On Dignity

1
On Dignity
Introduction
The question of dignity has arisen in much of the contemporary
political debate, with leaders from all sides of the political spectrum
contributing to the movement. These thinkers range from giants like John
Rawls, whose thoughts have structured especially the American political
debate since his monumental piece A Theory of Justice was first published, to
thinkers like Jurgen Habermas, whose thoughts stem back to critical theory
and The Frankfurt School in Germany. The impetus of the thoughts
presented here is to demonstrate not only that the legacy of human dignity
research has taken hold, but also to give the reader a better understanding
of what exactly this debate entails. To do this I will draw on some of the
contemporary research in the field to articulate both what dignity entails, but
also to differentiate the ways in which various thinkers interpret it across the
political spectrum. I will then step back and analyze dignity as a structural
phenomenon capable of being studied as a structural phenomenon, with the
intention of further analyzing the extent to which dignity is structural vs.
non-structural. The guiding assumption of this paper is that dignity can be
studied as a structural phenomenon, a non-structural phenomenon, and a
partially structural phenomenon because its features are complex and
because it has such a unique relationship with the basic structure. Also
assumed here is that dignity is a paradigmatic concept and that no one
unitary theory of dignity will ever encompass the spectrum of possibilities at
2
stake in the concept. The result of this is that dignity is best articulated
paradigmatically, studied paradigmatically and inter-paradigmatically, and
assessed in terms of the efficacy of its contextual deployment.
Yet before we sprint into an analysis of the term, let us first come to
some understanding of what exactly one means when using the term
dignity1? More specifically, and of central importance to the thoughts
presented here, what does one mean when using the term dignity in a
political context? Colloquially, we speak of dignity as a way of addressing
another in a context whereby we show that person either a formal or an
informal respect, and in so doing, recognize their status as a person with
intrinsic and inviolable worth. For example, an individual may maintain the
dignity of an individual or a household by not walking into a home and
robbing that person of his property or slandering the name the head of the
household. Dignity may also be understood colloquially as not violating an
individuals autonomy as an agent capable of autonomous action. An
instance of this form of dignity may arise when an individual recognizes and
respects another persons desire to cease with an activity, as might be the
case in either market exchanges or sexual relations. Dignity can also be
The Oxford English Dictionary defines dignity as a) The quality or state of

being worthy of esteem or respect, and b) [having] inherent nobility and
worth. (OED online). The Royal College of Nursing defines dignity as
concerned with how people feel, think and behave in relation to the worth
or value of themselves and others. To treat someone with dignity is to treat
them as being of worth, in a way that is respectful of them as valued
individuals.
3
studied as a purely subjective phenomenon2, that dignity in cases such as
this arises from meaning that is given in context, non-theoretically, and that
can be directly intuited in experience. Dignity thereby becomes a kind of
subjective experience an agent has in virtue of participating in a context in a
particular kind of way.
Although interesting, and of immediate relevance to the debate
concerning the what, or the de re, of dignity as it relates to everyday life,
dignity as it is structured in a political context must have a far more
determinate articulation to carry the motive force of a normative constraint
in either treatises or moral considerations. The phenomenology of dignity
research has motive force insofar as it has the ability to identify the
subjective implications of the more formal political and legal aspects of
dignity research that provides the groundwork for structuring policy. Yet, it is
still of central importance as a means of qualifying the efficacy of the formal
policy measures put in place from the perspective of the infinitely valuable
person for which the measures were designed to protect.
The question of how to articulate the de re of dignity is as much as
question of how we approach the concept as it is about the concept itself.
The method of articulating a particular concept of dignity by analyzing a
unitary theory that encompasses all forms of dignity is questionable, though,
for a number of reasons. First, as Doron Shultrziner argues in his paper
2
See Atterton, Peter, Dignity and the Other: Dignity and the
Phenomenological Tradition. (2014-04-30). The Cambridge Handbook of
Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (p. 276). Cambridge University
Press. Kindle Edition.
4
titled, Human Dignity: Functions and Meanings, the linguistic function of
the concept of dignity operates in a number of seminal documents,
documents such as the Charter of the United Nations3, Universal Declaration
of Human Rights4, and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of
Man5, among others, but it lacks a fixed content,6 which means that term has
motive force but refers to nothing substantial and non-transient. The what
of what the term is denoting is diffuse and fleeting, meaning, what qualifies
as having dignity, showing dignity, or losing dignity is not a fixed idea,
making any attempt at narrowing in on a fixed concept of dignity futile at the
outset. In a similar vein, Ruth Macklin, in her article titled, Dignity is a
Useless Concept has argued that the term dignity has no meaning beyond
what is otherwise the orienting principle of medical ethics, respect for
persons. Respect for persons in a medical setting implies needing to obtain
voluntary consent, ensuring confidentiality, the need to avoid discrimination,
and the need to avoid abusive practices. Each of these domains of inquiry
can be studied in isolation from each other, but as separate fields of inquiry,
complete with their own subject matter and referents, adding the term
Reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the
human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large
and small.
4
Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights
of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and
peace in the world.
5
the American peoples have acknowledged the dignity of the individual
and that the essential rights of man are not derived from the fact he is a
national of a certain state, but are based upon attributes of his human
personality.
6
Shultziner, Doron. Human Dignity: Functions and Meanings. P. 4.
5
dignity to the discourse appears to provide nothing substantively valuable,
hence why Macklin claims that the term is useless.7 So why add the term?
To be sure, there are many formulations of the concept of dignity that
attempt to elaborate on a central theme, or paradigm, and in so doing,
establish a third term whose Telos is dignity as a subjective experience. The
gesture of articulating a concept of dignity is an attempt to establish the de
re of dignity such that third terms (legal, moral, psychological, aesthetic) that
use the term in a functional manner have a referent, but also have
satisfaction conditions; meaning, that there is some criteria by which to
gauge whether or not the efficacy of the linguistic performative has
Steven Pinker also articulates his frustration with the term dignity in his
paper entitled, The Stupidity of Dignity: Conservative Bioethics Latest, Most
Dangerous Ploy. In it, he follows Macklin in protesting the meaninglessness
of the term on the grounds that the term is relative, which means that the
meanings of the term vary with the time, place, and beholder of the term;
the term is fungible, which means that other more appropriate terms can
replace the term dignity and do so in a way that captures the essence of
the paradigm being articulated more acutely; and that the term is harmful in
certain contexts, citing as justification of this various political repression
campaigns that cite the dignity of the state, the leader, or the creed, most
notably in the Salman Rushdie fatwa, the Danish cartoon riots, and a case in
which a British schoolteacher in Sudan who face flogging and a lynch mob for
a classroom trope that was enacted for the learning delight of the students.
Yet he does concede that the term carries a certain allure for our general
sensibilities in that people generally would like their dignity to be
maintained, and they typically will cite mundane cases in which it was
violated as justification for this (bursting in during a private moment,
stomping on ones toes, etc.). Secondly, he cautions that eliminating the
term might harden our hearts and cause us to mistreat other people. For
example, if the term dignity is reliably equipped to prevent mass humiliation
as was the case for Jewish citizens during the Holocaust it might maintain
a certain utility as a cultural artifice to prevent further societal ills. Yet the
thrust of Pinkers argument is essentially pragmatic, and that given a
different context, with a different set of signs operating within a different
linguistic field, the term may well be disposed of as semantic romanticism.
6
materialized, and that that criteria is grounded in facts about the world. If
one or all of these paradigms of dignity lack a referent, and as such, lack
satisfaction conditions that determine whether or not the linguistic
performative has materialized as a fact about the world, then the concept of
dignity is in fact meaningless. So why construct a positive paradigm? It is
clear that there are a number of positive paradigms of dignity that exist,
many of which will be analyzed in what follows. Consider as an example
dignity as inclusion within a basic structure8, respect for autonomy9, having
ones basic needs met10, equality of opportunity11, due process in criminal
proceedings12, the right to speak in ones defense13, equality of recognition14,
morality in healthcare practices15, dignity in dying16, etc. In each case, the
articulation of a paradigm is a conceptual construct whose Telos is dignity by
some mechanism. By beginning with a pre-existing construct thinkers
reserve for themselves principles of orientation that can be applied to a
See Pakuluk, Michael. The Dignity of the Human Person in the Philosophy
of John Rawls.
9
See Lysaught, Therese. Respect: Or, How Respect for Persons Became
Respect for Autonomy.
10
See Howard, Rhoda. The Full-Belly Thesis: Should Economic Rights Take
Priority Over Civil and Political Rights? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa.
11
Joseph, Lawrence. Some Ways of Thinking About Equality of Opportunity.
12
Scanlon, Thomas. Due Process.
13
See Young Kim, Janine. The Rhetoric of Self-Defense.
14
See Taylor, Charles. The Politics of Recognition in Multiculturalism:
Exploring the Politics of Recognition.
15
See Gallagher, A. Dignity and Respect for dignity-two key health
professional values: implications for nursing practice.
16
Chochinov, H.M. et. al., Dignity in the Terminally Ill: A Developing
Empirical Model.
7
situation that act as a kind of cognitive road map with a starting point, sites
to see along the way, and a destination.
The problem with constructing a paradigm of dignity and then applying
it to a situation is that how a situation is approached is constrained by the
paradigmatic gaze with which the thinker approaches it. Because there is a
prior paradigm, there also exists a set of predispositions manifested in
normativity or bias that cause the situation to be viewed one way versus
another, often to the effect that certain features of the scene are highlighted
and others are ignored; typically for a positive-paradigm thinker this
translates into applying a set of principles to a situation, principles which
have been established by the positive paradigm as reliably capable of
producing dignity. Consider as an example the case of the right to speak
freely.17 Within such a paradigm, dignity is simply a question of was the
defendant given the right to speak in a given situation? If so, ceterus
paribus, the satisfaction conditions of the paradigm were met, which means
dignity for the accused should be the result.
Yet what is the greatest strength of the positive-paradigm thinker,
however, is also his greatest weakness; by outlining the conditions of the
17
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen mentions freedom
of speech in Article 11 where it states: The free communication of ideas and
opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may,
accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for
such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law. Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads: Everyone has the right to
freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information
and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
8
possibility of dignity according to a third term whose Telos is dignity, the
paradigm delimits the appropriateness of the application to the orienting
principles derived prior to applying them to the situation, which means that
the paradigm determines the subject matter even though it is applied to a
situation more generally and it determines the appropriateness of the
principles applied. While this approach is certainly of value, and certainly
required in many procedural settings, like the court of law, for example, it
gives the impression that necessarily dignity is the result of applying a
unitary theory in a setting with certain transcendent conditions. But
considering Shultziners claim that the linguistic performative lacks a
referent within its linguistic field, the very gesture of articulating a third term
whose Telos is dignity is of questionable value because the referent of the
Telos is transient, which further means that value of positive-paradigm
dignity thinking is the reliability of the mechanism of producing the
experience of dignity within a non-determinate, paradigm-specific field.
There is another approach to dignity that begins with what Paula
Kaufmann, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhauser, and Elaine Webster call the
Negative Approach to dignity in their work titled, Humiliation, Degradation,
Dehumanization: Human Dignity Violated. The so-called negative
approach to dignity begins from the assumption that the most appropriate
way to approach the concept of dignity is to begin with an act or a practice
that is often characterized as a violation of human dignity rather than
constructing a dignity-paradigm, deducing moral principles from that
9
paradigm, and then applying them to a situation deemed appropriate.18 This
view presupposes that one can learn more about dignity violations from
investigating instances of these violations, and investigating what these
violations mean to situated, embodied subjects, than one can from
articulating a dignity-paradigm and operating within the confines of the
principles it stipulates. The practices that are cited here as being indicative
of practices commonly associated with the collapse of dignity are
humiliation, degradation, and dehumanization. Kaufmann and the rest of the
thinkers in this volume arrived at a negative dignity approach after
encountering the pitfalls of the standard paradigm-based normativity
approach, grounded in the work of Kant19, the religious tradition, and various
ancient sources of the concept of dignity as a social virtue.20 For the time
this writing will focus on the theme of dignity from a positive-paradigm
approach with the intent analyzing how these third terms produce the
subjective experience of dignity, but let us not forget the insights generated
from the negative approach as well as the various fissures in the positiveparadigm approach are made apparent.
Dignity as a Positive-Paradigm
18
P. Kaufmann et al., Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization: Human

Dignity Violated. P. 2
19
See Pfordten, Dietmar Von Der. On the Dignity of Man in Kant.
20
See P. Kaufmann et al., Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization: Human
Dignity Violated. P. 2, Goodwin, Jean. Ciceros Authority, and Cancik,
Hubert, Dignity of Man and Persona in Stoic Anthropology: Some Remarks
on Cicero, De Officiis I 105-107 for a more detailed analysis of this position.
10
In his article The Dignity of the Human Person in the Philosophy of
John Rawls, Michael Pakuluk helps the reader identify the ways in which John
Rawls incorporates the concept of dignity into his late research. The logic of
A Theory of Justice, John Rawls magnum opus on how to justify inequalities
in the distribution of scarce resources by applying the results of a decision
procedure that isolates an individuals capacity to act as a selfish agent and
then compels them to create a social structure from behind this so-called
veil of ignorance,21 is to generate a basic structure that reflects societys
desire to act from a position of equality, or to be more specific, to create
formal and procedural conditions of justice that reflect our most deeplyseated notions of equality, themselves reducible man, the sole guarantor of
these forms. The goal of this original position,22 and the principles of
justice that ensue from this grand intuition pump, is to ensure a stable, wellordered society that is to the mutual advantage of those taking part in it.23
From the original position Rawls developed the groundwork for (2) principles
of justice that he claims would arise for any agent so situated behind this veil
of ignorance:
21
The goal of the so-called veil of ignorance according to Rawls is: to

nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and
tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own
advantage. (118/I.24)
22
See Rawls, J. Theory of Justice. Sect. I.4.
23
Rawls claims: Now let us say that a society is well-ordered when it is not
only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also
effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. Theory of Justice. P.4.
11
1) Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate
scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the
same scheme of liberties for all; and
2) Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first,
they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under
conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to
the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the
difference principle).24
Rawls principles of justice may rightly be interpreted as Kantian in nature
due to the primacy of equal liberty that arises as a consequence of the veil of
ignorance.25 According to Kant, moral principles are the object of the rational
choices of free men and women, and as political, are specifically principles of
justice that express the nature of persons as free and equal before law. But
because the goal of Kant is to develop a kingdom of ends where no person is
treated purely as a means to an end for another person which entails
applying these formal constraints to all rational subjects equally the
kingdom of ends is therefore originally intended to be acceptable to all and
public. The original position accounts for both of these conditions as a
thought experiment that necessitates, for all rational actors behind the veil
of ignorance, principles that all would agree to if they were to choose the
conditions of justice after being stripped or their ability to act selfishly.
Stripping an individual of his or her ability to create the conditions of justice
24
25
Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, p. 42.

Theory of Justice, Ch. 4, sect 40.
12
selfishly mirrors Kants concept of the kingdom of ends in that the selfish
individual often uses the Other in disproportionately disadvantageous ways
to ensure the products of their own will is carried out, thereby neglecting the
Others status as a person with inviolable worth by relegating them to a mere
thing, valuable but only so derivatively as means to the production of the
selfish persons ends; or to be more specific, creating the conditions of
justice from behind a veil of ignorance in which each person is responsible
for creating the basic structure of society after being stripped of their ability
to be selfish creates formal and procedural constraints on each individual
subjective maxim, or constraints on that being responsible for the production
of forms under which he and his fellow man will expected to dwell if, as
rational actors, their goal is the production of a basic structure that respects
each individuals capacity to create and to carry out their own conception of
the good life.
Furthermore the original position is Kantian in the sense that, for Kant,
autonomous action is action that is chosen by an agent as the most
adequate possible expression of our nature as free and equal rational
beings,26 which implies that no other considerations, such as race, gender,
26
Concerning how the Original Position creates the conditions of equality for
rational actors deliberating on the basic structure, Rawls claims: Obviously
the purpose of these conditions [the conditions of the Original Position] is to
represent equality between human beings as moral persons, as creatures
having a conception of their good and capable of a sense of justice. (I.4/17)
The basis of equality that Rawls Original Position projects contains the
following elements: a) equal material condition from which to deliberate on
the basic structure, which include ignorance of race, gender, and social
standing, and b) equal consideration of persons conception of the Good, in
that conceptions of the Good life are not ranked in value and thereby given
13
social position, natural endowment, etc., will play a part in the deliberation.
Because the veil of ignorance strips the agent of their understanding of
where they fall in the post-veil-of-ignorance-lottery, it conditions rational
agents to develop principles of justice that do not take into consideration the
natural discrepancies that exist materially. In this sense, the original position
and the veil of ignorance are Kantian in that they prevent the agent from
acting heteronomously, and instead force agents to choose principles of
justice as rational actors, thereby giving expression to their nature as free
and equal beings. Finally, Rawls articulation of the principles of justice are
Kantian because they are developed as categorical principles rather than
hypothetical principles, meaning, the principles themselves operate
categorically irrespective of other conditions rather than as means to
produce some further consequence. In other words, punishments are meted
out to individuals who have violated the constraints of the basic structure, a
structure which was designed by rational actors capable of carrying out their
preferential treatment by the formal and procedural constraints produced by

the original position of equality. Liberty, as a condition of the possibility of
carrying out ones own conception of the Good, is derived from the initial
conditions of equality that the Original Position presupposes, making it
contingent and derivative. Equality in Rawls paradigm, then, can be thought
of as either fundamental or derivative: it is fundamental in the sense that the
Original Position the key intuition that produces the considerations of
justice that follow is a thought experiment that has the intention of
producing the conditions of equality of each member deliberating on the
basic structure. In this sense it is essential to the paradigm of justice
presented. Equality is derivative of the Original Position in the sense that
after being compelled to create a basic structure from initial conditions of
equality, equal procedural conditions ensue, which means that procedural
conditions are to be applied to persons equally and that each persons
conception of the good is given equal treatment.
14
own conception of the good life alongside other rational actors capable of
carrying out their own version of the good life; justification for punishment
does not result from an appeal to the consequences produced but rather the
formal conditions violated.27 Likewise, the structure itself, and the principles
of justice produced by rational actors stripped of their ability to act selfishly,
is justified as a structure that reflects the intrinsic worth of each individual
participating in its design, not a means of creating some end at the disposal
of an individual or a group.28
27
In his article, Why Punish the Guilty? Towards a Philosophical Analysis of

the States Justification of Punishment, Cyril McDonnell argues that there is
one possible justification for punishment and that is that the offender who is
being punished has in fact committed a crime for which he is to be punished.
While some argue from the Utilitarian position that punishment can be
justified on the grounds that it is preventative or that it reforms the
criminal, neither of these are justifications, and in fact leave open the
contingent possibility that innocents will be punished in the service of
preventative action and that disproportionate punishments might be inflicted
during the reformation period, causing onlookers to wonder whether the
punishment might be cruel and unusual (as in the case say of chopping ones
hand off when one steals an apple). The only possible justification for the act
of punishment, as McDonnell argues, is that the offender deserved the
punishment. This view stems from Kant, who stated: Judicial punishment
can never be used merely as a means to promote some good for the criminal
herself or for civil society, but instead it must in all cases be imposed on him
only on the ground that he has committed a crime, for a human being may
never be manipulated merely as a means to the purposes of someone else.
(36) This does not preclude the possibility of punishment having some
positive social value and certainly ought not be rejected in virtue of this
but social value must come at the intersection of desert, punishment, and
the positive value produced if it is to be justified for Kant, McDonnell, and the
rest of the retributivist thinkers.
28
To be fair to Kant, he does consider consequences in his project apart from
merely that which may contingently produce positive moral benefits to
society in the form of effects resulting from justified (or unjustified)
punishment. In his article, Kant on Responsibility for Consequences
Thomas Hill Jr. identifies three different forms of so-called bad results, or
those results that Kant would deem morally injurious: the bad effects of an
act on a) a guilty agent (i.e. an agent that acted knowingly, as the causal
15
Keeping the preceding in mind, Pakuluk details Rawls concept of
dignity as entailing the following:
1) Each person has an intrinsic worth as a human being.
According to this view, humans are different in kind than other entities found
in the natural world, and this difference is not purely a difference in kind, but
also entails a difference in worth. The difference in kind posited refers to the
rational capacities of persons that may or may not exist in non-human
animals. As such, persons are thereby capable of acting as free, rational
actors, a distinction that separates them from the other entities found in the
world. It is because of their rationality, and thereby autonomy, that they are
free, and therefore capable of cooperating in a polis designed to advance the
good of all members. These rational capacities also include the capacity to
know what truth is and to know how this truth is to contribute to their pursuit
of the Good or, more simply, what an individual finds to be good in life.
Importantly according to this view, members of kinds are categorically
members of that kind, which entails that members are not more or less
members, but are so categorically in virtue of qualifying as a rational
animal. This has serious implications especially for policy measures
designed to ensure rights and freedoms to members of the kind protected,
namely, that all members of that kind are to be granted access to the same
set of rights which implies the same set of responsibilities as all other
initiator of the harm, and as someone who could have done otherwise), b)
the bad effects of not doing what is otherwise praiseworthy, and c) the bad
effects of a morally wrong act. According to Kant, only c is morally culpable
and thus justifiably the subject of punishment.
16
members that fall into the same category. In this instance, the kind is
rational animal, which would preclude limiting these rights for marginalized
subjects like women, children, the elderly, and retarded people, but it may
well preclude kinds such as non-human animals or non-sentient beings as
these do not necessarily qualify under the criterion rational animal.
2) Something is due to human beings in virtue of their intrinsic worth.
Because they have rational powers, which thereby grant them autonomy,
humans are of a special kind. Because they belong to this special kind they
have an intrinsic worth that itself is different in kind than other entities found
in the natural world. This intrinsic worth implies that members of the kind
rational animal ought to be treated differently than entities that do not fall
into this category. It is not clear how members of the kind rational animals
are to be treated yet or who it is that does the treating, but what is
imperative here is that this special treatment is due. Due to the fact that
this intrinsic worth is granted on behalf of a persons rational capacities, and
that these rational capacities are equal for all members of the kind, the only
appropriate treatment is equality and reciprocity.
3) Human beings have an origin and a goal that is somehow divine.
In an attempt to stay faithful to the tradition, Pakuluk cites a number of
thinkers that have incorporated divine causation as being responsible for not
only the origin of the human being but also of their teleological pursuit as
well. Christianity, for example, states that the human is made in the image
of God and is therefore, in some sense, like God himself. Similarly for the
17
Greeks, they are theion, or godlike, and can achieve happiness only be
becoming divinized. More recently, Locke states that human beings are the
worksmanship of God and can only be understood as bearing his
resemblance indirectly.
Above is the standard conception of dignity as it is commonly
understood in the tradition. All other components of the concept are
relevant insofar as they elaborate on these central themes. Politically
speaking, however, the concept is still obscure insofar as its normative
features have yet to have been clearly articulated. The central question
looms: how does a robust definition of dignity contribute to the project of
political liberalism? How do the normative features latent in a rights regime
denote a tendency to take heed of (or ignore) this concept? How do these
features contribute to or detract from the reified phenomenological account
of dignity that is contextual, non-theoretical, and intuited in experience?
To understand what is political and when something is to be considered
political, it is important to subject it to a test of public acceptance. The word
political comes from the Greek politikos, from the word polites, or citizen,
which stems ultimately from polis, or city.29 The operant idea in a political
concept is that a citizen of a city proposes an idea that is subject to public
interpretation, and then either accepted or rejected. Once accepted, the
idea then materializes into a basic fact about the polis, and thereby carries a
determinate motive force over the population of the area. Basic human
29
New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd Ed.)
18
rights are a simple example of how an idea can be proposed, accepted, and
then materialized as a fact about a location. For example, if I have a
negative right to life, citizens of a given area have a correlative responsibility
not to take it from me. If they do, then they are subject to the censure of the
population if the normative constraint is considered moral or legal
punishment if the proposed idea has taken on the force of law. This view
naturally entails that we accept legal positivism which states that human
rights are not things in themselves in the same way that other material
entities are things (i.e. have determinate ontic properties), but exist as
manifestations of ideals30 supported by the coercive force of law which then
become internalized not only as anthropological norms but impulses
conditioning occurrent behavior.
Politically, however, dignity has quite a different character than it does
conceptually because it must not only heed the constraints of the
conceptual, it must also condition its aspirations to the practically accessible,
and it must have some metric by which to gauge the efficacy of the idea
apart from purely setting up a logical binary and implementing norms based
on that binary; this is where the phenomenological character of dignity holds
sway. We therefore find the necessity of a reflexive reciprocity between the
30
In Of Sweatshops & Subsistence: Habermas on Human Rights David

Ingram claims that Habermas view of human rights begins first as a moral
aspiration and therefore is in essence non-juridical from the outset and
only then takes on the force of law after sufficient collective learning has
occurred and the political will needed to pass these reforms has been
created. Institutional impediments are, according to Habermas via Ingram,
cultural in nature, with the aspiration of course intending to displace these
cultural practices via juridical reforms.
19
political character of the idea which maintains origins in the conceptual
and the phenomenological character which, according to Atterton 31 via
Levinas, maintains evaluative criteria in the Face of the Other. After further
articulating how the conceptual contributes to the political, I will return to
Attertons essay to help the reader further understand how and why
phenomenology is of importance in the discussion.
Politically the concept entails that human beings, again, in virtue of
belonging to the category rational animal, and therefore maintaining an
intrinsic worth, are to be treated differently than other material entities in
the world. And because this difference belongs to human persons singularly,
no metric of utility will justify its transgression if it can be avoided. This
concept provides the foundation for some interpretation of human rights,
which is how it conceptually contributes to the policy debate in a liberal
society. The logical extension of this concept presupposes the following:
Human rights are prior to convention and agreement.
Agreement and convention often direct behavior, but the central
concern with agreement and convention is that only the stipulations of the
agreement without regard to further conditions than those stipulated in the
agreement determine the motive force of the contract. Likewise with
convention, the norms stipulated are often arbitrary and relative to an area
or people, meaning, there is no further normative focus than that which
31
See Atterton, Peter, Dignity and the Other: Dignity and the
Phenomenological Tradition. (2014-04-30). The Cambridge Handbook of
20
already exists as convention. More dangerously, conventions may often
transgress the ideals of dignity cited prior as in the case of involuntary
female circumcision or stoning. With an agreement-based ethics, or
contractarianism as such, it is difficult to necessitate an adherence to
dignity-based norms or policy measures due to the interest-based conditions
that orient and justify the contract itself. In other words, contractarianism,
which stems from Hobbesian political theory, claims that ethics is the result
of an agreement between autonomous individuals operating under the
recognition that mutual cooperation towards a desired end is to the mutual
benefit of those involved. The benefits accrued result from the agreement to
act in accordance with a set of rules organized to maximize the interests of
the persons involved in the contract. Maximizing the interests of those who
agreed to the contract serves a utility function, where utility may outweigh
the individual interests of persons if the utility produced is greater if an
individual is denied the rights guaranteed in the contract. If an individual is
denied the rights stipulated in the contract due to increased utility, then that
individual is thereby denied the basis of dignity, which in so doing
transgresses the conceptual orientation of a dignity-based ethics or policy
measure. To say that human rights are prior to agreement or convention is
to say that irrespective of what agreement is made between two individuals
in order to maximize the interests of the parties involved or what convention
currently demands, human rights will take precedence and displace the
normative implications of either or both of the prior.
21
The Import of Phenomenology

In his paper Dignity & the Other: Dignity and the Phenomenological
Tradition32, Peter Atterton argues that dignity begins from a concrete, nontheoretical, subjective dealing with the world, and that dignity and rights are
attributes that persons cannot fail to have as human persons. These
attributes present themselves in the face-to-face interaction with the Other,
a relation whose most rigorous articulation has been given to us by the work
of Emmanuel Levinas. Phenomenology, which has a rich history dating back
to Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and the rest of the early German idealists, is
guided by the central thought that to understand being we must go back to
the things themselves.33 In his early work, Cartesian Meditations, Husserl
made the Cartesian move which he suggests all thinkers make to cast
aside all that one believes and begin with what one can be certain of and
build from there. Instead of arriving at the rationalist conclusion that
Descartes himself arrived at that the only thing one can be certain of is
thinking itself Husserl arrived at the certainty of vision and perception.
Heidegger in a similar vein arrived at the thought that before we even
understand the things of the world we already in some sense have an
understanding of the world itself, given to Dasein from always already
being-in-the-world. The central thought guiding the early
32
In The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary

Perspectives (2014).
33
Husserl, Edmond. Logical Investigations. P. 168
22
Phenomenologists was to disrupt the overly abstract work of the rationalists
who, by very definition, abstracted away from the difference of the world and
seeped their understanding of it into an impoverished epistemological nullity
by relegating objects of the understanding to their symbolic and linguistic
form. In essence, Phenomenology was responsible for the humanizing of
discourse. It accomplishes this by describing concrete experiences while
bracketing34 all biases given by unconscious impulses, historical
understandings, and cultural contexts.
Hegel, who is often considered the father of the European tradition
gives a phenomenological account of the interaction with the Other in a way
that describes a relationship that is, first of all, prior to any structural or
ideological intervention; the interaction he describes is at the outset a
primordial relation of one consciousness confronting and interacting with
34
According to Husserl, the project of bracketing phenomena of experience

in order to analyze the object as an object, apart from its psychical structural
conditions, is the result of the Kants claim that humans only have access to
phenomena and can never have access to the noumena, or the world as it
exists in itself. The goal of bracketing, then, becomes to isolate the psychical
conditions that construct experience, with the intention of analyzing the
thing apart from its historical, subconscious, or otherwise biased perspective
and with the intention of analyzing the psychical aspects of that which
construct experience; or, according to Husserl, bracketing is the science that
reduces structures to their primes intentions and retreat from the objects
posited in the natural attitude to the multiple modes of their appearance. In
Phenomenology, Husserl claims that this requires two distinct steps: 1) a
systematic epoche of every objectifying position in an experience,
practiced on objects and upon attitudes of the mind. And 2) recognition,
comprehension, and description of the manifold appearances of objects
that are no longer objects in the strict sense of the word but unities of
sense in the Kantian sense. Perhaps as we continue analyzing the project of
dignity-based research, the practice of bracketing might well prove to be
more efficacious than we initially expected.
23
another, each with the intention of becoming self-certain of that which is
most fundamental to consciousness, namely, the self-certainty of the I. If
dignity is given in context, non-theoretically, as that which can be directly
intuited in experience then it exists, either in fundamental human interaction
or derivatively as a byproduct of structural forms. Because Hegels account
of the independence and dependence of self-consciousness is so
fundamental to human interaction for Hegel, no account of dignity is
complete without addressing it, even if only to dismiss it as an antiquated
byproduct of pre-structural forms.
This primordial interaction begins with one essential fact about selfconsciousness, namely, that self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself.
The absolute freedom self-consciousness maintains with regard to itself when
it is by itself is a structural aspiration of self-consciousness more generally.
This absolute freedom with regard to itself is derived from selfconsciousness ability to totalize the contents of experience in such a way
that nothing calls it into question; that everything in experience can be
understood, analyzed, and controlled by a free self-consciousness certain of
itself. Apart from existing in itself and for itself, it also exists in being
acknowledged as a self-consciousness certain of itself. This unity in its
duplication35 has varied meanings and varied phenomenological moments
that construct self-consciousness as self-consciousness certain of itself and
construct self-consciousness as a relation to the Other which it confronts and
35
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Ch. 8, Part A.
24
in some sense requires as a condition of the possibility of itself. Hegels
analysis of the independence and dependence of self-consciousness is a
phenomenological analysis of these moments of confrontation and
constitution that begin with the initial face to face interaction with the Other.
The initial moment of this interaction is a move out of the self-certainty
of self-consciousness and into the consciousness of the Other; it finds itself in
an Other, or to be more specific, in the Others recognition that it is itself a
self-consciousness certain of itself and for itself. As Hegel states, This has
twofold significance: first, it has lost itself, for it finds itself as an other being;
secondly, in doing so it has superseded the other, for it does not see the
other as an essential being, but in the other see its own self. By superseding
the Other, self-consciousness confronts the problem of the Otherness of
itself, namely that as a being that exists in itself and for itself, and free with
regard to itself because of its ability to totalize the contents of experience,
the Other presents the specifically phenomenological problem of one being
that is self-certain of itself confronting another being that is also self-certain
of itself, each existing as self-certain and for the Other, which means that it
finds in the Other both the means to its subsistence as self-certain of itself
and Otherness which is not essential to the self-certainty of itself; this
Otherness calls self-certainty into question as non-totalizability. To become
certain of itself again, self-consciousness must supersede this Otherness in
the self-consciousness that confronts it and in so doing gains for itself the
self-certainty of itself as an essential being. The gift of this supersession for
25
the self-consciousness that is once again certain of itself as an essential
being is a return to itself, back into itself, and by superseding the Other, the
self-consciousness now once again certain of itself becomes equal to itself
and the Other self-consciousness which was superseded becomes a being for
the Other that has superseded it, and thus becomes dependent on the selfconsciousness that has superseded it and thereby gained its independence
as a self-consciousness self-certain of itself and for itself.
This movement is, as Hegel describes, simply the double movement
of the two self-consciousnesses. Each sees the other do the same as it does;
each does itself what it demands of the other, and therefore also does what
it does only in so far as the other does the same,36 with the result being one
consciousness that is dependent and another consciousness that is
independent. Characteristic of this initial exchange is each selfconsciousness recognizing themselves as mutually recognizing one another,
and then a process of supersession, containing distinct moments, with the
end result being one consciousness that is for itself (and thereby
independent) and the other consciousness that is for the Other (and thereby
dependent). At this stage, the struggle of self-consciousness exhibits a kind
of subjective inequality, where each self-consciousness is set against the
other with the need for recognition being the middle term between the two,
but after this process of supersession and struggle towards self-certainty,
one being is only recognized and the other is only recognizing; one being has
36
Ibid. Ch. 8, Part A.
26
achieved for itself the status of being-for-itself, or subject, whereas the other
is relegated to the status of being-for-the-other, or object.
Hegel then famously goes on to detail how this relation of subject and
object, or being-for-itself and being-for-another, dissolves once again into the
being that is for-itself being dependent on the being that is for-the-Other,
which causes the relation to once again transform through a progression of
unique and distinct moments of consciousness. In these succeeding instants
of consciousness, the being that has won its freedom through a struggle of
recognition maintains a relation to the thing mediately through the work of
the being-for-the-Other; it is in this sense that Hegel claims that the being
that is for-itself, qua consciousness, relates negatively to the thing. The
immediate relation of the being-for-itself becomes only, via a mediate
relation with the being-for-the-Other, a sheer negation of the thing,37 or
pure enjoyment of it. In other words, there is no work on the thing the beingfor-itself enjoys; the work is done by the being-for-the-Other who is object for
the subject that is for-itself. It is thus the latters essential nature that he
exist only for himself, and as such he is what Hegel calls sheer negative
power.38 As the progression of self-consciousness develops further it
becomes apparent, through this mediate relation to the thing, qua
consciousness of being-for-itself subjecting the being-for-the-Other to work
the thing such that the being-for-itself may enjoy it as pure enjoyment, that
the initial consciousness of independence has dissolved into a dependence
37
38
Ibid. Ch. 8. Part A.

Ibid. Ch. 8. Part A.
27
on the being-for-the-Other in more than just subjectively constitutively ways;
the being-for-itself becomes unessential consciousness and unessential
action.39
Thus, as the phenomenology of spirit unfolds, we see in it progression
towards freedom and subsequently equality with modes, instances, and
degrees of being-for-itself and of being-for-the-Other, or subjection. The
question of dignity resurfaces here in a very unique form, and its relation to
the structural conditions of its deployment become immediately apparent.
With the aspiration of analyzing this movement of spirit unencumbered by
the ideological predisposition of the prevailing debate, the question of what
dignity actually is is of central concern, especially if we consider its essential
feature to be that it is given in context, non-theoretically, as that which can
be directly intuited in experience. Is it sufficient to say that that being which
becomes object through a struggle of recognition, and as such maintains its
being-for-the-Other, is categorically denied the basis of dignity? 40 Perhaps it
is only so until through work it creates the conditions of the possibility of its
emancipation? Maybe dignity is ensured if upward mobility is ensured, such
that it is contingently possible for the being-for-the-Other to become a beingfor-itself. Likewise, dignity might be guaranteed if equality of opportunity is
guaranteed, such that should one desire one position of the employment of
39
Hegel states: It is in this way, therefore, that consciousness, qua worker

comes to see in the independent being [of the object] its own
independence. (Sect. 195)
40
If one takes this position, a violation of dignity would be tantamount to a
violation of ones autonomy and that all claims to subjective experience of
dignity would be equivalent to claims
28
ones labor versus another this lateral movement is guaranteed as a right.
Perhaps dignity is guaranteed if a certain degree of autonomy is guaranteed;
under this assumption one might find dignity to be the result of an
appropriate work & life balance, such that while one does labor in the service
of anothers enjoyment, one also at the same time is provided the means to
pursue ones own conceptions of the Good. Or, radically, what if dignity is
the result of deciding what dignity is, and that all other accounts of dignity
are simply superfluous gestures of individuals exerting their own stunted willto-power. If we operate under the a priori assumption that what is at stake in
dignity research is ultimately that which can be directly intuited in
experience, none of these conclusions are logically binding. What is logically
binding if we operate under the assumption that dignity is a value we ought
to pursue in its own right rather than as a means to an end is that this
experience of dignity is ensured. The question we will return to at the end of
this essay is whether, to what extent, and under which conditions a structure
is required to ensure the efficacy of dignity-based research.
In line with this trend, Emmanuel Levinas cites the Face of the Other as
holding a special, specifically ethical significance during the face-to-face
interaction. The Face, according to Levinas, is present in its refusal to be
contained,41 and therefore maintains itself as infinitely transcendent42.
The ethical relationship brought on by the face-to-face interaction is not
initially normative in orientation, but again, has a phenomenological
41
42
Totality and Infinity, Section 3, Part B

Ibid.
29
character. Yet the face is not of the totality itself, which means it is not a
species of intentional consciousness, meaning the ethical relationship which
subtends discourse43 is not a species of consciousness whose ray emanates
from the I; it puts the I in question.44 It is immediately apparent that the
ethical relationship brought on by the face-to-face interaction with the Other
is not normative insofar as it does not initially call to action normatively, or to
be more specific, is not a subjective maxim willed for a body of adherents,
but instead prevents one from acting on the Other; the Face presents itself
primordially as a negative imperative thou shalt not kill and only then as
a call to action feed and/or clothe the indigent Other, and it does so
primordially as a singular ethical imperative.
A norm has quite a different character than the ethical relationship
brought on by the Face of the Other. According to Habermas in The Theory
of Communicative Action Vol. II, a norm is the collective regulation of the
choices of participants in interaction who are coordinating their actions via
sanctioned imperatives and the reciprocal satisfaction of interests.45 Norms
generated are socially generalized to every member of the group, which
allows members of the group to expect certain actions from others in
interaction and thereby commits them to acting in certain ways as well. The
normative features of the interaction are derived from the employment of
linguistic signs that, according to Habermas, have identical meanings for all
43
44
45
Emphasis added.
Ibid.
The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. II. P. 37
30
adherents which react upon the organisms structure of drives and modes of
behavior46 causing them to act out the motive features of the linguistic
performative once the organism recognizes both the sign and the function of
the sign. The sign itself, and the intentional consciousness the sign
represents which itself has satisfaction conditions in material facts about
the world, giving moral dictums derived from linguistic performatives a
meaningful, non-arbitrary structure47 - are mode by which rational actors,
capable of free action, construct and constrain the members privy to a
contract by acting upon their biological organism with mechanisms like
punishment or moral censure. In the case of policy measures in a
democratic society, which again, appeal to a situated polis, and actors acting
within that polis by proposing ideas to that polis that are either accepted or
rejected as ideals that can ultimately become a fact about a territory, all
46
Ibid. P. 23
By the term non-arbitrary I mean to denote that signs have satisfaction
conditions in the same way that speech-acts have satisfaction conditions. If I
say to my neighbor, grab me that rake, and instead of a rake he hands me
a shovel, the satisfaction conditions were not adequately met to qualify my
neighbor as having complied with my request for a rake. See John Searles
work Speech Acts and Intentionality in which he identifies the main
characteristics of speech acts and their conditions of satisfaction. There is,
he claims, a relationship between intentional states of the mind and the
object or state of affairs that the speech act is directed towards. Intentional
states are always consciousness-of objects or states of affairs in the world.
These intentional states represent objects and states of affairs in the same
sense of the term represent that speech acts represent objects and states
of affairs in the world, and speech acts themselves are reducible to these
intentional states, such that the states of affairs the speech act represent
begin first as intentional states. A speech act is satisfied if both the
expressed psychological state is satisfied and the conditions of satisfaction
which are internal to the speech act and the expressed psychological state
are identical, giving linguistic performatives their meaningful, non-arbitrary
structure.
47
31
members of the population are both subject and subjected to the terms of
the contract.
In the case of a rights regime, this account of normativity has
multifarious implications. First, all rights entail a corresponding obligation on
the part of the subject to adhere to the motive constraints of the right.
Rights to life entail a positive obligation on the part of the community to
refrain from taking lives unjustifiably. This implies that in cases in which
taking a life is justified, as in cases in which ones life is in jeopardy or one is
standing in defense of another whose life is in jeopardy, then no censure
need apply. In cases in which taking a life is not justified, as in the case of
anger over menial matters or as an excessive response to a transgression,
then members of the population have an obligation to adhere to the norm
and therefore the sign written into law to refrain from taking the lives of
their fellow citizens. Second, not all rights are negative rights (i.e. rights that
ensure other members of the population will refrain from interacting with
other members of the population in certain ways); some rights which are
justified by ideal propositions are positive rights and therefore do more
than simply oblige fellow members of the population to refrain, but instead
oblige them to act in a certain manner. These obligations on the part of our
citizens are reflected in the form of societal institutions and variations on the
tax code that compel tax payers to provide things like housing, medical care,
and other basic necessities to disadvantaged members of the population. In
paying taxes or supporting institutions that carry out the measures resulting
32
from positive rights, citizens are acting on an obligation which entails the
normative constraint to conduct their behavior in a certain manner (i.e.
paying your taxes).
For Levinas, however, respect for universal rights is not only warranted
by the initial interaction with the Face of the Other, but also in some sense is
impossible without it as the a priori attachment to the Other precedes
reason, autonomy, and discourse. Paradoxically, he points out, the Face of
the Other seems to present itself, not in an equal relationship but instead in
one that is unequal, with the Face of the Other coming as though from a
height48; This creates the paradox of equal dignity if we consider that article
1 of the Declaration states: All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights. If it is the case that the Face of the Other comes as
though from a height, yet dignity is a concept that is intended to apply to all
equally, how is it possible to ground dignity in the primordial Face-to-Face
relation?
Human beings are unique in virtue of the fact that they are able to be
viewed ontologically as members of universal kinds (such as human being
or rational animal) where their singularity vanishes, but it is not possible to
view them ethically so. Treating individuals as ethical requires treating them
48
In Totality and Infinity Levinas claims: To hear his destitution which cries
out for justice is not to represent an image to oneself, but is to posit oneself
as responsible, both as more and as less than the being that presents itself in
the face. Less, for the face summons me to my obligations and judges me.
The being that presents himself in the face comes from a dimension of
height, a dimension of transcendence whereby he can present himself as a
stranger without opposing me as obstacle or enemy. (215)
33
as unrepeatable and incomparable49 (see Rawls conception of dignity
above on what this entails). What is fundamental to humans for Levinas,
which cannot be made common to other members of the species or beyond,
is their interiority.50 Interiority is not something that stands above or as a
distinction to ones humanity but in a fundamental sense is ones humanity,
and thereby qualifies her as unique and separate. It is only in virtue of this
fundamental separation and subjectivity that the human being or the
rational animal qualifies as having special status and therefore necessitates
being treated differently. Kant had a far different conception of the origin of
the dignity of humans, namely that as rational animals, (an ontological
category) or animals capable of free action, humans could construct for
themselves a world in which each human was treated not merely as a means
for anothers project but as an end in itself, and in so doing respect each
member of the otherwise unique ontological category rational animal. The
ability to reason according to this paradigm is that which sets humans apart
and is that which is fundamental to them as well. As Atterton points out,
Levinas does not ignore the role of reason in implementing rights that
protect the inviolable worth of humans, he merely questions whether and to
what extent the capability of reasoning can serve as the origin of rights as
opposed to a practical faculty that allows humans to construct a State that
49
In The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary

Perspectives (2014) P. X
50
Totality and Infinity: In the separated being the door must hence be at the
same time open and closed. (149)
34
implements models that universalizes the tenets derived from the Face-toFace interaction.51
The natural conclusion of this is that the Face-to-Face interaction
justifies not only the negative rights of the strict libertarian rights that
establish obligations for the rest of the population to refrain from acting in
certain ways but positive rights as well rights that establish obligations for
the rest of the population to act in a certain way. Therefore, alongside rights
to life, property, non-interference, etc., individuals also have rights to a
standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his
family, food, clothing, housing, medical care, and to security. The latter set
of rights which are essentially welfare rights are represented in
institutions that ensure disadvantaged members of the population access to
what is required for subsistence and dignity. The import of Levinas is work,
however, is not immediately structural, insofar as it would be a difficult to
impute to Levinas a robust and well thought out account of the basic
structure; instead, the ethical relation brought on by the indigent gaze of the
Other acts as a motivation, and indeed a foundation, for the rights regime
that follows. Because it contains within it distinct moments in which this
infinitely Other calls into question the totalizing I, the basic structure it helps
to justify in part reflects this primordial experience. It reflects it, again,
51
It is a phenomenological claim about how rights appear to me as one who

is endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood. (2014-04-30). The Cambridge Handbook of
35
because respect for the Other is not initially rational insofar pre-rational
disruptions are required to establish the subjective value of the Other, and in
the case of the indigent Face of the Other, it calls the totalizing I into
question primordially as the ethical imperative not to kill, which helps to
establish the libertarian imperative not to kill. It is only after the ethical
imperative thou shalt not kill the indigent Other that the Face that comes as
infinitely transcendent calls the totalizing I to feed and clothe it, thereby
supporting the positive rights of the political liberal to provide for such basic
necessities as food, shelter, healthcare, and education.
Discussion
A. Some Preliminary Thoughts on Dignity
Before we proceed further, let us not forget one profound insight, an
insight that has constructed much of the political debate for the past several
millennia, namely the insight given to us from Aristotles Politics regarding
mans essential nature. In it he makes the claim:
For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but,
when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all;
since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is
equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by
intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst
ends.52
52
Aristotle, Politics. Bk I. ch. II.
36
Although written around the 5th century BC, in a time before tanks,
warplanes, credit card fraud, the atom bomb, and chemical warfare,
Aristotles claim resonates today because it speaks to a very pointed aspect
of the human condition, namely its tendency to defer to what Aristotle would
call vice at moments in which accountability is lacking. In other words, in a
society without formal structures (laws, punishment, normativity, morality,
etc.) man tends to defer to vicious action towards his fellow man. While its
cultural iterations have transformed over the epochs since the Politics was
written, one must from the outset of the discussion of dignity question the
extent to which dignity is possible at all given this proclivity of human
nature. If it is true that human nature has this innate proclivity no doubt
considered a contingent proclivity, but a proclivity nonetheless must not
formal structures be erected as a means of procuring what is otherwise
sacrificed during moments in which this seduction holds sway, namely,
again, universal human dignity. And must not these formal structures be
considered a necessary condition of producing dignity if after we analyze the
history of political forms and find that most, if not all, instances in which
protections against this decline into vice is not prevented by laws and
regulations that foresee this tendency and act proactively to prevent it there
is a decline into some of the greatest violence the human race has seen? As
we proceed with this discussion, this precursor, and a backdrop of examples
throughout human history in which this precursor is made manifest, must
dominate our attention, and it must dominate our attention in such a way
37
that only if it is considered to be the lesser of two evils can it ever be justified
as a political virtue to drop the formal conditions that constrain individuals
subjective maxim and opt instead for a political organization that is subject
to the political will of an individual, group, or ideology.
The second point that must be considered before moving forward is the
question of political reconciliation. If an individual or faction seizes power
over a territory, and the regulations that presided prior to this seizure
become null, the coo is the compelled to do one of the following: a) create its
own political organization, which would be subject to its own form of political
reconciliation, b) reinterpret the prevailing political organization in manner
that is subject to the occurrent hegemonys interpretation of the presiding
political forms, or c) abandon the project of political reconciliation altogether
in favor of authoritarian rule in which will of the sovereign reigns supreme.
Thus, questions of how dignity is related to the basic structure, and
questions of whether dignity is a product of political forms or whether it can
be sustained without them, must be constructed after questions of the value
of political reconciliation have been answered. Political reconciliation is a
political virtue and ought to be seen as such but it is not a condition of
the possibility political rule. How many countless regimes throughout human
history have ruled without any concept, or desire to create, forms of political
reconciliation? This is the second point that I would like to keep in mind
before moving forward with the discussion of how dignity relates to the basic
structure. Political reconciliation is a necessary condition of all democratic
38
societies; by definition, this is what makes them democratic (i.e. the forms
are subject to the opinion of the demos). Political reconciliation is not a
necessary condition of political rule as such, which, as it relates to the
concept of dignity being analyzed here, indicates that providing a structural
account of how political forms relate to the concept of dignity that is
available for public interpretation is only necessary if a political regime is
rightly to be called democratic. Dignity may be the result of the
machinations of the occurrent regime, but a robust formulation of its
theoretical conditions is not a necessary condition its political legitimacy.
The third point that I would like to keep in mind is that, as Kent Roach
argues in his article The Primacy of Liberty and Propotionality, Not Human
Dignity, When Subjecting Criminal Law to Constitutional Control, the
traditional concept of negative liberty is a much more manageable term than
the concept of human dignity because negative liberty is determinate. While
often still subject to interpretation as to whether or not an action violated
ones negative liberty in an instance being tried, there is still determinable
criteria, and thus objective lines of demarcation that distinguish a criminal
act from a non-criminal one. Dignity, however, as Roach goes on to argue, is
an uncomfortable concept in constitutional law because it is so subjective
and agent-specific, adding layers of complexity to the conditions of
satisfaction of juridical statements. The natural consequence of these added
layers of complexity is confusion, and likely recurring miscarriages of justice;
or, worst of all, a radical questioning of the philosophical legitimacy of
39
dignity-based legal proceedings, which itself would result in a reversion back
to concepts of justice that justify negative liberty and proportionality in
criminal law. The value of proportionality in criminal law is then recognized
as that which rids law of its irrational, arbitrary, unnecessary, and deeply
subjective conditions brought on by dignity-based criminal proceedings.
That this confusion is irrational and arbitrary is a consequence of the fact
that dignity is subjective and directly intuited in experience. If one makes
the case that dignity is equivalent to and as such maintains an identity
relation with certain structural conditions, dignity loses its character as
irrational and arbitrary because the de re of dignity-based criminal
proceedings loses its immediate subjective character. By taking on
characteristics that are objective, dignity-based legal proceedings are given
the character of determinateness, which means that punishable acts are no
longer acts which have violated dignity in singular situation on a given
subject or group of subjects who have experienced the collapse of dignity in
their own subjective lives, but rather result from of a structure of laws,
regulations, or morality that have been deemed capable of producing dignity
40
for those who preside under it.53 This is the standard dignity-based
justification for procedural reforms. 54
The fourth point that I would like to make regarding dignity as it relates
to the basic structure before we delve deeper into a discussion of the forms
cited prior is the question of competing claims to dignity. In social and
political thought there is much talk concerning competing interests,
competing access to scarce resources, competing legal considerations, etc.
The question of what is owed to me, what is owed to you, and how to
adjudicate between the two has been the subject of debate since structures
were erected to protect interests in the first place. Any appeal to dignity that
assumes that dignity is the byproduct of a justifiable basic structure will, by
necessity, defer to arguments regarding conflicting interests and conflicting
53
Legal proceedings, then, which would otherwise be overseen by a judicial

authority deciding whether and to what extent an act violated the basis of
ones dignity, move from questions such as, was this persons dignity
violated by what you did? or did you have the experience of the collapse of
dignity in your own subjective life? to were there formal conditions, with
specific conditions of satisfaction, within a normative structure capable of
producing dignity, that were violated? While this does add the further
condition that some account of how these formal conditions produce dignity
either contingently or necessarily, as should one make the determination
that structural conditions are required for the production of dignity this
consideration ought eventually to become meaningless the shift in
orientation is from contextual subjective states to the interaction between
procedural forms and subjective states. The moral wrongness of violating
the foundations of ones dignity is then shifted from instances of subjective
violations, which would themselves be assessed on their own individual
merits as transgressions of ones capability for dignity, to violating the
normative constraints that have been justified on the grounds that they
produce dignity. Dignity, then, as the byproduct of procedural forms,
becomes the onus of responsibility for juridicial institutions transitively.
54
Cite.
41
legal considerations when attempting to adjudicate between conflicting
claims to dignity. The argument would run as follows: P1: dignity is the result
of set of procedural conditions that produce dignity. P2: the procedural
conditions that produce dignity do so in part because they adjudicate
between interests in a way that produces dignity. C: dignity is the result of
adjudication between interests. Conflicting claims to dignity, then, become
identical to conflicting claims to the rights and protections ensured by the
presumably justifiable basic structure. If a conflicting claim to dignity isnt
solved for according to this line of reasoning then a reform of the
applicable procedural constraints productive of dignity must ensue.
If on the other hand it has been decided that because dignity is
subjective and directly intuited in experience, and that because procedural
conditions produce dignity transitively they are inessential for the production
of this subjective experience, that dignity can be produced without a
determinate basic structure, some account of adjudicating between
conflicting claims to dignity is still warranted, if not more so than prior when
it was an appeal to the basic structure. The only possible means of
addressing conflicting claims to dignity in a manner that does not appeal to
the basic structure is to address the immediate subjective experience of
dignity itself, which itself requires input from phenomenology, psychology,
aesthetics, hermeneutics, race theory, theories of identification, and other
otherwise humanistic traditions. A proper articulation of the meaning and
contribution of each of these fields is outside the scope of this paper, but
42
what is not outside the scope of this paper is a recognition that in the
discussion of dignity and how it relates to the basic structure discussions
must be domain-specific, and assumptions concerning how to produce
dignity ought to come after a) the context of being has been established, b)
the assumptions concerning the what or the de re of dignity have been
brought to the fore, and c) the value of the various mechanisms of producing
dignity been determined given the context of being and the de re of dignity.
The final point that I would like to make before returning to the
discussion on how dignity relates to the basic structure is that dignity is
commonly understood to be the foundation for the liberal rights regime 55 but
dignity is not equivalent to having rights or presiding under a sovereign
regime in which rights are bestowed. I make this claim for a number of
reasons. First, it is possible for a member of the population to have rights
and still be denied the basis of dignity, as would be the case for a
disadvantaged member of the population under a right libertarian
government in which a conception of liberty as strictly negative liberty
predominates. In this case, denied access to healthcare, denied access to
education, denied access basic necessities, etc., this disadvantaged member
of the population would be left destitute and without a means of recourse.
All other considerations of dignity aside (i.e. whether dignity entails respect
for ones autonomy, whether dignity entails the right to upward mobility,
55
See Waldron, Jeremy J., Is Dignity the Foundation of Human Rights? for
an analysis of the concept of foundation as it relates to human rights. Not
sufficient.
43
etc.), there is nothing dignified about destitution, and hardly can one be
described as having the subjective experience of dignity if ones basic
necessities were denied to them, especially if this resulted in begging for
sustenance. Second, ontologically it is not the case that rights are identical
to dignity. As stated prior, rights are ideals that are proposed, deliberated
upon, and then enacted as basic facts about a given territory, which are then
supported by technologies of power like punishment. Dignity is subjective
and immediately intuited in experience by each individual subject, and while
there may be a transitive interaction between a rights regime and the
subjective experience of having dignity, there is still a disjunction between
their ontological properties, making each theoretically possible without the
other. The conclusion of this line of reasoning is that while dignity and rights
are often spoken of together, especially as rights being the guarantor of
dignity, both rights and dignity can be studied in isolation from each other,
which means that the locus of study must be their respective essential
properties and how their interactions unfold normatively and
phenomenologically rather than continuously attempting to define one in
terms of the other.
B. Dignity and the Basic Structure

With the preceding in mind let us return to the idea of dignity as it
relates to the basic structure and attempt to re-confront the question of what
dignity actually is. According to John Rawls political paradigm, determining
44
what equality is and how to implement it in society is a matter of beginning
from an original position of equality and then creating a basic structure that
reflects this original position of equality. Given that humankind is rational,
and thus capable of free, coordinated action, each member of the kind is
given a say in the creation of the basic structure. Given that this is in
practice impossible (i.e. that each member actually participates in the
construction of the basic structure), Rawls paradigm is meant to be a kind of
thought experiment, which has at its foundation, political reconciliation as its
driving motive. Persons are granted dignity within this paradigm because
each is welcome to participate in the construction of the basic structure, and
when absent, are still considered by it. But more than considered by it,
persons have intrinsic worth as human beings within it. By intrinsic worth,
one means that persons are different in kind than other entities found in the
natural world, and that this difference in kind grants to them a certain kind of
consideration that is not granted to other members of other kinds; in virtue
of their rationality, persons are considered special in ways that other
members of other kinds are not, which in part explains why they are
considered individually in the construction of the basic structure. This
difference in kind also implies that something is due to them. This
something for Rawls is an equal consideration in the original position and
an equal consideration of ones conception of the good once the deliberation
from the original position of equality has ended. Finally, in Rawls, we find
that human beings have an origin and a goal that are divine, and that unlike
45
other members of other kinds they have the ability to refine their capacities,
strive towards their own conceptions of the good, and ultimately reflect the
image of God.
Because of the Kantian orientation56, dignity has a very unique
relationship to the basic structure in Rawls paradigm. Initially, dignity is
established ontologically as belonging to all entities of an ontological kind,
namely the kind rational animal. That persons are rational is descriptive, and
that rationality qualifies one to participate in deliberations on the basic
structure is the result of the further descriptive claim that, in virtue of their
capacity to be rational, persons are free to do other than what their emotions
dictate. It is because of their rationality that Kant, and subsequently Rawls,
qualifies persons as having intrinsic worth, which establishes the foundation
of a persons dignity. But again, at this juncture dignity is merely a
formalism: if A then B, C is A, therefore C is B, where A is intrinsic worth, B is
dignity, and C is rational animal. Yet this formalism qualifies persons as
subjects capable of deliberating on the basic structure, and as such,
candidates for Rawls thought experiment. The result of this thought
experiment, as Ive shown prior, is the two principles of justice, which
support each persons claim to liberty and economic stability. Dignity at this
juncture implies that each person is due what the principles of justice
stipulate and that each persons conception of the Good is respected by the
56
For a robust formulation of Kants usage of the term dignity throughout his
writings see Pfordten, D. On the Dignity of Man in Kant. Also see Rachels,
James, Kantian Theory: The Idea of Human Dignity. P. 114-17, 122-23.
46
procedural conditions that result from the original position. What is
important to note here is that dignity is a purely formal concept attached to
persons that qualify as rational animals and that are given the rights and
protections of a basic structure designed by Rawls thought experiment. No
account of the subjective experience of dignity is given and no account of
how this basic structure produces dignity is provided, which implies that
dignity is a vacuous concept in the grand order of Rawls paradigm. While it
may produce the subjective experience of dignity transitively by
guaranteeing liberty and ensuring that basic needs are met for
disadvantaged members of the population, dignity as an isolated subjective
phenomenon is completely ignored. The conclusion we can draw from this is
that, for Rawls, dignity is a purely formal concept, and has meaning only
insofar as it serves to delimit categories of inclusion. It is not meaningful
transitively either, insofar as subjectively intuited dignity, which is given
immediately in experience, serves as the foundation from which to build a
rights regime. Dignity is merely a matter of belonging to the category
rational animal and being the subject of rights, which means that it is
synonymous with inclusion, not any primordial subjective experience.
In Hegel the term dignity is notoriously absent except as it relates to
the punishment of criminals.57 He specifically draws attention to the dignity
of the criminal throughout the criminal proceedings. Our brief foray into
Hegels account of the struggle of recognition is an attempt to elaborate on
57
See Dubber, M. Rediscovering Hegels Theory of Crime and Punishment.
47
the concept of dignity as a subjective phenomenon capable of being studied
as a subjective phenomenon. From the outset, such a project requires that
we make a number of assumptions about the nature of dignity. The first
assumption is that the study of dignity is category-specific, which means it
belongs to some categories and not to others, and it belongs to these
categories in virtue of there being some distinguishable ontological
properties that qualify an entity as belonging to the category dignity-bearing.
Given that dignity has been described as having the subjective experience of
dignity, the ontological property of subjectivity is the essential defining
characteristic. If an entity does not have subjectivity, that entity cannot be
described as having either the experience of the collapse of dignity or the
positive experience of dignity itself. Second, the first assumption does not
preclude the possibility of bestowing value on that which is not dignitybearing; a house, an ecosystem, an embryo, a planet, a painting may all be
said to have value in certain situations, but because each lacks the operative
feature of subjectivity, each is denied the basis of dignity, which means that
dignity-bearing entities might find value in these non-dignity-bearing entities
but only because dignity-bearing entities have some interest in non-dignity
bearing entities. This brings us to our third assumption: valuable nondignity-bearing entities do not have the same ontological status as dignitybearing entities because valuable-non-dignity bearing entities have value
because they have been given it by dignity-bearing entities either
intrinsically or extrinsically. A rock cannot give value to a leaf and a rock
48
cannot give value to a person, but a person can give value to a rock because
persons are value-bestowing entities. Yet because persons are valuebestowing, the value of valuable-non-dignity-bearing entities is contingent
upon a person bestowing value upon it, which means that value is contingent
and derivative. While a certain radical strain of thought may make the
charge that dignity-bearing entities can have dignity only because other
subjects bestow the capacity for dignity on dignity-bearing subjects, that
subjective states have the capacity to experience dignity is an ontological
property that distinguishes dignity-bearing entities from other entities in the
natural world, which means that the subjective experience of dignity only
contingently requires the act a person either consciously or non-consciously
bestowing dignity upon it.
The import of Hegel into the conversation on dignity stems less from
what he said about dignity and more from what we can draw from his
thoughts on consciousness about dignity, and further how we can insert his
thoughts into the conversation on dignity without bastardizing them by
coercing them to say what is otherwise untrue to his corpus. Hegels
account of the struggle recognition is best understood as a
phenomenological reading of the primordial experience of one self-certain
consciousness confronting another self-certain consciousness and then the
developments of consciousness that ensue. An analysis of these distinct
moments of self-consciousness unfolding before and with the Other is
warranted in the discussion on dignity because, once again, dignity is a
49
subjective experience, and further because the most common collapse of
dignity is the result of the confrontation between consciousness self-certain
of itself attempting to supersede the Other and the struggle for recognition
that ensues, often resulting in violent domination in which dignity is denied
to the subjectivity that becomes object for the being-for-itself. Thus a proper
analysis which may very well be outside the scope of the present thought
should contain an analysis of these distinct movements of consciousness,
especially as it develops within a struggle for recognition, all while
determining at what stage in this development of consciousness confronting
an Other the collapse of dignity emerges. What is important to note at the
outset of such an analysis is that Hegels phenomenology of spirit contains
distinct moments and waves of supersession that plateau and then
redevelop into new modes of being.
In order to demonstrate this, allow us to return to the text briefly. We
will remember that the struggle of recognition begins with one essential fact
about self-consciousness, namely that it is self-certain of itself, and that
when it confronts another consciousness self-certain of itself each recognizes
that it is a consciousness self-certain of itself and that it also exists in being
acknowledged. Hegel calls this a unity in its duplication. 58 Selfconsciousness is duplicitous because it has lost itself as self-certain because
it finds in itself an Other that is brought on by the self-certain consciousness
that is Other than its self-certain self, an Other which is also constituted in
58
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Ch. 8, Part A.
50
being recognized as a self-certain consciousness. When the struggle for
recognition ensues, a process of supersession and subordination ensues as
well, which results in a being-for-itself and a being-for-the-other because
each self-certain consciousness must supersede the Other in order to gain for
itself the self-certainty of itself as an essential being. When this
supersession takes place the self-certain consciousness that superseded the
Other becomes equal to itself and the Other self-consciousness becomes a
being for the Other that has superseded it. These are distinct moments in
the unfolding of consciousness, each of which can be studied in isolation.
Hegel goes on further to analyze how this process of supersession leads to a
situation in which the being-for-itself has gained its independence as subject
and the being-for-the-other has lost its independence and become
dependent on the being-for-itself, making it object for the subject that is foritself. Ostensibly at this juncture this relation of consciousness appears as a
fact of nature, as though by winning the struggle for recognition the beingfor-itself has in some sense guaranteed this state of affairs both currently
and into the future, hence the reason I use the term plateau to describe it.
Yet famously Hegel goes on to detail how this presumably concrete state of
affairs once again transforms, through a progression of unique and distinct
moments, into a relation that disrupts the being-for-itselfs independence,
and through work gains for itself its freedom.
Given that Hegel describes this movement of spirit in terms of a series
of confrontations, moments of supersession, consciousness inequality, and
51
transformations, any statement concerning dignity must be a statement that
attends not merely to the occurrent state of affairs complete with their
plateaus and subjective inequalities but also to the historical backdrop that
pervades occurrent consciousness and to the avenues by which disruptions,
fissures, and transformations can take hold and restructure consciousness in
a way that reorients a hegemonys capacity to act as sovereign. The
implication of this is that any statement concerning dignity as it relates to
subjectivity is itself a statement suspended between a past and the
possibility of a future; it is a statement concerning the occurrent ordering of
consciousness and its possibilities of transformations, rather than being
merely a statement about any subjectivity abstract and historically
isolated.59 Also, given that Hegels account of self-consciousness self-certain
of itself confronting an Other that is also self-certain of itself, but exists in
part because of its need to be recognized as self-certain of itself and as such
exists as a unity in its duplication, contains such a pointed inter-subjective
element, approaching the question of dignity in a post-Hegelian world means
confronting the question of subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and historicity
concurrently. It also means confronting the question of dignity in terms of
spatiality and the capacity for inter-subjectivity along with the struggle for
recognition that ensues. If a consciousness self-certain of itself cannot
59
Judith Butler makes a similar point in Precarious Life: The Powers of

Mourning and Violence where she states: To ask for recognition, or to offer
it, is precisely not to ask for recognition for what one already is. It is to solicit
a becoming, to instigate a transformation, to petition the future always in
relation to the Other. (44)
52
confront another consciousness self-certain of itself, and this struggle for
recognition that ends in a being-for-itself and a being-for-the-Other cannot
ensue, the spiritual will of the independent being equal to itself cannot
become law, which means the spiritual will of the independent consciousness
exists but only negatively.
Yet problematically at this juncture we must re-confront the question of
what the de re of dignity actually is and what kinds of normative,
phenomenological, psychological, and aesthetic demands arise once this
generalized concept is articulated. Likewise, and even more problematically,
do normative, phenomenological, psychological, and aesthetic demands
arise once the de re of dignity is articulated? If the experience of dignity or
the collapse thereof is entirely subjective, and as such subject to the prior
conditions of subjectivity, namely occurrent subjectivity, inter-subjectivity,
and historicity, any ahistorical or non-contextual normative dictum becomes
inert because the possibility of an action and its opposite may, in varying
contexts, produce dignity as a result. Further complicating the question of
context is the question of adjudicating between Utilitarian concerns as they
relate to the subjective experience of dignity. Is one persons experience of
dignity more valuable than another persons experience of dignity? Is it not
the case that I ought to produce dignity for the greatest number even if it
means sacrificing the dignity of a few? Should non-human animals be
granted dignity? How does suffering contribute to or detract from the
possibility of having the experience of dignity? These questions are best left
53
to be answered elsewhere. The point of the preceding is to articulate the
conditions in which such questions can have answers that attend to
complexity of subjectivity and the historical conditions that give rise to
occurrent subjective forms. Yet regardless of whether we have analyzed
subjectivity properly in terms of its occurrent form, its inter-subjective
element, its historical backdrop, and its potential for transformation, without
the de re foundation of what dignity is, no positive practical prescriptions can
be made, which would inevitably cause a regress of the concept back to pure
emotivism or vacuous attempts to utilize the expression as a means of
concealing ulterior motives, moral or otherwise.
Allow us for the time to suspend this judgment and instead re-examine
dignity from a multitude of paradigms, all of which contingently capable of
producing the experience of dignity without attempting to settle on one
particular paradigm, and let us confront this problematic within the Hegelian
worldview that weve laid out. The goal of the present analysis, well
remember, is to determine to what extent a basic structure is required for
the subjective experience of dignity. And further, how a basic structure is
operationally relevant paradigmatically. In other words, given different
paradigms of dignity all of which capable of producing the subjective
experience of dignity a basic structure is more or less operationally
relevant. In what contexts and under what paradigm of dignity is a basic
structure required? Admittedly, a full articulation of this idea is outside the
scope of the present thought. But what is not outside the scope of the
54
present thought is the possibility of laying the groundwork for a project that
analyzes the possibility of dignity paradigmatically and interparadigmatically, with the result being paradigm-specific orienting principles
that are applicable across a broad range of techniques used to create
dignity, but also, and more importantly, paradigm-specific satisfaction
conditions that allow political theorists to analyze dignity-producing practices
in terms of the reliability of their applications.
Whether we assess dignity in terms of inclusion within a basic
structure60, respect for autonomy61, having ones basic needs met62, equality
of opportunity63, due process in criminal proceedings64, the right to speak in
ones defense65, equality of recognition66, morality in healthcare practices67,
dignity in dying68, etc., we are always assessing dignity according to a third
term whose Telos is the production of dignity by some mechanism, be it
procedural forms, psychological practices, or aesthetic intervention. In each
case there is an engagement with the third term, and this engagement
60
See Pakuluk, Michael. The Dignity of the Human Person in the Philosophy
of John Rawls.
61
See Lysaught, Therese. Respect: Or, How Respect for Persons Became
Respect for Autonomy.
62
See Howard, Rhoda. The Full-Belly Thesis: Should Economic Rights Take
Priority Over Civil and Political Rights? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa.
63
Joseph, Lawrence. Some Ways of Thinking About Equality of Opportunity.
64
Scanlon, Thomas. Due Process.
65
See Young Kim, Janine. The Rhetoric of Self-Defense.
66
See Taylor, Charles. The Politics of Recognition in Multiculturalism:
Exploring the Politics of Recognition.
67
See Gallagher, A. Dignity and Respect for dignity-two key health
professional values: implications for nursing practice.
68
Chochinov, H.M. et. al., Dignity in the Terminally Ill: A Developing
Empirical Model.
55
determines the modes of application to be assessed. The question at stake
in the present thought is what degree of structural intervention each mode
requires, such that a qualification of the third term is a qualification of a
practice, not an instance or an agent, and the degree to which this practice
has procedural requirements. For example, does the concept of dignity as
the maintenance of reciprocal recognition require a basic structure or can we
assess it solely in terms of psychological practices or aesthetic practices? If
we can assess these practices solely in virtue of a third term that is nonstructural, then dignity itself can be analyzed non-structurally in terms of its
subjective elements. Yet at this juncture we must concede the possibility
that while some dignity-producing mechanisms are non-structural, and can
be analyzed in terms of their non-structural elements, other dignityproducing mechanisms are deeply structural, and cannot be understood
except within a procedural framework; the obvious example which really
amounts to a truism is the concept of dignity as inclusion within a basic
structure. Again, there is a certain concept of dignity that is purely formal: if
A then B, C is A, therefore C is B, where A is intrinsic worth, B is dignity, and
C is rational animal. According to this paradigm, dignity is inclusion within a
basic structure that provides for basic necessities, basic liberties, etc. for all
those that are granted the rights and protections of a basic structure.
Staying true to the theme of dignity as multiply-paradigmatic, with
some paradigms of dignity being intrinsically structural and others being
intrinsically non-structural, we are now confronted with the question of
56
whether dignity can be partially structural, seen as a third term with a Telos
of dignity that is conceptualized in terms of the gradations of its structural
requirements. For example, is maintaining equality of opportunity a
structural requirement or a non-structural requirement? On the one hand,
dignity is assessed here purely in terms of the degree to which capacities in
conjunction with other values like hard work and persistence are capable of
producing a successful individual, seen strictly as equalizing the contingent
possibility of the actualization of potential. Equalizing the contingent
possibility of the actualization of potential given of course the presence of
other values like hard work and persistence is what is fundamentally at
stake in equalizing opportunity. Whether and to what extent procedural
forms are required for this third term is of some dispute. While it is possible
to equalize access to human capital, which would create the formal
conditions of equality of opportunity within our current neoliberal model, and
which would subsequently require procedural forms like affirmative action
legislation, a just distribution of resources in order to provide the material
means of actualizing latent capacities, corrective care for those born with
disabilities, etc., non-structural forms might be equally as relevant. Consider
as an example of this race-relations as they relate to equality of opportunity
in the workplace.69 While human capital might have been equalized by prior
69
A Pew Research Center study conducted in 2016 showed that wageinequality in the workplace is as real today as it was 35 years ago. Blacks
earn 75% of Whites in hourly earnings, with Whites trailing Asians slightly.
The income inequality between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics has changed
very little over this 35-year time frame as well. Likewise, college educated
Black men and college educated Hispanics trailed college educated White
57
structural intervention, perceived threat or other subconscious reservations
may well be at work in the decision to hire as well. The implication of this is
that structural intervention might well be insufficient to carry out the Telos of
the third term, and instead psychological or aesthetic intervention might
prove more efficacious at balancing opportunity in the workplace by
undermining the subconscious boundaries preventing this equality from
being realized.70 But psychological intervention is entirely non-structural,
men by making only 80% of what White men earned hourly. In another study
done by the Brookings Institute in 2015, a number of signs of racially-based
inequalities in the workplace emerged as well. First, upward mobility is more
difficult for Black Americans, with 51% of the Black population in America
born in the lowest fifth of the earnings distribution remaining there at age 40.
Second, most Black middle class kids are downwardly mobile, with 7 out of
10 of them born into the middle class falling into the lower class. Third it
showed that Black wealth rarely exists, in that the median wealth of white
households is now 13 times greater than black households.
(www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2015/01/15/five-bleak-factson-black-opportunity) Studies such as these and others similar suggest that
there pervades in the workforce and beyond what Charles Mills calls a Racial
Contract in his book titled The Racial Contract. In it he makes the claim,
and subsequently argues for, the idea that inequalities are as deeply
embedded in the basic structure as the laws and regulations that hold it
together; it is a contract between one subset of humans and another, with
the meta-agreement that the disadvantaged group is privy to a
disproportionate set of privileges and moral considerations, all to advantage
of whites as a group.
70
In the workplace itself there exists a complex network of interrelations that
often pervades the entire structure of an organization that is at one turn
functional as in, required for the functional operation of the organization as
a unit and at another social, with clearly identifiable practices, processes,
actions, and meanings that result in what Joan Acker calls Inequality
Regimes in her paper titled, Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in
Organizations. She defines inequality regimes as the interrelated
practices, processes, actions, and meanings that result in and maintain class,
gender, and racial inequalities within particular organizations. (443) These
inequalities within organizations result in a systemic inequality in categories
like participants in power, the distribution of resources, decision of outcomes,
opportunities for promotion, benefits, pay, respect, and pleasures in ones
work. These regimes also have a schema that attests to the difficulty of
58
even if we concede that left unfettered by structural or other normative
requirements such interventions will quickly regress to non-dignity-producing
forms.
Similar accounts of this binary and antagonism may be given for
gender issues and other social issues affecting the body politic. What is at
stake here is the interrelation between the forms, whose Telos is the
production of dignity, and the subjective experience of dignity itself, but
more importantly, which structural components are essential to dignity and
which can be studied in isolation. Can dignity be studied in isolation or are
the subjective aspects of dignity that appear distinct and excluded from
disrupting these operations of power, schemas like disproportionately steep

hierarchies that are correlated with race and gender, identifications of
leadership qualities that are disproportionately masculine, patterns of
employment segregation (grooming men or whites for certain jobs and
women and blacks/hispanics for others), and dramatically high inequalities of
income between those members at the top of the hierarchy and the rest of
the organization. A classical example of this that Acker cites is a study done
in 2003 in which CEOs made close to 185x what the average worker made.
The conclusion of the paper is that inequality is structural even within
private organizations that prize non-racial attributes like human capital, and
that even after structural interventions equalize human capital between
races, some disparities will still emerge, and these disparities will be along
racial and gender lines. What further modes of intervention ought we apply?
Is disproportionately awarding socially disadvantaged members of the
population whose abilities in terms of human capital might be equal but
whose standing within these inequality regimes unequal the solution? Or
is non-structural intervention, which can be assessed in terms of
categorically subjective attributes the solution? The point is that equality of
opportunity is the third term whose Telos is the subjective experience of
dignity for those receiving just reward their skills within a workplace; whether
and to what extent structural intervention is the solution once human capital
has been equalized is questionable, which opens avenues to mechanisms of
disruption whose Telos is also dignity, but is not essentially a structural form,
such as psychological, social, or aesthetic interventions as they relate to
questions of racial and gender inequality.
59
structural considerations themselves deeply structural, if not derivatively so?
In other words, if the normative and procedural structure of rights and
responsibilities was absent, would the phenomenon under consideration that
were calling the categorically subjective experience of dignity, analyzed as
isolated and distinct from dignity as a derivative property of the basic
structure, be a phenomenon for consideration and analysis, and if so in what
way? The only way to garner a viable answer to this question is to take a
scientific approach and attempt to isolate variables, which in this case would
mean studying the subjective experience of dignity in an environment in
which the protections of the basic structure were lacking, and then analyze
the extent to which non-structural forms of dignity such as mutual
recognition or aesthetic identification materialized. For the time, however,
allow us to posit this distinction between forms of dignity that are structurally
derived and forms that are distinct, and as such, can be studied in isolation.
Let us also study these phenomena, again, within the Hegelian worldview
that was developed prior; a worldview complete the inter-subjectivity, the
distinct moments in the struggle for recognition, consciousness inequality,
plateaus, historicity, and transformations. Without this backdrop, any
approach to dignity is minimalistic.
Finally, re-confronting the question of dignity from the context of
Emmanuel Levinas account of the Face-to-Face interaction with the Other
means analyzing how the Face of the Other disrupts the totalizing tendency
of the I by calling its power to act into question. Specifically for Levinas, the
60
Face calls the totalizing power of the I into question by disrupting its ability to
act on the indigent Other that it confronts as infinitely transcendent.71 This
results in a non-normative imperative not to kill the Other, and subsequently
an imperative to feed and clothe the indigent Other. Re-confronting the
question how the disruption of the Face of the Other relates to a basic
structure is a question of how an individual responds to the call of the Other
that it confronts as though from a dimension of height.72 This call to action
is not normative in a formal Kantian sense in which a respect for persons and
desire to act according to ones duty by only engaging in an action which can
be universalized to all persons, but instead begins with a desire for the
absolutely other,73 and because of the totalizing Is inability to fully
comprehend the interiority of the Other, the gaze of the Other calls into
question its ability to act, which manifests in the imperative not to kill. For
Kant, it is respect for the Universal Law and the higher-order, autonomous
check on each individual subject maxim that compels an individual to act
morally, not a disruption of an Is capacity to act. The resultant act not
taking the life of the Other is the same, which compels many thinkers to
conflate the moral paradigms of these respective thinkers, but as weve
shown here, the impetus differs.
The problem political thinkers confront at this juncture is how to utilize
the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and his account of the disruption of the
71
72
73
Totality and Infinity, Section 3, Part B

Totality and Infinity, p. 215
Totality and Infinity, Section 1, Part A.1
61
Face in a political framework that must account for features of the basic
structure that hold it together, such as punishment, civil rights, legal
proceedings, property rights, etc. Can an account of a subjective response
to a unique individual Other who is experiencing a moment of indigence be
sufficient to provide the groundwork for a framework that accounts for these
other essential formative features or is more needed? And in what way does
this call of the indigent Other contribute to a political paradigm that must
account for the suffering of many individuals? As Atterton points out Levinas
does not ignore the role of reason in his discourse, he merely questions the
extent to which reason alone can be the sole guarantor of respect for
persons, and whether something more primordial like a disruption of an Is
capacity to act, which was brought on initially by a desire for the absolutely
other confronting the untotalizability of the separate I, might be responsible
instead. For Kant, reason alone was sufficient to establish the grounds of
morality and the value of other rational agents, and in fact he once famously
wrote: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and
awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens
above me and the moral law within me. The import of the disruption of the
Face of the Other, however, can act as a motivation for the rights regime that
follows, such that Levinas account of the Face can act as a sort of existential
political reconciliation for a pre-existing regime, or perhaps a call to reform it
if the ethical relation to the indigent Other or the conditions of the possibility
of ethics changes with varying socio-historical conditions.
62
The question of how the Face of the Other is related to the basic
structure is not altogether clear at first glance. The primordial experience of
the disruption of the I when confronted with the gaze of the indigent Other is
categorically non-structural; as it is a subjective response to environmental
stimuli, a response that would be same whether there was a structure
already in place or not, given that the other conditions that Levinas
stipulated as requirements for anything like an ethical response to an
indigent Other were satisfied (i.e. enjoyment, nourishment, a dwelling to
shelter from the Element, and a work world from which to derive meaning).
The Face of the indigent Other may also provide a motivation for the basic
structure that it in part helps serve to justify, which was the relation detailed
in the analysis prior.
The question of how the Face of the Other is related to dignity is also a
precarious one. On the one hand, one might suggest that the indigent Face
of the Other attests to a moment of collapse in which the subjective
experience of dignity is lacking and that responding to this call is a matter of
restoring to the Other that which was taken from him (i.e. the experience of
dignity). Dignity here would be a concept correlated to the other
characteristic features of indigence that Levinas outlines, features such as
vulnerability74 and openness to death, and the experience of the collapse of
self-worth associated with such features. On the other hand, if we consider
74
See Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence for
an analysis of vulnerability and it capacity to have motive force on
interpersonal relations and the basic structure more generally.
63
the Face of the indigent Other to be a motivation or a form of existential
political reconciliation for a pre-existing structure of rights, an interpretation
of dignity as inclusion within a basic structure would pre-dominate. Insofar
as the concept of dignity was a consideration here, dignity would be doublytransitively important: the Face of the Other would motivate inclusion within
a basic structure and a basic structure would produce dignity. The
conclusion of this line of thought is that the Face of the Other acts in isolation
from the basic structure but can also act as a further foundation for it. And
when the basic structure of rights and responsibilities is lacking in its
capacity to ensure dignity or at least the possibility of dignity even after a
subject has been included in its protections, it acts as a motivation for
reforming the structure in a way that enhances the basic structures capacity
to produce dignity through a re-interpretation of concepts like fairness,
liberty, and equality.
Conclusion
The preceding has been an analysis of the concept of dignity from a
variety of paradigms. Each paradigm operates by appealing to a third term
whose Telos is the production of dignity for the portion of the population
about which the third term is concerned. Ive shown that these paradigms
can be studied paradigmatically and inter-paradigmatically, and that an
appeal to a paradigm is an appeal to a process, a mechanism, or a structure
that is itself to varying degrees structural. I have also analyzed the concept
64
of dignity from a variety of different thinkers concerned with the concept and
from some who never specifically used the term but whose corpus
contributes to an elaboration of the discussion modern thinkers are currently
having. I have also attempted re-orient the discussion concerning dignity to
a discussion that takes into consideration the Hegelian worldview, complete
with its inter-subjectivity, its historicity, its plateaus, its subjective
inequalities, and its potential for transformation at both the structural level
and the subjective level as well. While many thinkers have relegated the
import of Hegels writing to discussions of dignity as they relate to
recognition as especially as it concerns the possibility of mutual recognition
I claim instead that all accounts of dignity must be understood from within
this purview, whether we are speaking of dignity as a subjective experience
or dignity as the by product of procedural forms.
The de re of dignity is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a)
the quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect, and b) [having]
inherent nobility and worth. The Royal College of Nursing defines dignity as
concerned with how people feel, think and behave in relation to the worth
or value of themselves and others. To treat someone with dignity is to treat
them as being of worth, in a way that is respectful of them as valued
individuals.
I have also articulated several orienting principles that contemporary
thinkers ought to adopt during their discourse on the idea of dignity. The
65
following principles I propose ought to be applied to every conversation
about dignity:
1) Given mankinds proclivity to descend to otherwise vicious action when
accountability is lacking typically resulting in a collapse of the
conditions of the possibility of dignity all discussions of dignity should
begin by assuming that a basic structure is required for dignity, and
that any departure from this orienting theme should be viewed as a
departure from the conditions of the possibility of dignity such that
only in extreme circumstances in which this departure is seen as the
lesser of two evils should it proposed as a positive value.
2) The value of political reconciliation as a political virtue ought to be
assessed contemporaneously with conceptions of dignity if not prior.
3) Dignity-based criminal proceedings are confusing and add layers of
complexity to the conditions of satisfaction of juridical statements.
They likely lead to recurring miscarriages of justice as well. They
should be avoided at all costs.
4) Within a basic structure, in which dignity is produced transitively as a
byproduct of procedural conditions, competing interests are settled by
an appeal to the laws applicable to the situation. If the basic structure
is considered inessential, competing interests must be settled after the
context of being has been established, after the assumptions
concerning the de re of dignity have been brought to the fore, and
66
after the value of the various mechanisms that produce dignity have
been determined by the context of being and the de re of dignity.
5) Dignity is not equivalent to having rights. It is entirely possible that
one can have rights under a regime that guarantees them and still be
denied the basis of dignity. It is important to keep this in mind when
discussing how dignity relates to the basic structure.
In closing, let us keep in mind that the concept of dignity has been
analyzed and defined in nearly as many different ways as the different
thinkers that have approached it as a topic worthy of discussion. Because
of this, the concept has lost its force as an idea and has taken on the
character of a vacuous formalism often misconstrued with respecting
persons or recognizing those different from oneself. What is at stake in
the idea itself, and why the discussion is meaningful still, is simply that it
contributes to how we as a culture assess mechanisms as third terms
whose Telos is the subjective experience of dignity. Simply because
dignity is multiply-paradigmatic, contains varying degrees of structural
and non-structural features, has deeply historical and inter-subjective
components, and has such a precarious relationship with criminal law
does not make the discussion meaningless. Rather, it makes the
discussion complex, and it does so in such a way that a recurring
meditation on what dignity actually is is as important as judgments
concerning whether or not a mechanism is capable of reliably producing
67
dignity or whether an individual has experienced the subjective collapse
of dignity.
Bibliography
Acker, J. "Inequality Regimes: Gender, Class, and Race in
Organizations." Gender & Society 20, no. 4 (2006): 441-64.
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London:
Verso, 2004.
Chochinov, Harvey Max, and Maia S. Kredentser. "Dignity in the Terminally
Ill." Psycho-Oncology, 2015, 480-86.
Dubber, Markus Dirk, and Mark Tunick. "Rediscovering Hegel's Theory of
Crime and Punishment." Michigan Law Review 92, no. 6 (1994): 1577.
Dwell, Marcus, Jens Braarvig, Roger Brownsword, and Dietmar Mieth. The
Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
"Free OED - Oxford English Dictionary." Accessed October 25, 2016.
http://public.oed.com/about/free-oed/.
Gallagher, Ann. "Dignity and Respect for Dignity Two Key Health
Professional Values: Implications for Nursing Practice." Nursing Ethics 11, no.
6 (2004): 587-99.
Goodwin, Jean. "Cicero's Authority." Philosophy and Rhetoric 34, no. 1 (2001):
38-60.
Habermas, Jrgen. The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 2. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1984.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Arnold V. Miller, and J. N.
Findlay. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
Hill, Thomas E. "Kant on Responsibility for Consequences." Respect,
Pluralism, and Justice, 2000, 155-72.
Howard, Rhoda. "The Full-Belly Thesis: Should Economic Rights Take Priority
over Civil and Political Rights? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa." Human
68
Rights Quarterly 5, no. 4 (1983): 467.
Husserl, Edmund. "The Idea of Phenomenology." 1973.
Ingram, David. "Of Sweatshops and Subsistence: Habermas on Human
Rights." Ethics & Global Politics 2, no. 3 (2009). doi:10.3402/egp.v2i3.2045.
Joseph, Lawrence B. "Some Ways of Thinking about Equality of
Opportunity." The Western Political Quarterly 33, no. 3 (1980): 393.
Kaufmann, Paulus, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhuser, and Elaine
Webster. Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization: Human Dignity Violated.
Dordrecht: Springer, 2011.
Kim, Janine Young. The Rhetoric of Self-Defense (2008). Faculty
Publications. Paper 534. http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/facpub/534.
Lysaught, M. "Respect: Or, How Respect for Persons Became Respect for
Autonomy." The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 29, no. 6 (2004): 665-80.
Lvinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Pittsburgh,
PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969.
Macklin, R. "Dignity Is a Useless Concept." Bmj 327, no. 7429 (2003): 1419420.
Mccrudden, C. "Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human
Rights." European Journal of International Law 19, no. 4 (2008): 655-724.
McDonnell, Cyril. Why Punish the Guilty? Towards a Philosophical Analysis of
the States Justification of Punishment. Maynooth University ePrints and
eTheses (2009).
Mills, Charles. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.
"New Oxford American Dictionary." 2010.
doi:10.1093/acref/9780195392883.001.0001.
Patten, Eileen. "Racial, Gender Wage Gaps Persist in U.S. despite Some
Progress." Pew Research Center RSS. 2016. Accessed October 25, 2016.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/01/racial-gender-wage-gapspersist-in-u-s-despite-some-progress/.
Pakaluk, Micahel. The Dignity of the Human Person in the Philosophy of John
Rawls. Paper presented for a conference entitled, The Philosophical
Foundations of Human Dignity, Washington D.C., March 8, 2007.
69
Peter, Atterton. "Dignity and the Other: Dignity and the Phenomenological
Tradition." The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: 276-85.
Pfordten, Dietmar Von Der. "On the Dignity of Man in Kant." Philosophy 84,
no. 03 (2009): 371.
Pinker, Steven. The Stupidity of Dignity: Conservative bioethics latest, most
dangerous ploy. Published in The New Republic, published May 28, 2008.
Aristotle. Politics - Aristotle. Place of Publication Not Identified: Nuvision
Publications, 2009.
Rachels, James. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1986.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1971.
Rawls, John, and Erin Kelly. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Reeves, Richard V., and Edward Rodrigue. "Five Bleak Facts on Black
Opportunity." Brookings. 2015. Accessed October 25, 2016.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2015/01/15/fivebleak-facts-on-black-opportunity/.
Scanlon, T. M. "Due Process." The Difficulty of Tolerance: 42-69.
Searle, John R. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. London:
Cambridge University Press, 1969.

On Dignity

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

On Dignity

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

1

The Oxford English Dictionary defines dignity as a) The quality or state of

P. Kaufmann et al., Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization: Human

The goal of the so-called veil of ignorance according to Rawls is: to

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, p. 42.

preferential treatment by the formal and procedural constraints produced by

In his article, Why Punish the Guilty? Towards a Philosophical Analysis of

New Oxford American Dictionary (2nd Ed.)

In Of Sweatshops & Subsistence: Habermas on Human Rights David

The Import of Phenomenology

In The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary

According to Husserl, the project of bracketing phenomena of experience

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Ch. 8, Part A.

Ibid. Ch. 8, Part A.

Ibid. Ch. 8. Part A.

Hegel states: It is in this way, therefore, that consciousness, qua worker

Totality and Infinity, Section 3, Part B

In The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary

It is a phenomenological claim about how rights appear to me as one who

Aristotle, Politics. Bk I. ch. II.

Legal proceedings, then, which would otherwise be overseen by a judicial

B. Dignity and the Basic Structure

See Dubber, M. Rediscovering Hegels Theory of Crime and Punishment.

Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, Ch. 8, Part A.

Judith Butler makes a similar point in Precarious Life: The Powers of

disrupting these operations of power, schemas like disproportionately steep

Totality and Infinity, Section 3, Part B

You might also like