and Darwall 2006, esp. p. 14). Note also that Killmister, like
Kateb, eschews thinking of "human" as a natural kind, in
favor of understanding it as a social kind.


### 2.1 Dignity's defining properties vs. dignity's grounds



The previous section offered examples of how the general schema of
dignity's meaning gets modified in existing theory, as well as
how each category of meaning might be fleshed out. More examples could
be given. But to decide between any of them, it seems crucial to ask,
how *should* we formulate the concept of dignity? In other
words, instead of simply cataloging first-order views about its
meaning, we need to introduce some second-order criteria.



On the one hand, we need to determine the *defining properties*
of dignity: the distinguishing characteristics or explanatory demands
that are supposed to apply to any contentful account of dignity. Such
criteria might include, for example, that dignity is
"inherent"; that it is "incommensurable" with
other values; that it has a "distinctive normative
function"; that it has an essential connection to rights; and so
on.



On the other hand, we need to determine what *grounds* dignity:
we need to say what it is about humans, or any being with dignity,
that satisfies the defining properties. In other words, we need to
answer the question: In virtue of what do we have dignity? The most
common answer to this question, historically speaking, especially when
it comes to human dignity, involves a claim about autonomy. Or if not
autonomy tout court, then the "capabilities" for such
autonomy (see, e.g., Nussbaum 1995, 2006a, and 2006b). Thus, one
finds many variations of the claim that humans have dignity in virtue
of their capacity for (or exercise of) "choice" or
"rational agency"--claims that are often tethered to
the earlier discussed historical platitude about Kant. This said,
alternatives to the grounding question about human dignity include
brute species membership, sentience, the creative power of humanity,
creation "in the image of God", a politically conferred
status as "rights bearer", the capacity for empathy and
caring relationships, the earlier mentioned "personality",
the concrete "particularity" of an individual person, and
the possession of "perspective".



Sorting these views is not easy for a few reasons. First, some of the
operative concepts, such as "autonomy", are themselves
hotly disputed. Second, there is no pre-theoretical reason to deny
multiple ways of satisfying any given definitional criteria. That is,
any given proposal for the defining properties of dignity might be
satisfied by more than one ground. For example, depending on the
criteria, humans might "have" dignity in virtue of both
autonomy *and* sentience, or both divine creation *and*
our capacity for empathy, and so on. Third, twentieth century
theorists rarely took a second-order view on their subject and
methods. In turn, they often confused or at least failed to clarify
which of the two foregoing challenges they were trying to tackle,
articulating dignity's defining properties or articulating
dignity's grounds.



Thankfully, twenty-first century formulations of dignity are marked by
increasingly conscientious attempts to articulate the defining
properties of dignity, and to do so in a way that might guide
discussion about dignity's grounds. For example, in
"Bedrock Truths and the Dignity of the Individual",
Iglesias (2001) distinguishes between historically older,
"restricted" meanings of dignity associated with general
schema
 (1),
 (2), and
 (3);
 and, on the other hand, what she calls "universal"
meanings associated with schema
 (4),
 "human dignity". She further argues that any satisfactory
universalist account must render human dignity as 
 (4a) 
 in some sense "inherent" or "intrinsic"; and 
 (4b) 
 the "grounds" of basic rights. Regarding the latter, Iglesias
writes:



> 
> 
> The connection is essential. It is rooted in the concept of the human
> person, in human self-understanding as constituted by the bedrock
> truths about what and who we are...The universal meaning of the
> concept of *dignity,* as inherent to every human being,
> expresses the *intrinsic good that the human being is.* The
> distinct *human rights* articulate those basic *intrinsic
> goods* proper to, and expressive of, each one's dignity,
> individually and in community relationships--as dimensions of our
> very being. These basic goods--guaranteed as rights--must be
> recognized, respected, and promoted so that the intrinsic good that
> the human being is himself or herself, personally and as an
> individual, may be preserved and assured. Thus, the ground for
> advocacy and defense of human rights resides on what and who the human
> being is, *as* a human being, namely on his or her dignity.
> (2001: 130)
> 
> 
> 



By comparison, Shultziner (2007) adopts a
"philosophical-linguistic" method to distinguish
moral-philosophical uses of dignity from political and legal
"functions" of the concept, especially the use of dignity
to ground specific rights and enforceable duties. Regarding the
latter, Shultziner stresses that in real world contexts, the rights
which the concept of dignity is used to ground vary considerably:



> 
> 
> There is no fixed and universal content that spouts out of human
> dignity and, hence, its content and meanings are determined separately
> in each legal document in accordance with the political agreement
> achieved at the time. (2007: 78)
> 
> 
> 



This might seem to express skepticism about the possibility of any
general, stable concept of dignity. In fact, it underlines the point
of Iglesias's final criterion
 (4b);
 namely, that a defining property of dignity is the grounding
connection to rights. In other words, strictly speaking, Shultziner
agrees with Iglesias that at least *one* defining property of
human dignity--in political contexts--is that dignity
grounds rights, even though the content of these rights vary greatly
because the grounds of dignity itself vary greatly.
 [4]



Another example of second-order thinking can be found in Debes (2009),
who argues that any satisfactory "formal" account of human
dignity--by which he means an account of its defining
properties--must pick out a "distinctive" value or
status belonging to humans. And it must be distinctive in the sense
that it (a) is not merit based, but instead unearned; (b) is in some
sense "incommensurable" with other values; and (c) makes
sense of the basic "normative function" of the concept.
Regarding (c), Debes argues that the concept of dignity does not
purport to be only or even mainly descriptive. Instead, it has a
normative purpose or role, namely, "to *set off* in our
practical deliberations whatever 'dignity' is applied
to--to guard or protect what *has* dignity" (2009:
61-2).



Or consider Waldron (2012), who tracks a confusion in legal
discussions of dignity between (on the one hand) definitional claims
about dignity's defining properties and (on the other hand)
claims about dignity's practical conditions; that is, the
conditions of its moral, social, or political recognition. Thus,
Waldron notes the way that various human rights charters claim that
dignity is "inherent" in the human person; but also
"command us to make heroic efforts to *establish*
everyone's dignity" (2012: 16, emphasis added). Such
claims, he writes, may look like an equivocation akin to claiming, as
Rousseau once did, that "Man is born free but everywhere is in
chains"--a claim that Jeremy Bentham later called
"miserable nonsense". However, Waldron argues that Bentham
missed an easy explanation of Rousseau:



> 
> 
> [A person] might be identified as a free man in a juridical
> sense--that is his legal status--even though he is found in
> conditions of slavery...So, similarly, one might say that every
> human person is free as a matter of status--the status accorded
> to him by his creator--even though it is the case that some
> humans are actually in chains and need to have their freedom
> represented as the content of a normative demand. (2012:
> 16-17)
> 
> 
> 



To be clear, Waldron quickly adds that one might shy away from the
specific premise of divine creation as a way of grounding human
freedom. That metaphysical premise is only an example. His overarching
point is that it is not incoherent to make this *kind* of
claim. Because the operative claim about the status of human
persons--namely, that they are free--is a claim about a
defining property of the concept of "man" (in a juridical
sense), it follows that we can distinguish this claim from any further
claim about what grounds this "free" status, as well any
claim about the worldly conditions that are required for this status
to be expressed, realized, or recognized.



Keeping this in mind, we can now understand why Waldron thinks that we
are not necessarily equivocating if we claim that dignity is
*inherent*, but nevertheless enjoin others to
*establish* it in practice. He writes,



> 
> 
> On the one hand, the term ["dignity"] may be used to
> convey something about the inherent rank or status of human beings; on
> the other hand, it may be used concomitantly to convey the demand that
> rank or status should actually be recognized. (2012: 17)
> 
> 
> 



Importantly Waldron further argues that dignity finds its proper
conceptual home not in morality, but in the legal context of rights.
He writes, "law is its natural habitat" (2012: 13). This
is because, he argues, rights articulate, or flesh out, the kind of
status that modern conceptions of dignity typically include or allude
to; but also, which his own theory depends on. Thus, for Waldron, it
is historically mistaken and theoretically confused to ground our
contemporary concept of human dignity on thick metaphysical
bases--some inviolable value that "inheres" in
humans, whether by dint of divine creation or otherwise. Instead, on
Waldron's view, the contemporary notion of human dignity is
essentially Samuel Johnson's old idea of "elevated
rank", albeit *refashioned* in the modern consciousness
to apply to all humans.



In other words, Waldron explains the historical revolution in our
concept of dignity as turning on a leveling *up* of all people
to the kind of social status once reserved only for the noble elite.
We simply reappropriated the term "dignity" to describe
this high status, ditching its original "sortal"
connotation for a new egalitarian one (2012: 57-61).
Furthermore, he claims that all this happened through (or mainly
through) the paradigm of rights. Oversimplifying for sake of argument:
Waldron thinks that people of lower social rank successfully annexed
the rights reserved to those of higher ranks, by reinterpreting those
rights as *human* rights. Hence why rights remain the critical
apparatus for fleshing out the kind of status relevant to
"dignity", and why the proper home of dignity is law, not
morality.



Waldron's view on dignity has been influential, so a few more
notes about it are fitting. First, in making these claims about
dignity-as-elevated-rank, Waldron partly aligns himself with Appiah
(2010), although Waldron does not seem to notice this. Second,
Waldron's claim about the "home" of dignity is
contentious. It is *prima facie* hard to square with everyday
claims about human dignity, which seem evenly spread over moral,
political, and legal contexts. And it contradicts Shultziner (2007),
discussed above. Moreover, Dimock (2012), Herzog (2012), and Rosen
(2012b) challenge it directly, among others (see, e.g., Bird
2013).



Most important, however, in the greater context of discussing the
defining prosperities of dignity, it is to register Waldron's
underlying suggestion about an "essential" connection
between dignity and rights. As we have seen, this claim finds wide
traction in the literature, even in accounts of dignity that are at
odds with the Appiah-Waldron view of
"dignity-as-elevated-rank". For example, considering only
accounts reviewed so far, Iglesias (2001) made the same claim; Darwall
(2017) implies it; and both Kateb (2011) and Killmister (2020) endorse
it in different ways. This raises an obvious question: What exactly is
the connection between dignity and rights?


### 2.2 Is a connection to rights a defining property of dignity?



It is beyond the scope of this entry to answer this question in
anything close to a comprehensive way. (Good starting points include
Meyer and Parent 1992; Gewirth 1992, Carozza 2008 and 2013;
and Tasioulas 2013). Instead, let us draw out a few points about the
connection between dignity and rights as it bears specifically on
attempts to make it a defining property of dignity itself. To get at
these points, consider a final proposal about the definitional
criteria of dignity, from Fitzpatrick (2013):



> 
> 
> The primary notion of dignity is the idea of a certain *moral
> status* involving possession of an *inherent, unearned form of
> worth or standing*--a basic worth or standing that is neither
> dependent on one's being of use or interest to others nor based
> on one's merits, and which essentially calls for certain forms
> of respect. (2013: 5546)
> 
> 
> 



Fitzpatrick presents this definition within the context of an
encyclopedic effort to capture its meaning. As such, he is
understandably aiming at something generic. However, in the light of
our analysis so far, the tensions in his attempt are manifest, albeit
instructive.



First, describing dignity as primarily a "status" instead
of a "value" aligns with those like Waldron, who make a
principled distinction between their accounts and all kinds of
"worth" or "value" conceptions of human
dignity (see, e.g., Killmister 2020, who emphasizes this distinction;
and Dan-Cohen 2012, for analysis on its import to Waldron).
However, Fitzpatrick immediately equivocates on this point, redefining
status as, "worth *or* standing". Similarly,
consider that those like Appiah-Waldron who think human dignity
depends on a refashioned idea of high social rank, must, strictly
speaking, reject the property of "inherentness" that
Fitzpatrick appeals to. But they *might* allow for the
alternative description of "unearned", especially if this
is interpreted as historically indexed to the refashioned conception
of status.



More important for the question about rights is to consider
Fitzpatrick's final remark that dignity, "calls for
certain forms of respect". At first blush, this appeal might
seem to be merely a refinement of Debes's (2009) claim that
dignity has a distinctive "normative function". If so, it
would be a refinement that is common to many theorists, as we already
noted in
 SS2.1.
 However, Fitzpatrick immediately connects this generic claim about
respect to two specific elaborations of dignity's normative
function. He writes:



> 
> 
> It is in this sense [of an inherent worth or standing that calls for
> respect] that many hold that all persons possess a fundamental,
> inalienable dignity, which grounds 
>  [1] 
>  basic rights...or 
>  [2] 
>  the authority to make claims and demands of others. (2013: 5546)
> 
> 
> 



Both claims merit elaboration.



The first
 claim [1]
 gives voice to the strongest, or at least the most direct way to make
the connection to rights a defining property of dignity, by making
dignity the *normative basis* of rights. Thus, suppose one asks
of any given right *x*, what justifies the claim that
"*x* is a human right"? The answer for those who
take this line is, "dignity". Or at least, "human
dignity".



Now, in one sense,
 claim [1]
 is unsurprising given that it has legal reality. For example,
although the claim is only implicit in the *Universal Declaration
of Human Rights* (1948) as well as the original *Charter of the
United Nations* (1945), a 1966 amendment to the *Charter*
made it explicit, declaring that rights "derived from the
inherent dignity of persons". Moreover, claims like this have
become increasingly common in state constitutions, especially in the
west, as well as other international charters and humanitarian
declarations (see, e.g., Schachter 1983, Iglesias 2001, Shultziner
2007, and McCrudden 2008, for summaries and analysis).



And yet, it is important to note that such legal claims are almost
always brute assertions. They are not conscientious attempts at
theory. More exactly, they do not claim that any adequate theory of
dignity (as a concept) *must* account for the grounding
relationship between dignity and rights. This is important because,
*pace* FitzPatrick, or those like James Griffin (2008) who
adamantly stress dignity as the foundation of rights, some theorists
challenge or avoid or even reject
 claim [1].
 This includes skeptics who challenge the viability of any existing
substantive accounts of dignity to ground rights (discussed later).
But it also includes some theorists who defend dignity (in one form or
other). For example, Waldron skirts around the kind of commitment at
issue in claim [1]. He allows that dignity involves each person
thinking of themselves, "as a self-originating source of legal
and moral claims" (2012: 60), but the overarching implication of
his argument is that rights *articulate* the nature of the
"high" status humans have been elevated to. Dignity is
thus not the normative *basis* of rights on his view. Instead,
legal systems, and rights in particular, "constitute and
vindicate human dignity, both in their explicit provisions and in
their overall modus operandi" (2012: 67).



Killmister (2020) follows Waldron's lead, but she is more
explicit. "[H]uman rights", she argues, "form part
of our articulation of how members of the human kind ought to be
treated" (2020: 143). And, like Shultziner (2007), she warns
against attempts to derive the content of rights directly from
dignity, a warning that further tells against making
 claim [1]
 part of the definitional criteria. Relatedly, Meyer (1989) concludes
that insofar as we aim to explain rights, we can never successfully
explain dignity: "While having and exercising certain rights is
important to our dignity as human beings", Meyer argues,



> 
> 
> what we commonly regard as essential to human dignity would not be
> explained even if we were able to delineate all of the relevant rights
> and the particular ways in which each of them expresses or protects
> human dignity. (1989: 521)
> 
> 
> 



Meyer's point is enhanced (perhaps even preempted) by
Donnelly's (1982) sociological claim that in cultures where
"rights" are or once were a relatively foreign concept,
human dignity is not. If Donnelly is correct, then excepting
motivational purposes, rights theory is arguably a non-starter for a
proper account of dignity's defining properties (see also,
Howard 1992, who partly recapitulates Donnelly's point).



Piling onto this, Schroeder (2012) and Moyn (2013) warn that the
"normative basis" version of the connection claim between
rights and dignity--i.e.,
 claim [1]--leaves
 dignity vulnerable, because our contemporary concept of human dignity
carries underappreciated debts to non-secular, theological traditions
(see also Addis 2013). And Valentini (2017) argues that the
plausibility of claim [1] depends on which other defining properties
of dignity we want to defend. Specifically, if dignity is taken to be
inherent, she argues, then claim [1] becomes not only
"uninformative" because "the notion of inherent
dignity is opaque"; it also becomes counterproductive to the
aims of most rights theories. This is because, she continues, the
inherentness claim pushes rights debates, "into deep
metaphysical waters", and distracts us from the main political
function of rights (especially, human rights), namely, to
constrain, "the conduct of powerful actors" (2017:
862-3).



Now consider connection
 claim [2]:
 dignity grounds the *authority* to make claims in general.
Some have argued that the first connection
 claim [1],
 which makes dignity the normative basis of rights, is ultimately just
a special case of the second claim [2], about authority. Perhaps most
well-known in this respect is Feinberg (1970 [1980]), who, in the
course of arguing that the act or practice of making interpersonal
claims is what "gives rights their special moral
significance", adds this passing remark about dignity:
"what is called 'human dignity' may simply
*be* the recognizable capacity to assert claims" (1970
[1980: 151]). Admittedly, Feinberg does not unpack the point. And it
is not perfectly clear if authority per se is part of his conception
of this "capacity". Still, the point seems to resonate
with claim [2], especially if we pair Feinberg's point with
Darwall's views about second-personal authority, considered
earlier. Indeed, Meyer (1989) tries to unpack Feinberg in a way that
seems to anticipate Darwall's view. (See also, Forst 2011, who
offers a similar line of argument to Darwall, which he credits partly
to Ernst Bloch. But see Sangiovanni 2017, who objects to both Darwall
and Forst, esp. pp. 50-60).


### 2.3 Are distinctiveness and fragility defining properties of dignity?



It is possible to take an even wider view on the defining criteria of
dignity. For example, consider Etinson (2020), who represents another
case of conscientious second-order theorizing. Etinson argues that a
complete theory of dignity should explain not only what
"grounds" dignity--"that is, how and why one
comes to possess or lose it"--but also its
"proper" method--that is, "how inquiry into all
of this should proceed and be understood" (2020: 356). The
latter demand is akin to calling for an articulation of the defining
properties of dignity, in the sense that we have been discussing.
However, Etinson adds an important substantive claim about this
method: He agrees that dignity is partly distinguished by something
like a distinctive "normative function", but sharpens this
claim by suggesting that to explain this function, we should focus
specifically on the conditions of dignity's violation. This
refinement is important for two broad reasons.



First, over its long history, inquiry into human dignity has often
been conjoined with considerations of what it means to harm dignity:
What constitutes disrespect of dignity? Can we lose it? Can it be
destroyed? And so on. Call this, the question of dignity's
"fragility". Sometimes, this question is taken up within a
direct examination of dignity (see, e.g., Kaplan 1999 or Dussel
2003). At other times, the motivation is pragmatic. For example, in
his reflection on legal appeals to dignity, Schacter (1983)
writes:



> 
> 
> When [dignity] has been invoked in concrete situations, it has been
> generally assumed that a violation of human dignity can be recognized
> even if the abstract term cannot be defined. "I know it when I
> see it even if I cannot tell you what it is". (1983: 849)
> 
> 
> 



And in some cases, these reflections go the other way around; that is,
*from* an analysis of a specific kind of dehumanizing harm
(slavery, torture, rape, genocide; alienation, humiliation,
embarrassment) *to* dignity, or one of its close cognates like
"humanity" (see especially, Neuhauser 2011; Morawa
2013; Haslam 2014; Frick 2021; Mikkola
 2021).[5]



But whatever the context, it is crucial to distinguish between
first-order encounters with dignity's fragility, and
second-order efforts that try to draw a connection between a negative
methodology centered on the question of fragility and the positive
effort to articulate the defining properties of dignity. It is the
latter claim that Etinson makes, illustrated in the following incisive
point:



> 
> 
> Not all moral wrongs convincingly register as violations of human
> dignity...And this suggests that dignity is normatively
> special--that its violation represents a particular type of
> wrong. (2020: 357)
> 
> 
> 



Essentially, Etinson is arguing that (1) we should add to the defining
properties of dignity, that the value or status "dignity"
picks out is in some sense "normatively distinctive"; and
(2) in order to articulate (positively) what makes it distinctive, we
must investigate (negatively) what it means to harm it. Thus, for
Etinson, dignity does not simply have the normative function to
"set off" the special status of humans in our practical
deliberations; it sets off humans in a special way. And this
"way" can only be understood through a consideration of
dignity's fragility.



The second reason for underlining this kind of negative methodology
comes from Killmister (2020), who also makes second-order claims about
the proper method for theorizing dignity. On her view, all the primary
senses of dignity in the general schema can be harmed in some way or
other. Each can be injured, lowered, embarrassed, humiliated,
threatened, frustrated, even destroyed. Correspondingly, it is a
criterion of any satisfactory theory, that it explains the nature and
conditions of dignity's fragility in *all* its primary
senses
 (categories 1-4
 in the general schema).



The emphasis on "all" is important. Killmister's
theory stands out for being an attempt to use the criterion of
fragility to offer a unified theory of dignity. And this raises a
question beyond whether fragility is a defining property of dignity.
Namely, for any given theory of dignity, does it purport to theorize
dignity in general, or *human* dignity in particular? Most
literature bearing the term "dignity" in its title will
say at some point that it is really or mostly about human dignity. But
if so, then are such theories in some sense incomplete? Must a
complete theory of *human* dignity
 (category 4
 in the general schema) reconcile itself with the other primary senses
of the term
 (categories 1-3),
 as Killmister implores?



The next section attempts to offer some footholds for answering these
new questions. But there is one more point to make here, because it is
pertinent to second-order questions about how to formulate dignity.
Part of what motivates Killmister's effort at a unified theory
is an attending argument that theories of dignity should fit with
everyday ways of speaking about dignity. And everyday talk of dignity,
she argues, often refers to the other primary senses of dignity in the
general schema. Moreover, she claims that all these ways of talking
are connected by the fragility criterion, as well as some of the other
defining criteria we have discussed, especially (A) the idea of a
normative function and (B) an essential connection to respect.
Finally, she treats this "fit" between her account of the
defining properties of dignity and everyday talk about dignity as
important evidence for the correctness of her own criteria. Nor is she
alone in staking evidentiary value on fitness to everyday language.
For example, Bird (2013) and Etinson (2020) make similar
 arguments.[6]
 Do we agree? Surely, a good theory of dignity will not run roughshod
over everyday usage. Still, exactly how beholden should a theory
be?


## 3. Human Dignity: Touchstones of Analysis



The conclusion of the last section raised the following question about
the conceptual landscape of dignity research: Which of the many points
being made are relevant to theorizing dignity in general, and which
pertain specifically to human dignity? To answer this question, it
will help to distill a few enduring themes that characterize the
debate over specifically human dignity. These are hardly all the
themes that could be identified. Also, because each theme has been
introduced in one way or other already, the following is intentionally
condensed, with the understanding that any of these leads could be
followed into a forest of nuance.


### 3.1 Virtue, Value, Status, and the "distinctiveness" point reconsidered



One could take all the existing literature on human dignity and
arrange it into three groups, depending on whether any given argument
renders dignity as a kind of (i) virtue or quality of character; (ii)
value or worth; or (iii) status or standing. Our analysis already laid
out the most important aspects in deciding between these
classifications. We also noted that the trend in secular accounts is
to articulate dignity as a kind of status rather than as a virtue or
value. To this it should be added that virtue accounts make up the
minority of all modern positions, no doubt because most contemporary
positions eschew the hierarchical drift that comes with tying dignity
to virtue.



Perhaps less obvious in the literature, is the agreement to articulate
what is distinctive about dignity, regardless of which way it is
rendered: virtue, value, or status. This "distinctiveness"
point is pressing, given Etinson's (2020) argument that a
negative analysis of dignity's fragility is crucial to
understanding what is "special" about dignity as a
normative concept. On his view, a good theory of dignity will pick out
a "meaningful distinct set of concerns" (2020: 354), if it
is to justify using the term at all. The force of this point extends
beyond the question of whether fragility is a defining property of
dignity. But to appreciate fully why, we need to contextualize it. So,
consider the following:



The idea that human beings are morally special or distinctive has
found expression in the religion, philosophy, literature, and art of
all societies, modern and ancient. And connected to that idea and
those expressions is an enduring struggle to understand what this
peculiar "value" is. Since antiquity many have leveraged
this idea about human distinctiveness into the idea that humans are
*supremely* valuable. The chorus in Sophocles'
*Antigone* (c. 441 BCE), for example, lauds man as the most
"wondrous" of all things in the world, a prodigy who cuts
through the natural world the way a sailor cuts through the
"perilous" surging seas that threaten to engulf him
(verses 332 ff., cited in Debes 2009 at p. 52). Similarly, the
Judeo-Christian doctrine of *imago Dei* trumpets human dominion
over the earth and the distinctive value of humanity. Excluding God
and angels, the doctrine implies that humankind is preeminently
valuable.



Admittedly, these are not references to theory, strictly speaking.
However, the historical development of dignity has long been tangled
up with this kind of widespread attempt to explain human
distinctiveness, even if only implicitly or under cognate terms like
"uniqueness" (e.g., Muray 2007 and Rolston 2008). Indeed,
one might say that the most basic point of the *concept* of
dignity, especially as it was molded into the category of "human
dignity", just is to describe the distinctive virtue, value, or
status of humans. From Cicero's ancient claim about the special
worth of the "human race"; to Schacter's (1983)
anti-Waldron argument that dignity's importance outside of legal
contexts highlights the need "to treat it as a distinct
subject" (1983: 854); to Iglesias's (2001) attempt to
explain our "distinctiveness" as human beings; to
Kateb's (2011) claim that human dignity involves the unique role
humans have as "stewards" of the earth--in all these
arguments the distinctiveness point is in play. Or consider Simone
Weil, writing in the shadow of World War II, and who inspired
Iglesias:



> 
> 
> There is something sacred in every man, but it is not his person. Nor
> yet is it the human personality. It is this man; no more nor
> less... The whole of him. The arms, the eyes, the thoughts,
> everything. Not without infinite scruple would I touch anything of
> this. (first published 1957 [1986: 50-51])
> 
> 
> 



Similarly, Malpas (2007) explicitly argues that insofar as we are
investigating human dignity, it seems we are inquiring into what is
distinctively valuable about "being" human, by which he
means something like the *experience* of being human.



This said, we must understand Etinson as arguing that it is not enough
to claim that what explains the moral distinctiveness of humans is
their "dignity". We have to say what about human dignity
*itself* is distinctive. And we must do so in a way that would
substantiate (in part or in whole) the more general claim of human
distinctiveness. After all, Etinson argues, not all kinds of harms to
humans count as harms to their human dignity. Not even all harms to
their status are obviously harms to their human dignity. Slapping
someone in the face is certainly an affront to their status in some
sense, and perhaps even necessarily to their social-status dignity
 ((3)
 in the general schema), but not necessarily to their *human*
dignity
 ((4)
 in the general schema). (See also, Valentini 2017.)



So, what is distinctive about human dignity itself? There is more than
one way to answer this question. Etinson's own suggestion, as we
have seen, is to use a negative normative lens to articulate what
kinds of harms to humans count distinctively as harms against their
dignity. But rather than tracing out further particular answers to
this question, let us note a few final general observations about the
distinctiveness point.



First, most theorists of dignity do not explicitly parse out the need
to explain the distinctiveness of dignity itself, as contrasted with
human distinctiveness in general. However, I submit that explaining
the distinctiveness of dignity (itself) is often *part* of what
many theorists take themselves to be doing, however indirectly. In
other words, explaining dignity's "distinct set of
concerns", to use Etinson's phrase, seems to be
constitutive of many theories of dignity. There is no space to
substantiate this contention here, but we risk losing valuable
insights about dignity's distinctiveness if we don't take
this charitable approach.



Second, it is important not to run together the normative upshot of
any claim about the *grounds* of dignity, with a
*definitional* point about dignity's distinctiveness. For
example, if one thinks humans have dignity in virtue of their rational
agency, then in one sense, this will entail *a* kind of
distinctiveness. For, it will necessarily inform the substance of
whatever rights or duties we think dignity justifies. In other words,
the content of such rights and duties will need to be
"distinctively" tied to rational agency, and what it means
to protect, harm, or nurture this agency. Likewise for any other
candidate account of dignity's grounds. Nevertheless, this is
different than talking about distinctiveness as a defining property of
human dignity. Scholars like Etinson and Killmister are trying to
articulate the distinctive normative function that *defines*
dignity, regardless of its grounds--indeed, which any
satisfactory account of dignity's grounds must be able to
explain.



Finally, Debes (2009) adds the following qualification to the
"distinctiveness" point:



> 
> 
> A proper account of dignity must pick out a distinctive value
> belonging to humans. This is not equivalent to demanding a value that
> belongs distinctively to humans.
> 
> 
> 



The latter demand (which some theorists do insist on), not only
arbitrarily rules out a shared space of dignity between different
entities but also risks ruling out the best options for
dignity's grounds:



> 
> 
> For example, if rationality should after all turn out to be the most
> defensible basis for a theory of human dignity, we [humans]
> wouldn't want to yield it simply because we discovered that
> chimps and whales were rational or that Martians really have been
> trying to communicate with us for millennia. (2009: 61).
> 
> 
> 


### 3.2 Individuals vs. species



The conclusion of the last section brings to mind another theoretical
dividing line in the literature, between those arguing for human
dignity *qua* human individual, and those arguing for human
dignity *qua* species. Which is it?



Some say, both. For example, Kateb (2011) argues that we must explain
the uniqueness of persons *and* the species: "I am what
no one else is, while not existentially superior to anyone else; we
human beings belong to a species that is what no other species
is" (2011: 17). According to Kateb (echoing Cicero), humans are
partly divorced from the natural order both individually and
collectively, in virtue of possessing unparalleled and morally special
capacities for self-creation. Moreover, Kateb is clear that the
distinctiveness of human dignity also grounds human normative
supremacy. Indeed, on his view, human supremacy is one of the defining
properties of dignity: "The core idea of human dignity is that
on earth, humanity is the greatest type of being" (2011:
3-4); we are "the highest species on earth--so
far" (2011: 17).



Of course, such claims are contentious. But if we want to engage them,
it is important to be clear about whether we are doing so at the
definitional level, or at the level of dignity's grounds. For
example, recall Cicero's claim that it is in virtue of our
distinctive capacities for self-development "by study and
reflection", that human beings have a "superior"
"nature" to that of "cattle and other
animals". This Ciceronian idea about the grounds of dignity
shares affinities with many other extant views, including Kant, Pico,
and obviously Kateb. And we have considered reasons for rejecting this
line of argument. But even if one accepts it, the present point is
that one might *not* endorse Kateb's claim about the
"core idea" of dignity being essentially about the human
species. That is, one could agree with Kateb about what grounds
dignity but disagree that part of what defines dignity, is the
property of species superiority. Stern (1975) and Gaylin (1984), for
example, agree that the concept of dignity is most essentially about
human worth or status, but argue that this does not imply that the
human *species* possesses dignity. It only implies that each
individual human has dignity.



Finally, any claim about the dignity of the species or collective
humanity must confront worries about speciesism, and in turn all the
objections of those who think that non-human animals have a purchase
on the normative space of dignity (see, e.g., Rachels 1990; Pluhar
1995; LaFollette & Shanks 1996; Bekoff 1998; Meyer 2001; Rolston
2008; Singer 2009; and especially Gruen 2003 [2010], who explores the
idea of "wild dignity".)


### 3.3 Inherent vs. constructed



It is common to talk of human dignity as "inherent". What
this means, however, is often unclear. Sometimes it is redescribed to
mean "intrinsic", other times "inalienable".
It is also often conjoined with claims that dignity is
"inviolable"--although this is dubious if
inviolability is supposed to be *entailed* by inherentness.
After all, one might agree that human dignity cannot be entirely
destroyed because dignity is inherent, but nevertheless allow that
human dignity can be harmed, insulted, frustrated, and humiliated.



This is not to suggest that all that is inherent is indestructible.
Whether human dignity can really be destroyed depends entirely on why
one thinks human dignity is inherent. If one thinks that human dignity
is inherent because we have dignity in virtue of possessing a soul,
then they probably do not think dignity can be truly destroyed
(although they may think it can be degraded; or even, if they
subscribe to Christian dogma, that it was in fact degraded by the
"fall" from grace). On the other hand, if one thinks that
human dignity is inherent because we have dignity in virtue of our
capacities for rational agency, then they probably do think dignity
can be lost or destroyed, whether by extreme psychological trauma or a
sharp blow to the head.



It must also be reiterated that secular theorists of dignity have
increasingly turned away from "inherentness" as a defining
property of dignity (see, e.g., Darwall 2006; Debes 2009; Kateb 2011;
Rosen 2012a; Waldron 2012; Valentini 2017; Killmister 2020). The
reasons for doing so vary. Most reflect suspicion about the
metaphysical baggage, especially of the theological kind, that
historically has gone hand in hand with inherentness claims. But there
are often other reasons. For example, for those that think human
dignity is defined by the authority or standing to hold others
responsible with second-personal claims, dignity only comes into
existence within actual second-personal encounters (see, e.g., Meyer
1989, Darwall 2006, Forst 2011, and perhaps Feinberg 1970 [1980]). Or
recall Valentini, who argues that the problem with the metaphysical
claims needed to back up inherentness is not simply that they are
"heavy", but that they distract us from the core political
function of rights. Meanwhile, for those committed to a negative
methodology, like Killmister or Etinson, the starting assumption is
that dignity *can* be destroyed. And while this does not entail
that dignity is not inherent, Killmister persuasively argues that such
fragility strongly tells against inherentness.



All this raises the question: If not inherent, then what? The simple
answer is that on many theories dignity is socially constructed. Of
course, there are many theories about what it means for something to
be socially constructed, with many important differences between them.
There is, for example, a chasm of difference between claiming that
dignity is constructed as a constitutive part of second-personal
relationships (*a la* Darwall or Forst) and claiming
that it is constructed through the transformation of an old idea about
"elevated rank" (*a la* Appiah or Waldron).
So, the simple answer must be turned into a complicated one, which we
cannot do here.


### 3.4 Respect: An alternative lens on dignity



A complete theory of human dignity must articulate the demands that
dignity places on us, morally and politically. Some theories, as we
have seen, build this expectation into the defining properties of
dignity. But even when they do not, there is almost always some
appeal, positive or negative, to some claim about what it means to
recognize dignity, and most often to some claim about
*respect*--which, furthermore, is usually claimed to be
both what dignity demands and what it means to recognize dignity. The
subject of respect, however, is its own labyrinth. It boasts an array
of meanings, diverse applications, and extensive commentary. This
said, two very general points about respect stand out in connection to
human dignity.



First, the connection between dignity and respect has been made
concrete in various political contexts. For example, Schachter (1983)
notes that Article 10 of the *International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights* provides that,



> 
> 
> all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity
> and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person. (1983:
> 848)
> 
> 
> 



He marks a similar provision in Article 5 of the *American
Convention on Human Rights* (Ibid). And this connection generates
distinct challenges in the political context that reach beyond the
human rights discourse. Schachter explains:



> 
> 
> In the political context, respect for the dignity and worth of all
> persons, and for their individual choices, leads, broadly speaking, to
> a strong emphasis on the will and consent of the governed. It means
> that the coercive rule of one or the few over the many is incompatible
> with a due respect for the dignity of the person. (1983: 850)
> 
> 
> 



However, Schachter further points out, many political theories
contend,



> 
> 
> that substantial equality is a necessary condition of respect for the
> intrinsic worth of the human person...In particular, relations of
> dominance and subordination would be viewed as antithetical to the
> basic ideal [of human dignity]. If this is so, great discrepancies in
> wealth and power need to be eliminated to avoid such relations.
> (ibid)
> 
> 
> 



The question thus becomes, how can we achieve such egalitarian
objectives, without the kind of "excessive curtailment of
individual liberty and the use of coercion" that human dignity
is *also* thought to eschew (1983: 850)? This question figures
into some of history's most influential political theories, from
Hegel to Rawls. (For an inroad to understanding the Hegelian line, see
Honneth 2007; for the Rawlsian line, see Bird 2021.)



Second, as already hinted, the introduction of respect raises its own
distinctive challenge, namely, to explain what respect is. To do this,
many theorists appeal, explicitly or implicitly, to what we earlier
called "recognition respect". When we make plans or choose
to act, we recognize-respect others when we appropriately take account
of some fact about them, by adapting, revising, or even foregoing our
plans and choices in the light of that fact. So, which
"fact"? Well, if we are talking about respecting persons
*as* persons, in a moral sense, many theorists have answered
that *human dignity* is the operative fact. Or, if they drill
down further, then whatever they end up defending as the
*grounds* of human dignity--whether rational autonomy,
species membership, an immortal soul, etc.--is the relevant
 fact.[7]



However, the last few decades have witnessed a wave of new theorizing
about respect. And this has consequences for theorizing about human
dignity. The most notable consequence stems from the field of care
ethics, where empathy, compassion, and caring have been conceived as
distinct kinds of respect. Thus, although human dignity did not figure
explicitly into early formulations of care ethics, as conceived by
those like Noddings (1984) or Held (2006), care ethics has
increasingly been developed in ways that does bring dignity to the
fore, e.g., by those like Dillon (1992), Kittay (2005 and 2011), and
Miller (2012). Dillon, in particular, gives voice to a profound
alternative to rationalist paradigms of human dignity, noted
frequently in this entry, and associated especially with Kant. She
writes:



> 
> 
> [Care respect] grounds respect for persons in something which,
> considered in the abstract, nearly all human beings have and can be
> said to have equally - the characteristic of being an individual human
> "me" - a characteristic which each of us values and thinks
> is both morally important and profoundly morally problematic not only
> in others but in ourselves as well, and which pulls our attention to
> the concrete particularities of each human individual. We are, on the
> care respect approach, to pay attention not only to the fact that
> someone is a "me" but also to which particular
> "me" she is. (Dillon 1992: 118)
> 
> 
> 



The core idea Dillon expresses here about the grounds of dignity
*qua* the concrete "particularity" of an individual
person (as she puts it on 1992: 115), traces to Iris Murdoch (1970)
and Elizabeth Spelman (1978). It also resonates with the thinking of
Simon Weil, noted above in
 SS3.2.
 More generally, Dillon's argument illustrates how taking the
concept of respect as our starting point might lead to very different
views about human dignity.


## 4. Skeptical Worries



The conceptual complexity surrounding dignity has sparked a long
history of disagreement about the utility of the concept, with some
concluding that it is hopelessly messy or essentially ambiguous. One
of the more cited versions comes from the Yale bioethicist Ruth
Macklin, who made this complaint in a widely read 2003 editorial.
"Dignity", she asserted, "is a useless concept. It
means no more than respect for persons or their autonomy" (2003:
1419).



Macklin's claim was not backed by much argument. And judging by
the literature, her complaint did nothing to slow down the application
of dignity in bioethics, where it is now discussed in the context of
everything from disability studies, elderly care, human research,
cloning, "chimeras", enhancement, transhumanism, and
euthanasia (see the bibliography for leads to each of these). Still,
one does not have to look hard to find Macklin's allies.



For example, Rosen (2012a) claims that "animus against dignity
is widely shared among philosophers, in my experience, and goes back a
long way" (2012a: 143). He buttresses his claim by recounting
the encouragement of a colleague to give the concept "a good
kicking", and by quoting his favorite historical challenges by
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the former of whom called dignity,
"the shibboleth of all the perplexed and empty-headed
moralists" (1840 [1965: 100] cited in Rosen 2013: 143).
Importantly, however, for Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the problem
wasn't simply the ambiguity of the concept. They thought that
the moralized notion of inherent or distinctive human worth garners
widespread credence only because it flatters our pride and allows us
to slip into self-deceptive moral complacency. This deflationary
hypothesis strikes at the heart of our modern dignitarian ethos.



So, exactly how widespread is skepticism of dignity? There is no
simple answer to this question because it depends greatly on what one
takes dignity to be. Even defenders of one conception of dignity often
express skepticism about other conceptions. For example, we already
noted the trend away from thick metaphysical claims about dignity,
which make dignity depend on anything like a divinely implanted
"soul" or Kant's "noumenal" idea of the
self. Rosen calls such views, "internal kernel" theories,
and further notes that reservations about these views are often both
metaphysical (no such thing exists) and epistemological (we cannot
justify our belief in such things). The present point, however, is
that if one's skepticism about human dignity in general turns on
the specific reservation about internal kernel theories, then one
should stay open minded. For, as we have seen, there are many
alternatives for theorizing dignity that do not depend on such
metaphysical commitments.



Still, because there is more than one way to interpret
Schopenhauer's claim that dignity is a "shibboleth",
it may prove helpful to trace out a little further a few possible
skeptical lines of argument, albeit briefly. So, here are four ways
skepticism tends to play out in the existing literature:


1. Rosen suggests that Schopenhauer's main complaint
is that "dignity" is an impressive
"facade" obscuring the harsh reality behind the
idea, namely, that the concept lacks the substance to do the work we
assign to it. More exactly, dignity cannot serve as a foundation for
morality, including, serving as the normative basis of rights (Rosen
2012a: 143). We encountered this line of thinking already in the
earlier discussion of the connection between dignity and rights.
Essentially, the complaint is that no extant account of the
*grounds* of dignity (e.g., Kantian rationalist arguments,
Judeo-Christian *imago Dei* arguments, etc.) can satisfactorily
explain and justify the kind of normative work dignity is supposed to
do. See especially, Sangiovanni 2017, who rejects Aristotelian,
Kantian, and *imago Dei* accounts of dignity as insufficient
for the tasks dignity is typically set to, including grounding
rights.
2. A related but distinctively different way of taking
Schopenhauer's objection, is the worry that dignity has been
*politically* manipulated to capitalize on its deceptive
potential. As Rosen notes, the general point here is not new.
"The idea that illusions are essential to the political
order", he writes, "runs through the Western tradition of
political thought from Plato" (2012a: 144). However, Rosen
suggests that Nietzsche gets the credit for understanding how powerful
an illusion human dignity, specifically, can be, for such political
purpose. "Such phantoms as the dignity of man", Nietzsche
writes,



> 
> 
> are the needy products of slavedom hiding itself from itself. Woeful
> time, in which the slave requires such conceptions, in which he is
> incited to think about and beyond himself! (from "The Greek
> State", 1871; quoted in Rosen 2012a: 144)
> 
> 
> 



In fact, this skeptical line goes back further than Rosen seems to
appreciate. Thus, in his 1714, *Fable of the Bees*, Bernard
Mandeville essentially made the same argument. Speaking conjecturally
about the origins of morality, Mandeville writes:



> 
> 
> Making use of this bewitching Engine [of flattery], [the Politicians]
> extoll'd the excellency of our Nature above other
> Animals...Which being done, they laid before them how unbecoming
> it was the Dignity of such sublime Creatures to be solicitous about
> gratifying those Appetites, which they had in common with Brutes, and
> at the same time unmindful of those higher Qualities that gave them
> the preeminence over all visible Beings. (1714 [1988: 43])
> 
> 
>
3. Dignity is vacuous. Bracketing any worries about how any
given political institution manipulates the idea of dignity to achieve
its ends, or how human pride might capitalize on the idea of dignity
to facilitate self-deception about our personal moral failings,
perhaps the idea of dignity is simply unnecessary. For example,
consider the first sentence of Article One of the *Universal
Declaration of Human Rights*: "All human beings are born
free and equal in dignity and rights". What would be lost, Rosen
asks, "if one were just to say, 'All human beings are born
free and equal in rights'?" (2012a: 149). A slightly
different version of this complaint is that, because of its
vacuousness, dignity has become mere dogma. For example, in the legal
context, Theoder Heuss, called dignity a "non-interpreted
thesis" in law. And Costas Douzinas argued dignity was an empty
placeholder in a "hegemonic battle" of competing legal
ideologies (see also, McCrudden 2013a for some analysis of both; also,
Bargaric & Allan 2006).
4. Dignity is ambiguous. The thrust of this frequent
complaint is that dignity has become a useless concept, not so much
because it is empty, but because it has too many meanings. (A few have
even claimed that the concept is "essentially" ambiguous,
though it is not clear what this is supposed to mean; see, e.g.,
Shultziner 2007 or Rotenstreich 1983.) When focused, this worry comes
in three forms:


	1. the ambiguity of meaning makes "dignity"
	incomprehensible;
	2. the ambiguity of meaning makes "dignity" susceptible
	to abuse;
	3. the ambiguity of meaning conceals objectionable subjective opinion
	or substantive baggage in the concept of "dignity".



Examples of all these positions can easily be found. But perhaps the
best illustrations once again come from the legal context. Regarding
 (1):
 see, e.g., Bates (2005), who acknowledges the problem but then tries
to defend dignity. Regarding
 (2):
 see, e.g., Gearty (2014) and Moyn (2013), who argue that the
continuing ambiguity of dignity make it too easily abused in courtroom
deliberation and democratic theories of rights. Regarding
 (3):
 see Pinker (2008), who argues that dignity is a subjective
phenomenon, "relative, fungible, and often harmful"; also
Rosen (2012a) and Moyn (2013), both of whom argue that our modern
concept labors under underappreciated debts to Christian theology;



These are not all the possible reasons for skepticism about dignity,
only the most prevalent. And each is usually sharpened in various ways
that make the argument cut deeper than what this summary suggests.
This said, the merits of these critiques are disputable. Indeed, much
of the foregoing analysis in this entry suggests strategies of
response to each.



But perhaps the most fitting way to conclude is with a different kind
of question entirely. Namely, how *ought* we respond to such
skeptical attacks, if at all? Thus, it is hard not to think of
Frederick Douglass's warning, delivered in his 1852
"Fourth of July" speech, about the dangers of demanding of
anyone, that they *argue* for their equal and basic human worth
or status--especially when so many people remain not simply
oppressed, but exposed to vitriolic hate in a world that constantly
proclaims its faith and commitment in the ideal of human dignity.
"At a time like this", Douglass said, "scorching
irony, not convincing argument, is needed" (1852: 20).