A Further Thought on Human Dignity

 

 

Thanks to Michael S. for raising the interesting and important question raised by one of his students over Mary Ann Glendon’s valuable analysis of the Kantian and Rousseauian perspectives on human dignity. Ambassador Glendon is right on target in identifying the debilitating fault line that runs through Kant and Rousseau. Although there has been some previous discussion of the subject of human dignity here at Mirror of Justice, I would like to draw attention once again to a point made by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter Centesimus Annus where he said there is something “which is due to man because he is man.” Jacques Maritain offered a similar insight into the nature of every human some years earlier. I would like to take this mutual thought of John Paul II and Maritain and suggest that regardless of who anyone is—which takes into account all kinds of physical, emotional, social, economic, age, sentient, and all other statuses—each human is to be accorded the protection of his or her existence because he or she is human. This is not necessarily a religious argument, although it reinforces the Catholic doctrine on the issue of human dignity. It is, however, an argument based on reason, an explanation that transcends the problems with the views of Kant and Rousseau that Ambassador Glendon identifies. As I stated earlier, there is something that is innate to the human and this integral character is the dignity which is the guarantor of everyone’s existence that begins with the moment of their first being. With each’s being there is the commencement of the individual’s dignity that needs to be preserved. If one’s dignity is assaulted, what is to prevent the forfeit of anyone else’s dignity?

 

RJA sj