The Origins of Inherent Human Dignity

The idea of inherent human dignity has come to play a prominent role in contemporary culture. A commonplace, now, in political discourse and journalism, it has long been central to theories of human rights, where it serves as an anchor stabilizing the argument as to why human beings have rights to begin with. The basic argument linking dignity and rights is this: because human beings have an innate value (dignity), they enjoy certain rights that protect human existence and human flourishing.

The concept of inherent human dignity brings with it, however, a host of philosophical difficulties. To begin with there are disagreements about how exactly to define it. It asserts a value that belongs to being human; but how precisely are we to understand the content of that value? Then there are questions about how it should function when used, as it increasingly is, as a factor in legal decisions, and in jurisprudence generally. More recently, the idea has been criticized as expressing an “anthropocentric” disregard of the intrinsic value of other creatures. And then there are not a few who deny the validity of the concept altogether, dismissing it as a product of metaphysical sentimentalism, or a relic of outmoded religious belief.

Still, despite these criticisms, the idea has steadily become more ubiquitous in modern moral, political, and legal discourse. And that creates a certain pressure to explicate the concept: to clarify its meaning, and to spell out its philosophical presuppositions and implications.

Here is a very abbreviated response to that pressure.

According to the concept, there is a special value that belongs to humans simply because they are human: a worth intrinsic to them because of the distinctive qualities that belong to human nature. These include 1) the capacities of questioning, understanding, and knowing in the distinctively human manner of consciously seeking and grasping intelligibilities through insights, and verifying the truth of insights; 2) the capacity to apprehend values and to use free will to affirm or choose them, or bring them into being; 3) the capacity for self-transcending love; 4) the powers of creativity that arise from understanding united with imagination and freedom; and 5) the genuine, or authentic, self-determination and self-choice that all of these make possible; together with 6) vulnerability to suffering and the disruptions of distinctively human functioning.

Whether all of these characteristics really do belong to humans (as a genus of being allowed its normal development), and whether they are really unique to human beings, are questions that can be, and have long been, debated. For my part, I embrace the validity of this conception of inherent dignity (incomplete though it may be); and will try to unpack some of its implications.

A first implication would be that an innate dignity is present whether or not it is recognized by other persons, or recognized even by the person to whom it belongs. It is not the fruit of any kind of social agreement or contract; it does not arise out of any pragmatic considerations or arrangements; it is not a human construction at all. If an innate value exists, it does so regardless of what anyone might think about the matter (or even if no thought at all is given to it); and the most forceful denunciations of its truth, or the ignoring of its existence, have no effect upon it. An inherent dignity is a given, and remains a given under all conditions (including conditions in which it is overlooked, or those that have led to its enshrining as an important moral and political principle, as has occurred in contemporary culture).

Second, to state that each human being has an inherent dignity—and, as a consequence, a range of inherent, “inalienable” rights pertaining to the protection and flourishing of personhood—is to assert that neither the differences among worldly situations nor the transience of worldly conditions alter its status or affect its truth. If dignity is a given that belongs always to human nature, then every instance of that dignity is a fact that transcends all differences of individual biology, locality, culture, and history. Human dignity must be both a given and a constant; and to be those, it must have its ground, or basis, in a dimension of meaning that is unalterable. Only this gives human dignity the status of an “absolute” (i.e., something unmixed, perfect), the status of a truth that admits of no exceptions, one that lies “beyond the possibility of any revocation by merely human means” (Gerhard Sauter).

Now it is a matter of logic to arrive at the conclusion that if inherent human dignity is invariable and universal, then it is a value that must be grounded in a realm of meaning that transcends change and perishability—in that transcendent dimension of meaning that explicitly reveals itself (only) when the cosmos differentiates, through human seeking, into realms of immanence and transcendence.

But!—this is a conclusion that doesn’t derive merely from speculative deduction. It arises also from the experience of the presence of transcendent reality in human consciousness—from the discovery that, given the unrestricted nature of its questioning and ability to recognize that the ultimate ground of things must be timeless and non-imaginable, human consciousness participates in and shows forth a transcendent ground of reality. This transcendent presence in consciousness is universally human, even if the fact of it is not universally attended to or acknowledged. As Václav Havel put it in a speech on human rights, when we think about the matter carefully, our reasoning accurately arrives at the conviction that “respect for human rights [is] a political expression of moral obligations anchored in [a] general human experience of the absolute.”

Third, because the distinctive value of human personhood derives from its immediate participation in the value of transcendent being—in ultimate value, the ground of all the good manifest in the universe—inherent human dignity itself is of infinite value. As Kant famously put it, the inherent dignity of each person should be regarded as an “unconditioned and incomparable worth” that in each instance deserves our “reverence.”

(Importantly, this reverence for inherent dignity is not to be confused with the respect that we owe people on the basis of their achievements or accomplishments, or of their attainment of an impressive or dignified way of living. That respect is conditional; we grant it or withhold it according to what people do with their choices within the circumstances given to them or that they create for themselves. But respect for each person’s inherent or innate dignity is owed unconditionally—because, properly understood, every human existence is transparent for the transcendent value that grounds that existence.)

Finally, in many modern political instruments and much general discourse, it is understand that all human beings share equally in the inherent dignity that belongs to them by nature—that the incalculable value of participation in transcendence is equally enjoyed by every individual.

When and where did this notion of equal human value first arise?

Although it runs against a significant mass of contemporary cultural sentiment to affirm the fact, the notion of equal inherent human dignity did not arise generally among human cultures. It was foreign to all early, cosmological cultures. And in those cultures where the differentiation of transcendence occurred that allowed for a recognition of universal human participation in timeless being and value, the vision of essential human equality did not always follow. It did not arise, for instance, in the wake of the Chinese discovery of the Tao; nor in the wake of the Hindu discovery of the transcendent principle of Brahman. It is not to be found in Confucianism. Buddhism teaches the ability of all to become enlightened, but not the already-existing fact of equality.

The historical emergence of the notion of the absolute equality of all persons was quite culture-specific. It originated in the Jewish and Christian visions of each person as “made in the image of God”: of human persons as equal partakers in, and transparencies for, the infinite value of transcendent divine personhood.

Equal inherent human dignity originated, then, in a religious intuition; and it developed initially as a religious conception. In fact, it continues to make sense only as a spiritual principle. (There is no human equality, after all, that is manifest in any observable human characteristics—physical, intellectual, or moral.)

Over many centuries—ever so gradually—legal, political, and cultural ramifications of this spiritual principle of human equality have been recognized and brought to bear on social and political views and institutions.

Why so slowly?

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