The dignitarian return

Abstract

Dignity underlies much philosophical debate, but the concept and its place in a broader theory of justice have received renewed analytic attention of late. In this article, I examine several recent books on dignity: Human Dignity and Political Criticism, by Colin Bird; Human Dignity and Human Rights, and Human Dignity and Social Justice, both by Pablo Gilabert; Contours of Dignity by Suzanne Killmister; and Humanity Without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights, by Andrea Sangiovanni. As I outline, each book develops and defends a position in an established disagreement between so-called ‘Naturalistic’ views, which hold that dignity inheres in natural properties, and ‘Conventionalist’ perspectives, which hold that dignity is socially defined. With these contemporary accounts in mind, I expose the contours of this disagreement and suggest that further work should focus on developing a hybrid conception of dignity consistent with Naturalism and Conventionalism.

Introduction

Dignity underlies much philosophical debate, but the concept and its place in a broader theory of justice have received renewed analytic attention of late. In light of this, it is appropriate to speak of a dignitarian return in political and moral philosophy – a revitalised focus on the role that dignity has in theorising over social justice. In this article, I begin by outlining recent contributions to the debate over the meaning of dignity. I then draw out a crucial area of disagreement between two of the main positions: so-called ‘Naturalistic’ views, which hold that dignity inheres in natural properties, and ‘Conventionalist’ perspectives, which argue that dignity is a social convention. ¹ As I explain, recent literature has fruitfully developed the concept of dignity in both of these approaches, but each of them also face challenges. To respond to them, I suggest that theorists should begin to explore a hybrid conception of dignity that incorporates Conventionalist perspectives into a Naturalistic approach.

The diverse meanings of dignity

Dignity is a particular kind of status. ² While recent literature does not offer an entirely original conception of what that status is, it does further develop and clarify the different ways in which the meaning of it can be understood. In this section, I characterise the four main views, by drawing on the typologies offered by Bird (2021: chap. 4), Gilabert (2018: chaps. 5 and 6) and Killmister (2020: chap. 1) in their recent books ³ :

Many understand dignity to be an inherent and immutable worth. This is the orthodox ‘Naturalistic’ understanding of dignity (Bird, 2021: 56–57), evoked in the UN Charter on human rights. Bearers of this kind of status-dignity are thought to have their inherent worth in virtue of certain valuable capacities they possess (Gilabert, 2023a: 6–9), capacities which constitute ‘the basis of dignity’ (Gilabert, 2023a: 8–9). On the orthodox view, possessing dignity implies you ‘are owed certain kinds of treatment that involves respect and concern as a matter of rights’ (Gilabert, 2023a: 6). This approach stems from the legal norms concerning human rights but was philosophically developed by Griffin (2008) and Kateb (2011). While Gilabert's (2018, 2023a) books attempt a similar task, they do not reinvent the wheel. They offer several novel contributions. First, Gilabert's account explicitly argues that dignity is the ‘core, anchoring idea’ (Gilabert, 2023a, 6) in a broader network of dignitarian concepts that (as I clarify below) he seeks to characterise (Gilabert, 2018: chaps. 5 and 6). Other orthodox accounts are less explicit about the relationship between dignity and other moral norms. Second, while other orthodox views have held that the basis of dignity inheres in uniquely human capacities (Kateb, 2011: 17–19; Griffin, 2008: 32–37), such as rational agency or personhood, Gilabert does not accept this position. According to Gilabert, this kind of dignity might be plausibly grounded in other valuable capacities instead of (or as well) as unique human capacities like rational agency – such as sentience, self-awareness, or empathy (Gilabert, 2023b). Third, unlike other orthodox views, Gilabert argues that your status dignity must be reflected in certain Dignitarian norms and that when those norms are respected you experience what he calls ‘condition-dignity’ (Gilabert, 2018: 122–26). Hence, while this understanding does have the implication that your dignity cannot be altered or tarnished (Bird, 2021: 56–60), this need not mean that a more complex conception of dignity cannot make sense of the ways in which dignity can be violated. Finally, Gilabert's books further develop the role, meaning and importance dignity has to human rights (2018), and to social justice (2023a) – the two sides to what Gilabert calls the ‘arc’ of justice, one minimal, the other expansive (Gilabert, 2018: chap. 11). This ambitious task is one which no other theorist has comprehensively and convincingly performed.

A second kind of Naturalistic approach claims that dignity is a relational and immutable status (Bird, 2021: 60–64). The idea here is that certain social relations and moral norms presuppose that we have a particular non-contingent status – that of dignity – which implies that others must respect us and our authority as an agent (Darwall, 2006). This status cannot be altered or taken away, only violated insofar as someone fails to respect a dignity-bearer's rights and their authority as a member of the moral community that ‘they jointly constitute with all other agents’ (Bird, 2021: 62). This conception of dignity might rely on some claim about the inner worth of individuals, but it need not (Zylberman, 2018). Finally, note that while Sangiovanni (2017) purports to reject dignity, his view ends up appearing strikingly similar to a version of this second conception, championed by Darwall (2006). This is because, according to Sangiovanni, we ought to relate to one another as moral equals because of the wrongness of treating one another as inferiors (Sangiovanni, 2017: 73–75). The norm this identifies is immutable since the demand to treat you as an equal obtains because you have certain capacities to develop and maintain an integral sense of self. In other words, no one can make it the case that you ought not to be treated as an equal, they can only fail to relate to you as such. However, what's unique about Sangiovanni's approach is this focus on the wrong of inferiorisation.

The third and fourth approaches are the ‘Conventionalist’ views of dignity. ⁴ They diverge from Naturalistic accounts insofar as they perceive dignity to be ‘vulnerable’ to change (Bird, 2021: 52), and urge us to consider the interpretative aspects of dignity – the ways in which the concept can be put to use in practice.

1. Some Conventionalist accounts of dignity perceive dignity to be a status of personal self-respect, or self-esteem. Dignity is mutable, but a non-relational (inherent) property of the bearer on this view, because it consists in how you comport yourself (Bird, 2021: 52–56). This definition roughly coheres with how Killmister understands ‘personal dignity’, which individuals possess when they accord with certain internal norms, such as holding themselves in high esteem (Killmister, 2020: 24–25). Killmister's view is more expansive than previous accounts of this sort, which focus specifically on self-control (e.g., Meyer, 1989). Typical examples of how personal dignity can be undermined include the indignity of torture or hospitalisation, where victims experience degradation, shame, or disgrace against their own standards (Killmister, 2020: 41).

2. The final understanding also sees dignity as a mutable status, but rather than being an inherent property it is relational (Bird, 2021: 64–66) and historically situated. Examples include norms of honour, reputation, or social esteem. These norms are historical and unfixed; as Rorty (1989: chaps. 2 and 3) has argued, humans are conditioned to adopt them through their relationship with the community they are a part of. While this view consists of the most ambiguity and complexity (especially as Bird, 2021: chaps. 13–15 develops it), Killmister's (2020: chap. 1) book helps to clarify it by breaking it down into two further parts which I will call appraisal dignity and recognition dignity. ⁵ While this conception of dignity is not new, it has received revitalised attention in contemporary political theory.

3. Recognition dignity should be distinguished from appraisal dignity with reference to the reason for which a certain dignitarian norm is generated. We might appraise others for their achievements (gaining a high salary, or struggling against domination), but we can also grant them a form of respect associated with merely recognising their status within a community, too (Killmister, 2020: 32–35). Violations of this form of dignity ‘call our standing within the relevant group into question’ (e.g., imagine if someone deliberately fails to bend the knee in the presence of royalty) (Killmister, 2020: 34), while in contrast violations of appraisal dignity involve lowering someone's reputation, honour, or social esteem in the eyes of others (Killmister, 2020: 50). This conception of dignity draws on the aristocratic notion of ‘dignitas’. For instance, a Queen might have recognition dignity simply in virtue of her ranked status as royalty within a particular state. However, unlike aristocratic conceptions, many contemporary understandings of recognition dignity extend the ‘high rank’ of dignity to all humans, not just nobles. This approach to ‘human’ dignity was first articulated by Waldron (2012). In her new book, Killmister (2020: chap. 5) offers a similar view, which she argues provides a more robust defence of the claim that recognition dignity should be extended to humans: we should all be able to stand tall as equals in dignity, as if we were nobles, but simply in virtue of our status as members of the community of humanity. That is to say: no one must achieve anything to receive recognition dignity – they simply have it in virtue of their membership within the human community (Killmister, 2020: 34). In developing a similar view, Bird (2021: chaps 13–15) argues that contemporary conceptions of ‘human dignity’ are no less dependent on a particular community than historical, aristocratic conceptions – but they are a special case of a global community developing a shared norm regarding dignity.

Most theorists are at least implicitly aware that none of these views are mutually exclusive from one another. Nonetheless, contemporary proponents of dignity are much like their predecessors: Naturalistic theories (understandings one and two) tend to ignore social conventions in favour of Naturalistic, deontic norms, while Conventionalists (understandings three and four) argue that social norms should take centre stage.

The normative role of dignity

I argue that both Naturalistic and Conventionalist positions have something to add to our understanding of dignity, and by extension, our understanding of social justice. However, both positions also face unique challenges. The reason for this is that they put dignity to use in entirely different but mutually compatible ways, and nowhere is this borne out more explicitly than in the debate over what normative role dignity should play. I suggest below that there is a sizeable gap for a hybrid conception of dignity that is consistent with both Naturalism and Conventionalism, one which would help each approach to address the challenges that the other faces. ⁶ In other words, it is possible (in principle) to develop an account of dignity that partially incorporates all four perspectives, because they ask and answer different questions.

To see this, it is useful to start by looking at the diverging ways in which each view understands the normative role of dignity. For Naturalism, dignity is the fundamental basis of particular rights (Gilabert 2018), and even maximal entitlements of social justice (Gilabert, 2023a). In his latest book, Gilabert's main original contribution is to argue that dignity provides a unique normative imperative to avoid exploitation (chap. 5), alienation (chap. 6) and domination (chap. 7). Gilabert convincingly argues that moral norms concerning social justice relate to the capacities that give rise to our dignity in the first place (sentience, self-awareness, reasoning, etc.). This is because the Naturalistic basis of dignity forms a bridge between ‘the capacities that give rise to dignity’ and the ‘deontic status of being owed (reasonable and feasible) support’ in exercising, developing and retaining those self-same capacities (Gilabert, 2023a: 20–21). For instance, consider work. Work is valuable because of the benefits it can bring to our lives, benefits that are hard to achieve outside work (such as creativity, cooperation, and contribution to others’ well-being) (Gilabert, 2023a, 289). But workers are often dominated by the spheres of production, exchange, and political process. On the dignitarian approach we can make sense of this complex issue by straightforwardly referring to the ways in which domination undermines our valuable capacities (those which ground dignity in the first place). Respecting dignity in this way not only generates negative duties, such as avoiding domination where it blocks workers’ capacities to self-determine, but it also generates positive duties to promote their capacities, for instance by promoting social policies that give workers ‘agential power to live flourishing lives’ (Gilabert, 2023a: 288).

In contrast, Conventionalists premise their view on a rejection of Naturalism. Because of this, they often assume normative principles of social justice based on those principles’ internal coherence with a particular social convention. For instance, a Conventionalist might hold that we all have an equal dignity simply because social convention says this is a morally desirable principle in western democracies. This coherence is ‘internal’ insofar as Conventionalism about dignity aims to directly disavow the empirical characteristics of individuals and focuses exclusively on norms that already exist in social practices (Bird, 2021: 223–224). For example, take human rights, and the social practices that embody it (e.g., activism and legal frameworks). According to these conventions, ‘human dignity’ is justified with reference to the role it plays in justifying human rights as protections for all ‘humans’, taken as members of the human community and conferred on us by that community (where ‘Humanness’ is not a natural/biological category, but a social one) (Killmister, 2020: 138; Phillips 2015). In adopting this route, Conventionalists turn our attention away from questions about the grounds of deontic norms and onto questions about the role dignitarian social norms have in normative considerations. This allows Conventionalists to account for cases the Naturalistic view cannot, for instance, the intuition that someone's dignity might be violated after death through violating what I called their ‘recognition’ dignity, a dignity that might obtain even when a person is not living (Killmister, 2020: 56–57). Thus, Conventionalists aim to work out what kinds of social relations generate a particular social or personal status, or otherwise undermine it, and so what moral reasons we have to adopt one kind of social relation as opposed to another. Killmister's account is particularly original and well developed in this respect – she not only argues that we can violate someone's dignity, but she also claims that dignity can be ‘frustrated’ and ‘destroyed’ by how we act towards one another (Killmister, 2020: chap. 2). For instance, while sexism might not violate a woman's dignity, it might frustrate her dignity if it discourages or prevents her from adopting the same social roles men do (Killmister, 2020: 62). Similarly, some ways of relating to others do not simply violate their dignity but destroy it entirely. Torture is the paradigm case here, where the victim might feel ‘reduced to mere meat’ and thus lose sight of themselves ‘as a self’ (Killmister, 2020: 63).

These differences mean that each position faces unique challenges. As Sangiovanni (2017: chap. 1) explains, a Naturalistic account of dignity must do two things:

(1) explain in virtue of what we have dignity, and

(2) explain why we are equals in possessing dignity.

The lure of Naturalism rests in its claim to achieve these two desiderata, and thus provide us with a secure explanation for why we ought to be treated in particular ways. However, Sangiovanni argues that no Naturalistic theory has in fact succeeded in accounting for (1) and (2), because there is an explanatory gap between the possession of some valuable capacities (which individuals have to different degrees) and the possession of an equal inherent value that dignity is thought to identify. Therefore, Sangiovanni concludes that we should reject dignity – as it is understood according to the first form of Naturalism – entirely, and adopt an alternative route (which, as I explained above, looks suspiciously similar to the second understanding of dignity). Many others share Sangiovanni's scepticism, including Killmister (2020: 16–20) and Bird (2021: chaps. 5 and 6).

It is worth noting that this challenge is also one that is faced by accounts of moral equality and of human rights more generally. ⁷ This is known as the ‘variations objection’ (Arneson, 1999): put simply, not everyone possesses the same degree of a particular capacity that might ground moral equality, human rights, or dignity, so it might appear that they do not therefore possess the same dignity and human rights, or are not one another's equals. If, for instance, dignity is based solely on the capacity for rational agency, then this might put certain vulnerable humans who have less developed capacities for rational agency at risk, including infants and the profoundly cognitively disabled. At worst, it would follow that humans that lack this capacity also therefore (objectionably) lack dignity/human rights, or at best humans that have a less developed version of rational agency would have an inferior dignity/would not be moral equals with other humans. Because of this, Naturalism has also been critiqued on the grounds that it would engender an exclusionary form of ‘trait racism’ (Bird, 2021: 70). So, as well as the above two desiderata, it seems that dignitarian theorists must also complete a third task:

(3) develop a view that is sufficiently and/or equally inclusive.

The challenge facing a Naturalistic theory of dignity is to achieve all three desiderata simultaneously. Recent work convincingly argues that orthodox forms of Naturalism fail to do so – and it is not clear that Gilabert's Naturalism adequately does either (though he argues it has the resources to do so (Gilabert, 2023b)). This has given way to the contemporary Conventionalist accounts of dignity I described above – as well as Conventionalism about human rights and moral equality too (Phillips, 2015; 2022).

Nonetheless, no one has (yet) shown that a Naturalistic account cannot plausibly explain (1) – (3), they have simply demonstrated that orthodox accounts have (so far) failed to do so. What's more, Naturalism must be assessed in comparison with Conventionalist alternatives, and it is not obvious that these alternatives can stand on their own.

The worry is that Conventionalist attempts to do away with Naturalism about dignity might need to rely on Naturalism about dignity. Imagine that ‘human’ dignity is based purely on social conventions: you have dignity in virtue of your membership in the community of humanity. The problem for an account endorsing this approach is that it cannot tell us why we should adopt this view in the first place, at least not without ‘invoking the kinds of considerations that the [Naturalistic] dignitarian approaches themselves focus on’ (Gilabert, 2023a: 73). For instance, Bird argues that to respect others’ dignity we must value them and their lives ‘for their own sakes’ through ‘the affective mode of respect’ (Bird, 2021: 228–229). However, Bird cannot provide us a reason for why we should take up this ‘mode’ in the first place. He claims that a respectful attitude towards a person ‘presupposes’ the worth of the person being respected and in doing so ‘reflects something of the targets’ value’ (Bird, 2021: 229). Yet presupposing the value of someone raises questions about where that value resides, absent the social relations that are thought to constitute dignity. Focusing solely on social status is therefore inadequate for two reasons.

First, it fails to answer a deeper question about why social statuses are so important in the first place. Answering that question means referring to our natural capacities to experience or be affected by some state of affairs. But referring to our capacities to explain the moral importance of social status means relying on Naturalism. This point also follows if we attempt to give up on dignity entirely. For Sangiovanni, as we have seen, the wrongness of treating someone as an inferior can be explained by the fact that they have a capacity for an integral sense of self, supposedly without any reference to dignity. However, if this follows, then Sangiovanni appears to implicitly rely on a form of Naturalism since the wrongness of inferiorisation is explained by a failure ‘to respond appropriately to people's capacity to develop and maintain an integral sense of self’ (Gilabert, 2023a: 73–74).

Second, a being's life is valuable beyond the social statuses within which they live it. Consider pigs. Pigs have subordinate social statuses in human societies; they are used as resources. This practice is embedded in a history of relating to pigs in this way, much like Bird describes dignity as a historical precedent of relating to one another as having value for our own sakes (Bird, 2021: 214–219). But, whether or not we call it dignity, it seems plausible to say that pigs have a worth that is independent of how we relate to them – and indeed, helps to explain why it is wrong to relate to them in particular ways. In other words, if we avoid asking the questions that (1) to (3) raise then at some point those questions will arise, because we must refer to a being's capacities to explain why it is wrong to treat them in particular ways that undermine their interests in the first place, or to explain why they are valuable independent of social relations.

This disagreement is morally and politically important for a range of reasons. Consider the question of the scope of dignity raised by desiderata (3), for example. Both Naturalistic and Conventionalists accounts tend to hold that dignity is possessed by humans alone. However, this problematically excludes nonhuman animals, notwithstanding the exclusion of some humans it might also imply on Naturalism. In response to this kind of critique, Conventionalists tend to dig in their heels (Killmister, for instance, devotes a chapter of her book to defending ‘human’ dignity (chap. 5)), but Naturalists are beginning to consider the proposal that dignity might extend to nonhumans, a claim so far defended only on the fringes of political and moral theory. ⁸ Gilabert (2023a) indicates his support for a more inclusive view of dignity, which he develops in a recent paper (Gilabert, 2023b). ⁹ However, what direction the scope question takes will be partly determined by our approach to justification because of the role that coherence plays in each view. The advantage of Naturalism is that the natural property alone coherently determines who has dignity: those beings who possess the relevant capacities. In contrast, Conventionalism is likely to generate a much more ‘interactive’ response (Killmister, 2020: 145). As Killmister (2020: 139) clarifies, nonhumans could in principle be welcomed into the community of ‘humanity’ if social conventions change so as to include some nonhuman animals (such as chimpanzees). The problem is that this makes the status of both humans and nonhumans contingent on our societal norms about social dignity.

I suspect that the solution to this standoff between Conventionalism and Naturalism lies in combining both perspectives, precisely because they each bring different things to the table. A hybrid view would allow us to ground dignity in natural properties as Gilabert suggests, but it would also be sensitive to social conventions in the way that Bird and Killmister indicate. This would help each view to overcome the disadvantages in the other. For instance, Gilabert's account fails to adequately consider the interpretative aspect and social function of dignity in contemporary society – that is, the way in which dignity functions as a tool for ‘political criticism’ only if it is understood to be fragile in the Conventionalist sense (Bird, 2021: 114–119). Conventionalists address this by telling us that if some action undermines someone's dignity, then it is ‘serious enough to trigger political concern’ (Bird, 2021: 247). Killmister's (2020) account helps to develop this idea: a Conventionalist view of dignity can help us to make sense of the role of shame (chap. 3) and social recognition (chap. 4). Yet, the trouble with Conventionalist accounts is that they lack a clear conception of dignity. They are far less precise than Naturalistic views about what normative principles follow from dignity, and, as I explained above, those principles lack a secure normative footing. Bird (2021: 249–251) contends that this is unproblematic because it speaks to the importance of interpreting the social senses of dignity. However, even if it is true that interpretation is important, the problem remains because ‘conventional norms bind only—and at best—those who are participants of the convention’ (Zylberman, 2018: 744), which is why we require a positive conception of dignity grounded in Naturalistic norms. In other words, the danger of pure Conventionalism can be avoided if complemented with a Naturalistic account.

Dignity continues to be a central concept in political and moral philosophy. Despite the challenges it faces, it is surprising how fruitful recent literature is in further developing an already saturated debate. This demonstrates just how relevant and productive a dignitarian return can be for normative questions about social justice – but to gain further ground, diverging perspectives on dignity's normative role must be synthesised.