In what sense are persons equal, such that it is appropriate to treat them as equals? This difficult question has been strangely neglected by political philosophers. A plausible answer can be found by adopting a particular interpretation of the idea of respect. Central to this interpretation is the thought that in order to respect persons we need to treat them as ‘opaque', paying attention only to their outward features as agents. This proposed basis of equality has important implications for the (...) currency of egalitarian justice, ruling out a number of the equalizanda favored by contemporary egalitarians. (shrink)

Dignity plays a central role in current thinking about law and human rights, but there is sharp disagreement about its meaning. Combining conceptual precision with a broad historical background, Michael Rosen puts these controversies in context and offers a novel, constructive proposal. “Penetrating and sprightly...Rosen rightly emphasizes the centrality of Catholicism in the modern history of human dignity. His command of the history is impressive...Rosen is a wonderful guide to the recent German constitutional thinking about human dignity...[Rosen] is in general (...) an urbane and witty companion, achieving his aim of accessibly written philosophy.” —Samuel Moyn, The Nation “[An] elegant, interesting and lucid exploration of the concept of dignity...Drawing on classical, liberal and Catholic traditions, Rosen hopes to rehabilitate dignity to its rightful place near the centre of moral thought...Rosen's admirable book deserves wide attention from political theorists, jurisprudes and political philosophers.” —Simon Blackburn, Times Higher Education “Dignity deserves to be widely read, not only for its intrinsic interest, but also as a corrective to the habit of discussing such topics in abstraction from their social context. Whether or not one agrees with Rosen's arguments, there can be no doubt he has widened our horizons.” —Rae Langton, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is often considered to be the source of the contemporary idea of human dignity, but his conception of human dignity and its relation to human value and to the requirement to respect others have not been widely understood. Kant on Human Dignity offers the first in-depth study in English of this subject. Based on a comprehensive analysis of all the passages in which Kant uses the term ;dignity, as well as an analysis of the most prominent arguments for (...) a value of human beings in the Kant literature, the book carefully examines different ways of construing the relationship between dignity, value and respect for others. It takes seriously Kant s Copernican Revolution in moral philosophy: Kant argues that moral imperatives cannot be based on any values without yielding heteronomy. Instead it is imperatives of reason that determine what is valuable. The requirement to respect all human beings is one such imperative. Respect for human beings does not follow from human dignity for this would violate autonomy but is an unconditional command of reason. Following this train of thought yields a unified account of Kant s moral philosophy. (shrink)

This article focuses on human dignity as a moral idea and, in particular, on a single but fundamental question: what conception of human dignity, if any, can generate an egalitarian duty to respect all persons? After surveying two mainstream and two alternative conceptions, the article suggests that explaining how human dignity generates an egalitarian duty of respect may be more difficult than has been appreciated.

Although the idea of dignity has always been applied to human beings and although its role is far from being uncontroversial, some recent works in animal ethics have tried to apply the idea of dignity to animals. The aim of this paper is to discuss critically whether these attempts are convincing and sensible. In order to assess these proposals, I put forward two formal conditions that any conception of dignity must meet and outline three main approaches which might justify the (...) application of dignity to animals: the species-based approach, moral individualism and the relational approach. Discussing in particular works by Martha Nussbaum and Michael Meyer I argue that no approach can convincingly justify the extension of dignity to animals because all fail to meet the formal conditions and do not provide an appropriate basis for animal dignity. I conclude by arguing that the recognition of the moral importance of animals and their defense should appeal to other normative concepts which are more appropriate than dignity. (shrink)

The meteoric rise of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology has ignited discussions of engineering agricultural animals to improve their welfare. While some have proposed enhancing animals, for instance by engineering for disease resistance, others have suggested we might diminish animals to improve their welfare. By reducing or eliminating species-typical capacities, the expression of which is frustrated under current conditions, animal diminishment could reduce or eliminate the suffering that currently accompanies industrial animal agriculture. Although diminishment could reduce animal suffering, there is a (...) widespread intuition that it would be wrong. One attempt to justify this intuition has been to claim that inhibiting the development of species-typical functions is wrong, even if it improves welfare. This has often been couched in terms of violating an animal’s dignity. I argue that the dignity objection to diminishment fails. In the first place, it fails to apply to some of the most troubling cases of diminishment, the creation of so-called animal microencepahlic lumps. In the second place, dignity views misplace the normative relevance of species norms; I argue that considerations from evolutionary biology should lead us to treat species norms - such as the possession of typical capacities - as merely a heuristic for rendering judgments about welfare. But diminishment cases are precisely the cases where the heuristic breaks down, and becomes a bias. I close my discussion with a sketch of my Historical Injustices Approach to animal ethics, and how it may help us vindicate our intuition that diminishment is wrong without appeal to species norms. (shrink)

A central puzzle of contemporary moral and political philosophy is that while most of us believe that all or almost all human beings enjoy the same moral status, human beings possess the capacities that supposedly ground moral status to very unequal levels. This paper aims to develop a novel strategy to vindicate the idea of moral equality against this challenge. Its central argument is that the puzzle emerges only if one accepts a usually unstated theoretical premise about value and the (...) proper response to value. The premise holds that if the presence of a valuable property warrants a certain kind of response towards its bearers, then every variation in the degree to which the property is present necessarily constitutes a reason for a corresponding variation in the response that is warranted towards its bearers. It argues that despite its intuitive appeal, the premise is not plausible as a general view about the proper way of responding to value, and as a view about responding to the value of rational beings in particular. It proposes an account of the proper manner of valuing rational beings that supports a distinctive version of the so-called threshold approach to justifying equal moral status. (shrink)

There is broad agreement that humans can be wronged independently of their incurring any harm, that is, when their welfare is not affected. Examples include unnoticed infringements of privacy, ridiculing unaware individuals, or disregarding individuals’ autonomous decision-making in their best interest. However, it is less clear whether the same is true of animals—that is, whether moral agents can wrong animals in situations that do not involve any harm to the animals concerned. In order to answer this question, I concentrate on (...) the illustrative case of treating animals in a demeaning yet harmless way that would be disrespectful if humans were concerned. I discuss whether such actions are permissible or unjustifiably discriminatory from a moral point of view. I conclude that moral agents cannot directly wrong animals without harming them and thus do not owe it to a particular animal to refrain from such actions. However, if the actions increase the likelihood that animal abuse will occur, this presents a strong indirect reason against performing them. Thus, the reasons for refraining from such actions are merely indirect rather than direct. (shrink)

In this engaging APSA address, Jacques Maritain outlines the essential relationship between Christianity and democracy. In Maritain's view, it is the Gospel or the Christian leaven which has awakened the secular, temporal consciousness to supreme moral principles and the real content of democracy understood as the earthly pursuit of Gospel truths conceming the transcendent origins and destiny of man and society. Christianity teaches the inalienable dignity of every human being fashioned in the image of God, the inviolability of conscience, the (...) unity of the human race, the natural equality of all men, children of the same God and redeemed by the same Christ, the dignity of labor and the dignity of the poor, the primacy of inner values and good will over external values, universal brotherhood, love, and justbe. Maritain distinguishes between the procedural aspects and the substantive content of democracy, but anchors the Gospel vision in the free exercise of rational and moral faculties as key to democratic self-government. He cautions that without a superior moral law by virtue of which men are bound in conscience toward what is just and good, the rule of the majority runs the risk of being raised to the supreme rule of good and evil, and democracy is liable to tum to totalitahanism, that is, to self-destruction. Maritain concludes that what has been gained for the secular consciousness, if it does not veer to barbarism, is the sense of freedom consonant with the vocation of our nature. (shrink)

Early defenders of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights invoked species hierarchy: human beings are owed rights because of our discontinuity with and superiority to animals. Subsequent defenders avoided species supremacism, appealing instead to conditions of embodied subjectivity and corporeal vulnerability we share with animals. In the past decade, however, supremacism has returned in work of the new ‘dignitarians’ who argue that human rights are grounded in dignity, and that human dignity requires according humans a higher status than animals. Against (...) the dignitarians, I argue that defending human rights on the backs of animals is philosophically suspect and politically self-defeating. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to sketch and defend a novel conception of dignity. I begin by offering three desiderata that a theory of dignity should be able to satisfy: it should be able to explain why all human beings are owed respect, and what kind of respect we are owed; it should be able to explain how acts such as torture damage dignity, and what kinds of harms this brings about; and finally, it should be able to explain (...) why dignity is held to a higher degree by certain individuals. After demonstrating that the dominant, Kantian-inspired conception of dignity cannot fulfill these desiderata, I develop a novel conception of dignity that centers around the role of normative standards. Dignity, on this conception, involves being subject to, and then upholding, relevant normative standards; to violate someone’s dignity is to prevent them from upholding those standards. Importantly, these standards can have either a subjective or a communal source, which in turn explains both the agential and social harms that accompany dignity violations. I then draw on the idea of social dignity to explain human dignity. Unlike the dominant philosophical conception, I take human dignity to be a status that is conferred, rather than a status that is inherent. (shrink)

In the Paraplegia Case, we must choose either to preserve the life of a paraplegic for 10 years or that of someone in full health for the same duration. Non-consequentialists reject a benefit-maximising view, which holds that since the person in full health will have a higher quality of life, we ought to save him straightaway. In the Unequal Lifespan Case, we face a choice between saving one person for 5 years in full health and another for 25 years in (...) full health. Frances Kamm has recently unfurled an Equal Respect Argument in an effort to support the position that while we ought to give each person a 50% chance of being saved in the Paraplegia Case, we are morally permitted to save straightaway the person who would live longer in the Unequal Lifespan case. The article tries to show that a Kant-inspired account of the dignity of persons is far more successful than Kamm's argument in supporting this position. The Kant-inspired account owes this success to its conceiving of respect for persons not primarily as respect for their pursuit of what is of value for them, but rather as respect for the value in them. (shrink)

Perfectionism about well-being is, at a minimum, the view that people’s lives go well when, and because they realize their capacities. It is common to link perfectionism with an idea of human essence or nature, to yield the view that what constitutes people’s well-being is the development and exercise of characteristically human capacities. The first part of this paper considers the very serious problems associated with the idea of human nature or essence, and argues that perfectionism would be more plausible (...) if it abandons reliance on it and focuses instead on the unfolding of some valuable capacities that need not be unique to, or shared by all human beings. This revised perfectionism is evaluative all the way down, pragmatic but not unprincipled, and holistic. In its second part, the paper articulates this account in terms of the dignitarian approach—the view that we have reason to organize our personal and social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individuals that give rise to their dignity. Dignity is a non-conventional, normative status based on a diverse and disjunctive set of valuable capacities. The dignitarian approach helps develop, defend, and identify the implications of the revised perfectionism suggested in the previous part of the paper while also allowing us to make sense of the role of some generalizations that animated some of the plausibility of traditional perfectionism—and this without the pitfalls of reliance on an idea of human nature. On this paper’s proposed view—Dignitarian Perfectionism—human individuals’ well-being consists, at least in part, in developing and exercising the capacities at the basis of their dignity. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of human dignity based on a discussion of Kant's moral and political philosophy and then shows its relevance for articulating and developing in a fresh way some normative dimensions of Marx’s critique of capitalism as involving exploitation, domination, and alienation, and the view of socialism as involving a combination of freedom and solidarity. What is advanced here is not Kant’s own conception of dignity, but an account that partly builds on that conception and partly criticizes (...) it. The same is the case with the account of socialism in relation to Marx’s work. As articulated, Kantian dignity and Marxian socialism turn out to be quite appealing and mutually supportive. (shrink)

Dressing up animals in ridiculous costumes, shaming dogs on the internet, playing Big Buck Hunter at the local tavern, feeding vegan food to cats, and producing and consuming “knockout” animals, what, if anything, do these acts have in common? In this article, I develop two respect-based arguments that explain how these acts are morally problematic, even though they might not always, if ever, affect the experiential welfare of animals. While these acts are not ordinary wrongs, they are animal dignitary wrongs.