by James Beauregard
My first attendance at the International Conference on Persons was in
August of 2013, held at the University of Lund, Sweden. While I had been reading personalism for some
time, it was the first opportunity I had had to gather with a group of
dedicated personalist philosophers, allowing me to experience personalism as it
was happening – as papers were presented, as ideas were being shared, as new
ideas were being formed. Belying the comment of a Swedish co-worker at the
time, who told me that “All Swedish food is grey,” I also discovered more variety,
in colour and flavour than that statement would have led me to believe. I also
inadvertently discovered that there are some very good Italian restaurants in
southern Sweden – who knew? Many personalist conversations were conducted over
red sauce that week. That Italian food proved so congenial to personalist
discussion was not the least of the reasons that I organized the dinner for the
Boston International Conference on Persons in the city’s Italian section, the
“North End.”
But, back to Sweden - I remember Randy Auxier’s
introduction to the conference on the first day. In those introductory remarks he made it a
point to mention the notion of human dignity “something personalists profess to
care about.” In a sense, this set the tone for the week for me – thanks Randy!
– and more recently has led me to consider human dignity more carefully, and in
a more organized fashion.
In much of the world, both East and West, the
concept of dignity has fallen on hard times. In some places, dignity talk is ignored or
banished, in others attacked, in still others devalued or ridiculed, and still,
in some places, recognized and affirmed.
How did we come to this situation in a
relatively short span of time? In the
years after the Second World War we saw the promulgation of some of the
greatest documents on human dignity and human rights that the world has known –
the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights being a flagship
example and in inspiration for many other documents that would follow.
Jump ahead with me from 1948 to 2003, when the
American bioethicist Ruth Macklin published a brief editorial in the BMJ called “Dignity is a useless
concept.”[1] She concluded her essay with the statement,
“Dignity is a useless concept in medical ethics and can be eliminated without
any loss of content.”[2] For
Macklin, the origins of the concept of dignity are obscure, shrouded in
“mystery” and she deemed the concept of dignity incoherent due to its vagueness
imprecision, to the point where it could invoked by multiple sides in debates
on life issues.[3] She argued further that dignity had been drawn
into bioethical debate as a substitute term for autonomy and “respect for
persons,” terms she found more specific
and useful.[4] Noting the lack of a concrete working definition of dignity in various
bioethical and international rights documents, she stated that “In the absence
of criteria that can enable us to know just when dignity is violated, the
concept remains hopelessly vague.”[5] A final criticism of dignity was addressed to
its origins in religious sources, “especially, but not exclusively in Roman
Catholic writings,” that have “crept
into the secular literature in medical ethics.”[6] Because of this, the aetiology of the concept of
dignity, in her view, remained “a mystery.”[7]
There is much to ponder here. Is dignity still
a useful concept, and if so, in what contexts?
How should it come into play?
What are the consequences of including dignity in public conversation
and what are the consequences of its absence? Macklin’s views have not going
unchallenged, and there is a literature since 2003 in direct response to her
shot across the bow, as well as a continuation of dignity more generally that
we will also consider.
Macklin’s comments may seem damning –
vagueness, incoherence. The concept of
dignity has been employed on both sides of the assisted sides debate – the
dignity of the human person defended against assisted suicide on the one hand,
and death with dignity on the other. But
the problem runs deeper than the issue of language and of definition. What is at stake is human persons, and not
least our very understanding of who is a person, what constitutes
personhood. When we speak of dignity,
either to support it or criticize it, we are speaking at some level of the
dignity of persons.
What I am writing here is the beginning of an
investigation – an investigation of dignity, which is something that, as Randy
said back in 2013, is something that should receive the attention of
personalist philosophers and theologians.
To do this, this blog begins a series of reflections on human dignity
that will look at the context and history of the notion of dignity to create a
context, and that will then look at dignity in its contemporary context, which
presents multiple perspectives, some in favour of recognizing dignity, some
against it. I will be asking the question of dignity, and as a precursor, the
question of persons, to whom dignity is ascribed or denied, or removed from the
conversation altogether. In the next instalment, the long history of the
concept of dignity will be our starting point.
[1] Ruth Macklin, “Dignity
is a useless concept,” BMJ, 327
(20-27 December 2003): 1419-1420.
[2] Ibid., 1420.
[3] Macklin specifically
mentions the California Natural Death Act in 1976 in the debate on death with
dignity, 1419.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid, 1420.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
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