PRIMUM NON NOCERE FIRST DO NO HARM:

FINDING COMMON GROUND FOR HUMAN INDIGNITY

PRIMUM NON NOCERE FIRST DO NO HARM:
FINDING COMMON GROUND FOR HUMAN INDIGNITY









A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in Philosophy







By







Charles R. Coil Jr.
Harding University
Bachelor of Arts in Business, 1976







May 2009
University of Arkansas






ABSTRACT

Given the current philosophical impasse over human dignity, it is the neglected
concept of human indignity that appears to offer more evocative and momentous capacity
to drive the moral discourse in a positive direction. Philosophy of language ideas from
Austin and Wittgenstein are suggestive of a largely untapped field of meaning by way of
negation which reveals the real intent behind a demand for human dignity, analogous to
the way we contrast real and unreal, light and darkness, heat and cold, even sanity and
insanity. This human indignity response might be further explained as behaving similar
to a simple tropism from elementary biology. In order to avoid the relativist and
subjectivist difficulties in weighting the definition of indignity merely toward personal
insult, I propose the hypothesis that the universal moral claim that one ought not to inflict
needless pain is a paradigmatic or grounding notion for human indignity. Thus, the
ancient proscription, primum non nocere, first do no harm, turns out to be a guiding
concept, not just for the practice of medicine but for the practice of moral philosophy and
a way forward toward acknowledging a sense of moral convergence or consilience of
conscience in the great debate over human dignity.
















This thesis is approved for
Recommendation to the
Graduate Council




Thesis Director:


_______________________________________
Dr. Richard Lee



Thesis Committee:

_______________________________________
Dr. Jacob Adler


_______________________________________
Dr. Tom Senor















































2009 by Charles R. Coil Jr.
All Rights Reserved




























THESIS DUPLICATION RELEASE

I hereby authorize the University of Arkansas Libraries to duplicate this Thesis when
needed for research and/or scholarship.



Agreed __________________________________________
Charles R. Coil Jr.


Refused __________________________________________
Charlie R. Coil Jr.






































vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction. The concept of dignity is still philosophically controversial
even as the concept of indignity remains intuitively powerful. 1
A. Definition and brief history 3
B. Contemporary debate: dignity in disarray 5
II. How an indignity thesis could be more tenable alternative 11
A. Religious approaches 12
B. Consequentialist approaches 14
C. Deontological approaches 19
D. Excursus on Kant 20
E. Virtue Ethics approaches 22
F. Phenomenalist approaches 27
G. Summarizing indignity as a tenable alternative 28
III. Indignity and language
A. Wittgenstein on our real need 29
B. Austin on ordinary language & trouser words 30
IV. The indignity response: a tropism? 34
V. Indignity response analogues 38
A. Light/Dark 39
B. Heat/Cold 39
C. Health/Disease 41
D. Sanity/Insanity 41
VI. A Preliminary Summary 42
VII. An intriguing hypothesis: needless pain as paradigmatic of indignity.
Perhaps the most visible symbol of the abstract notion of indignity is
the universal moral claim that one ought not inflict needless pain. 43
A. A puzzle: the issue better framed as death without indignity.
The death with dignity euthanasia debate and ethics of
palliative care can be seen as a puzzle about exactly how to
allow a terminally-ill patient to avoid needless pain
drugs to assuage the pain or drugs to annihilate the patient? 44
B. An intriguing hypothesis: needless pain as emblematic of indignity.
1. Defining terms: Emblematic and paradigmatic 45
2. Defining terms: Non-maleficence as a universal moral claim 48
C. Hypothesis fits previous concepts of language, tropism & analogues
1. Hypothesis is less ontologically difficult 49
2. Hypothesis fits with ordinary language observations 50
3. Hypothesis appeals to a principle absolutist position 51
4. Hypothesis could stand behind philosophy of caring notions 52
5. Hypothesis works well with negation approach 53
VIII. Testing the hypothesis
A. What about indignity without pain? 54
1. Indignities without pain outside hypothesis purview 54
2. Indignities without pain do not have less validity 56
3. Needless pain without indignity also not considered 56

vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

B. What about indignity and the second-person standpoint? 57
C. What about indignity and autonomy? 61
D. What about indignity and the pain of punishment?
1. lack of correlation 65
2. lack of proportion 67
E. What about the hard cases?
1. ticking bomb scenario 69
2. torture in general: 70
(a) ostensible historical justifications for torture 71
(b) many justifications can indicate dubious claim 72
(c) psychological considerations and torture 72
3. Rowes fawn: indignity of evil itself 75

IX. Extending the hypothesis
A. Can needless pain be autonomously chosen? 77
1. Sadomasochism / schadenfreude 77
2. Frankels inner freedom 78
3. Healing ends
(a) self 79
(b) others 80
(c) supererogatory 81
B. Notions of ideal observer and circumstance of indignity 82
1. Kinds of circumstances 83
(a) chosen (b) coerced (c) coincidence
2. Kinds of clarifications
(a) helps clarify absence of pain issues 84
(b) helps clarify absence of autonomy/rationality issues 85
(c) helps clarify absence of perviousness/vulnerability issues 87
C. Needless pain and Virtue Ethics: vulnerability, invulnerability, resilience 89
X. Conclusion:
A. Summary thoughts on the hypothesis 92
B. Highlights and possible propositions 94
C. No trivial claim:
1. Presuppositions matter 95
2. Include non-cognitivists 97
3. A simple illustration 98
D. Possibilities of moral convergence 99

Endnotes 103
Bibliography 136
Appendix: I. Applications to practical cases: torture, abortion, and euthanasia 156
II. The Imposter Stone: a thought experiment 160

1

I. Introduction. The concept of dignity is still philosophically controversial
even as the concept of indignity remains intuitively powerful. Lets begin at the end,
or that is with the end in mind, namely, to do no harm. Why has this ancient, time-
honored phrase First do no harm, traditionally associated in medicine with the
Hippocratic Oath, stood the test of time?
1
Why not instead say, First do all the good you
can? Could the reason relate to something as simple as the fundamental capacity of
ordinary human language to express ontological realities? That is, people seem to see
immediately and know how to express when there is harm being done to another person.
But, we disagree and fumble for words more often over what it is that might do a person
good. We disagree less often over what does a person harm. The ancients understood that
liability is always the first claim, so avoiding harm is the first aim. How does this idea fit
into the overall scheme of how to provide help to the human race? It appears to be a
bedrock principle that may get overlooked as we race to find some cure for what ails us
either physically or ethically. When people try to ground certain ethical claims toward
one another on the basis of some notion of human dignity there seem to be controversial
assumptions at stake. On the other hand, human indignity appears to offer more of a
prima facie (intuitive, basic belief) case for an ethical claim.
Human beings will tell you very quickly if and when they feel they are being
mistreated. As a matter of fact, they become downright indignant about it, we often say.
But, there seems to be an infelicity of language
2
to turn around and declare that this
indignant feeling must indicate some ontological fact of the matter attached to a concept
we call human dignity. Perhaps there is something called dignity that actually,
intrinsically exists (even as just a metaphysical abstraction) inside humans or perhaps

2

theres no such thing. I affirm neither proposition. Now admittedly, there might not be a
case for going so far as to classify human dignity as a systematically misleading
expression as Gilbert Ryle has outlined the concept. At least in everyday speech, most of
us would probably not want to label human dignity as a bogus predicate as Ryle
defines that term.
3
There does seem to be something of a particular character with this
notion of human dignity more than just that of a specified status. But, philosophers are at
a loss to clearly explain and agree on what this business of human dignity might actually
turn out to be. Perhaps the Scottish poet understood more philosophy of language than he
realized when he chose the turn of phrase, mans inhumanity to man, rather than some
indecipherable mundanitymans need for humanity. Burns knew with a poets
intuition where the shared value was; that it is this inhumanity that we get worked up
about. We understand inhumanity perhaps even more than we understand humanity itself!
Vulcan dignity? How can I grant you what I don't understand?! Bones
McCoy, character who played the chief medical officer aboard the starship Enterprise on
the 1970s TV serial, Star Trek. Therein lies the modern problem. How can we grant
human dignity when we dont understand it? Why not explore first how to grant
something we do understand at least a little more about. And so, let our thesis be this: At
the start, indignity, as commonly understood, offers the more useful concept for how to
treat people than the more difficult concept of dignity which is not as clearly understood.
Though not as poetic as Robert Burns, it was an insight of this very sort that made
for some productive analysis of ordinary language in the philosophical work of John L.
Austin and an area that I will explore in this paper. I suggest that this rather simplistic-
seeming distinction in reference to indignity and dignity has not received enough

3

attention and needs to be examined more closely. This is all the more important due to
the weight now attached to human dignity as the philosophical underpinning for ideas
about human rights, torture, stem cell research, abortion, and euthanasia, just to name a
few. I propose finally that using some aspects from the concept of indignity, in place of
dignity, could also offer a way forward or even a possible convergence of moral opinions
surrounding human dignity in several ethical debates.
A. Definition and brief history. As it is currently used in the English language,
the only non-obsolete definition for indignity in the Oxford English Dictionary is
[u]nworthy treatment; contemptuous or insolent usage; injury accompanied with insult.
With an and as a plural: A slight offered to a person; an act intended to expose a person
to contempt; an insult or affront.
4
Hearing the words slight and insult and affront
may call to mind for some, the stereotype of the sniffy, disdainful, umbrageous, too easily
offended prig. This more idiomatic picture may represent one understanding of how an
indignity has come to be viewed by some, but it is not to be taken as the core sense of
the word or the standard definitive view in this paper. I suspect that something has
happened over the years in the psychology of our language that has triggered a kind of
lack of respect for this word indignity so that using it has fallen out of favor.
5
For
example, when I want to emphasize how strongly I feel about some terribly unworthy
treatment, it just seems to carry less palpable significance if I merely protest that, Ive
suffered an indignity. However, if I protest (over the exact same mistreatment) that, My
dignity has been violated! Or, Ive been robbed of my dignity! then ears perk up and
heads turn, even though everyone understands that there will be no search-and-rescue
mission to find my lost, stolen or violated dignity. This is a remarkable feature of our

4

ordinary language that the thing which seems to pack the most psychic punch is not some
metaphysical abstraction on ontological value called dignity but rather a specific action
that triggers an instinctive, indignant response or sense of indignity.
Here is an example of how intuitively powerful this concept can be. When Chief
Bromden flew over the cuckoos nest and escaped from the horrible indignities of the
sanitarium, millions of viewers cheered in movie theatres across the world. Jack
Nicholsons character, Randolph Patrick McMurphy, along with Chief (played by actor
Will Sampson) and the other inmates in the asylum represented the great masses of
subjugated populations whose rights and human dignity are denied by a superior
authority.
6
Dignity denied rather than dignity defined is the key distinction here. It is
remarkable that the Polish writer Ken Keseys novel (1963) and the Czech movie director
Milos Formans film adaptation (1975) were greeted with such worldwide approbation.
7

Also interesting is the fact that a number of leading academic and advocacy organizations
championing the idea of human dignity are based in the Republic of Poland and the
Czech Republic where the populations of both nations have a relatively recent shared
experience of Nazi atrocities and Soviet totalitarian crueltyhuman indignities.
8

There seems to be something within the human psyche which Kesey and Forman
personified in story form on page and screen. Such a dramatic depiction of human
indignity and the ultimate triumph over it, somehow taps into a visceral and seemingly
self-evident aspect of what it is to be human. And, many people probably see no
confusion using the expression human dignity to epitomize the concept. But there is, in
fact, a great amount of confusion when those same people are asked to define what they
mean by dignity, until of course, they begin to describe what amounts to avoiding

5

indignity or preventing a violation of dignity. So, what is it really, for humans to suffer
indignity? Or what do we mean to say when we say that someones human dignity has
been denied or violated? Might there be, philosophically at least, greater moral clarity
attached to the expression, human indignity?
Framing the issue in this way and answering these initial questions could offer
more immediate help for ethical debates that involve human dignity. Of course, this is
more than a mere philosophical language puzzle, since global human rights declarations,
bioethics position papers, United States military code, and even the German, Belgian,
Bulgarian, Hungarian, Finnish, South African, Peruvian and Brazilian national
constitutions all appeal to the concept of an inviolable human dignity as though its
meaning was a foregone universal consensus.
9
At the Covey Lectures of Loyola
University, political scientist Glenn Tinder has even argued that the sanctity of every
individual, which he views as the gist of human dignity, is the central moral intuition of
the Western tradition.
10

Even so, the expression human dignity, as it is used today, is of relatively recent
origin,
11
and reservations were being expressed sixty years ago in scholarly circles
regarding its vague meaning. Witness this notation from the journal Ethics 1946:
Few expressions call forth the nod of assent and put an end to
analysis as readily as the dignity of man. It sounds wholesome and real,
and its utterance easily quiets our critical faculties. Because it is used by a
great variety of people, coming from all different quarters, and in a great
variety of contexts, we may well pause to examine its meaning.
12


B. Contemporary debate: dignity in disarray.

The most remarkable of this kind are the sects, founded on the
different sentiments with regard to the dignity of human nature; which is a
point that seems to have divided philosophers and poets, as well as divines,
from the beginning of the world to this day. David Hume
13


6

Human dignity is a linguistic currency that will buy a basketful of
extraordinary meanings. It is not surprising, perhaps, that some critics
describe dignity as a meaningless slogan. Richard Horton
14


A leading bioethics philosopher, Richard Ashcroft, has neatly classified the
contemporary disparity of viewpoints about human dignity as follows. (bf mine)
Currently, scholars divide into four distinct groups as regards
dignity. One group regards all dignity-talk as incoherent and at best
unhelpful, at worst misleading.[4] I venture to suggest that this group is
the mainstream of current English speaking bioethics. Another group finds
dignity talk illuminating in some respects, but strictly reducible to
autonomy as extended to cover some marginal cases. To this group we
can assign Deryck Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword, whose immensely
scholarly and interesting book I discuss further below.[5,6] The third
group considers dignity to be a concept in a family of concepts about
capabilities, functionings, and social interactions. This group is
exemplified by the authors of a recent suite of articles in The Lancet,
inspired by the writings of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum on
development and freedom.[7,8,9,10] The final group considers dignity as a
metaphysical property possessed by all and only human beings, and
which serves as a foundation for moral philosophy and human rights.[11
13] This group is perhaps the mainstream in European bioethics and much
theological writing on bioethical topics, and is exemplified in the book by
Leon Kass here reviewed, of which more in due course.
15


From the above it seems clear that the urgent issue at stake for human rights advocacy is
in settling on some basic consensus meaning for human dignity. [T]hat debate, says
philosophers, Richard Claude and Burns Weston in a survey of human rights progress
worldwide, includes the issue of how, in a world of diverse cultures, the basic demands
for human dignity can be satisfied while simultaneously accommodating widely differing
views of what human dignity means.
16
Despite all the post-World War Two universal
human rights declarations and the concept having been enshrined into the new
constitutions of a number of emerging national governments, a moral philosopher,
Michael Pritchard, offered this reflection in 1972: (italics mine)

7

The notion of human dignity has not fared well in contemporary moral
philosophy. It seems to have suffered the fate of notions such as virtue and
honor, by simply fading into the past. It is not entirely clear why this is
so. For some the notion of human dignity may seem too amorphous,
overworked, or unempirical to withstand philosophical analysis. For others,
it may conjure up theological specters or the rigorism of Kant. Or it may be
that moral philosophers have felt other matters to be more pressing.
17


In a post-September 11
th
world (a phrase we hear so often these days) and particularly
after the United States militarys Abu Ghraib Prison torture scandal, it would seem that
nothing could be more pressing than this matter of human dignity.
18
Nonetheless, the
underlying suggestion of vagueness and ambiguity still plagues this field of inquiry
which has led Ronald Dworkin to title an entire chapter in his book Lifes Dominion,
The Concept of Dignity is a Vague Ideal.
19
Another preeminent legal philosopher and
international law scholar of the 20
th
century, Oscar Schachter remarked that
We do not find an explicit definition of the expression dignity of the
human person in international instruments or (as far as I know) in
national law. Its intrinsic meaning has been left to intuitive understanding,
conditioned in large measure by cultural factors. When it has been
invoked in concrete situations, it has been generally assumed that a
violation of human dignity can be recognized even if the abstract term
cannot be defined.
20


Note for later reference Schachters observation above about being able to recognize a
violation of human dignity despite the inability to define the abstract term. This is a key
impetus for some of the ideas to be put forward. As recently as 2003 Jeremy Rabkin,
another renowned international legal scholar, agreed suggesting that contemporary ideas
about the role of international law are grounded on a very misplaced notion of what
human dignity is.
21
In fairness to Pritchard, he did reference a notable effort at the time
(1970s) by Herbert Spiegelberg to offer a coherent view and an actual prolegomena for a
philosophy of human dignity. [Italics and bf. are mine]

8

[As] much as I believe in the paramount importance of this idea
[human dignity] in the present plight of mankind, I am concerned about
the prevailing glibness and complacency among its supporters as to its
meaning and foundations. Sooner or later this may spell a crisis. To
prevent it is one of the opportunities and responsibilities for todays
philosophers of all schools.
All I propose to offer are a prolegomena for such a [human
dignity] philosophy. What I want to show specifically is: (1) that the idea
of human dignity plays a decisive role in todays social and political
thought and action, even more so than commonly realized; (2) that this
idea is relatively new; (3) that our ordinary way of talking about it is
confused and vague to the point of contradictoriness; (4) that the idea
of human dignity is vulnerable to attack; (5) that the philosophical
treatment of the idea thus far is inadequate.
22


It appears to me that the prediction of a crisis has indeed arrived and that Spiegelbergs
observations are still just as valid as when they were written almost thirty years ago. As
he went on to note, [H]uman dignity seems to be one of the few common values in our
world of philosophical pluralism the main hurdle at the moment is that there is not
enough clarity about the meaning of human dignity. To provide it is the responsibility of
all philosophers.
23
(The irony here of a common value without clarity of meaning leads
one to speculate whether the underlying theme of indignity is actually the common value
while dignity is the notion actually lacking clarity.) By 1977 Ronald Dworkin had as
much as declared the same in claiming that anyone who aimed to take human rights
seriously must at least acknowledge this vague but powerful idea of human dignity.
24

And as noted earlier, he had not changed his mind over fifteen years later.
But, what are we to make of such a crisis? With so many conflicting views,
certainly this paper is not meant to offer anything remotely approaching a refutation of or
even a defense of one particular view of human dignity. Instead, as Alasdair MacIntyre
offered in his Paul Carus Lectures, [w]hat I have issued is rather an invitation: to show
how from each of their standpoints due place can be given to the facts about
25
the

9

neglected concept of indignity. Hannah Arendt has famously pronounced that Human
dignity needs a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a
new law on earth, whose validity this time must comprehend the whole of humanity
while its power must remain strictly limited, rooted in and controlled by newly defined
territorial entities.
26
Previous or older guarantees presumably have come in the form
of either a religious belief in an imago dei (image or spark of the divine) intrinsic to
every human being
27
or a vague, societal belief (supported by human government) rooted
in the classical and medieval idea of a grand hierarchy of dignity otherwise known as the
great chain of being.
28
Of course, since the Enlightenment these conceptions of the
ground for human dignity have steadily faded.
29
In their place for the most part until
recently, Kant and Bentham and their philosophical successors have borne the burden and
carried on the battle for explaining and defending what is meant by human dignity.
30

Since G.E.M. Anscombes influential 1958 essay, Modern Moral Philosophy and the
so-called aretaic turn in philosophy, various reincarnations of Aristotelian virtue ethics
(sometimes in tandem with Christian Thomist philosophy) regarding human dignity have
gained a greater foothold in academia.
31
When it comes to the concept of human dignity,
virtue ethics, of course, will center on the human agent first. Such an approach makes for
an interesting intersection with a thesis about the human response which I identify as
indignity and then try to further elucidate. So, these four great, sometimes overlapping,
ethical domainsreligion, consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics offer a wide-
ranging catalog for considering human dignity and indignity.
All of this is not to say, of course, that any number of cognoscenti have not taken
their turn over the years at attempting to define and refine the concept of dignity.

10

Kantians ,
32
phenomenalists,
33
linguistic philosophy,
34
personalists and communitarians,
35

not to mention utilitarians of various stripes have all stepped into the fray with quite a
range of different views in recent years to the point that this sense of disarray continues
regarding the concept. Nonetheless, the sense of a crisis of meaning
36
seems to be
growing.
37
Finally comes this stinging rebuke, The Stupidity of Dignity, from
prominent Harvard linguist and psychology professor, Steven Pinker, in an article in The
New Republic criticizing the 555-page President's Council on Bioethics report entitled
Human Dignity and Bioethics.
38
[Italics mine]
This collection of essays is the culmination of a long effort by the Council
to place dignity at the center of bioethics. The general feeling is that, even
if a new technology would improve life and health and decrease suffering
and waste, it might have to be rejected, or even outlawed, if it affronted
human dignity. Whatever that is. The problem is that dignity is a
squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands
assigned to it. The bioethicist Ruth Macklin, who had been fed up with
loose talk about dignity intended to squelch research and therapy, threw
down the gauntlet in a 2003 editorial, Dignity Is a Useless Concept.
39


Pinkers essay is more of a rant, since he spares only a few words actually countering any
of the reports wide range of peer-reviewed argumentation.
40
But I only quote him here to
summarize the divisive tone of the wider scholarly debate outside academic philosophy.
More than just tone or semantics, as noted from Richard Ashcroft earlier, the actual
disparity of viewpoints on human dignity seems likely to continue. In this particular
academic script I wish to remain mostly agnostic on which view comes closer to the truth
of the matter. Not only this, the remainder of this writing will show that the indignity
thesis which we have set out could be seen as consistent with all four of Ashcrofts
divisions or any number of other human dignity debate maps that are out there.

11

Harvard epidemiologist, Jonathan Mann, considered the founder of the health and
human rights movement,
41
offers an apt transition at this point. [Italics mine]
[W]e are explorers in the larger world of human suffering and well-being.
And our current maps of this universe, like world maps from sixteenth
century Europe, have some very well-defined, familiar coastlines and
territories and also contain large blank spaces, which beckon the explorer.
The language of biomedicine is cumbersome and ultimately perhaps of
little usefulness in exploring the impacts of violations of dignity on
physical, mental, and social well-being. The definition of dignity itself is
complex and thus far elusive and unsatisfying. While the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights starts by placing dignity first, all people are
born equal in dignity and rights, we do not yet have a vocabulary, or
taxonomy, let alone an epidemiology of dignity violations. Yet it seems we
all know when our dignity is violated or impugned.
42


It is this last insight that I will explore in the next section. But first, it seems important to
emphasize again how easily the assumptive move is made from dignity to its violation
without much recognition of the rather potent distinction. However, as a trained medical
thinker, Manns instincts here are revealing. When attempts are made to lay out the
contours of what dignity amounts to, over and over the theorist finds herself moving to
the margins or the boundaries. This area of the map, as Mann suggests, beckons.
II. How an indignity thesis could be more tenable.
The prospects look promising for an indignity thesis to offer some more cogent,
tenable assistance in the midst of the human dignity debate. A cursory glance at how
human dignity has been defended from a philosophical perspective can reveal a number
of challenges where, I believe, a closer scrutiny of indignity might have helped. But, how
to concisely group and articulate these ideas is a real challenge. Not surprisingly, this
broad and confusing array of ideas about human dignity is quite difficult for practitioners
in various professional disciplines faced with very real and very human problems that
involve hearing an almost constant reference to human dignity. Here are a couple of

12

samplings of what many of them are liable to see in the literature. Nordenfelt and Edgar
present a theoretical model of dignity that has been created within the Dignity and Older
Europeans (DOE) Project. The model consists of four kinds of dignity: the dignity of
merit; the dignity of moral stature; the dignity of identity; and Menschenwrde .[the
latter being] the universal dignity that pertains to all human beings to the same extent and
cannot be lost as long as the person exists.
43
University of Manchester philosopher,
Matti Hayry conceptualizes the landscape very nicely with his five dignities: of God
(Catholic), of reason (Kantian), of genes (genetic), of sentient beings (utilitarian) and of
important beings (anti-egalitarian).
44
I will reference some of Hayrys categories a little
later. In light of the existing confusion Hayry recommends that professionals in bioethical
discussions and in global forums find a way to muster some conceptual leniency toward
each other.
45
I would ask for the same leniency with what is to follow in this section. So,
in broad brush strokes, I will look at some key philosophical ideas about human dignity
grouped generally within these four, traditional ethical domains to follow and see how the
prospects might fare for applying our indignity thesis.
A. Religious approaches. Among religious defenders of human dignity the major
problem to face will be metaethical and metaphysical in nature. That is, the question
typically argued is: does a religious position regarding human dignity absolutely require
the positing of a supernatural being? How can there be an image of God implanted in
human beings, or something along these lines, if the prior claim of the existence of God is
considered not provable? It is hard for a conversation to get off the ground when
presuppositions of this nature remain so far apart. Christian philosopher Darryl Pullman
suggests the twin problems of esotericism and redundancy. By esoteric he means, if all

13

that belief in God does is state certain aspects of morality that apply only to those who
support a Christian worldview, then the claim to universal significance is trivialized.
46

That is, if all a religious approach says is What you unbelievers call human dignity, we
refer to as god within, then this seems to set up an esoteric trivialization of the whole
concept. The other religious problem is often addressed with the question, Can I be good
without God? The idea is, if I can be good without God then God is redundant. The
same applies to human dignity. If I can have human dignity without God in the equation,
then adding God seems redundant. All this tends to diminish a sense of need for
discourse across the ideological divide and ends up separating religious thinkers from the
rest of academia. As James Gustafson has put it, the problem here becomes the
bracketing of theology itself
47
and some religious thinkers have resorted to this approach.
The concern is if all that a Christian philosopher can claim about some moral truth only
appears superfluous and already ascertainable from non-religious and even more ancient
viewpoints, then where is the universal normative relevance of a Christian conception?
Of course, Christian and other religious philosophers have plenty to say here but the
pluralist philosophical terrain is crowded.
48

Is there prospect then for an indignity thesis that includes religious support? If it
can be said that indignity in some sense is the negation of dignity then there is a great
deal of religious philosophical thinking in this general area which is sometimes called
apophatic theology.
49
Here is a ~p negative claim: it is not the case that indignity entails
dignity. In elementary logic, whatever ~p is, it cannot include p. But, to assert ~p is
not merely to declare a vacancy. Religious thinkers for centuries have pondered and
wrestled with this seeming inscrutability of how much more content can be found in a

14

negation which is not that apparent on the surface. For example, whatever superlative you
would like to attribute to God, apophatic theology negates it since God is beyond and
above all human capability to describe. And, the idea is that in the very process of
negating, I have actually revealed a little more about God to the human understanding.
Religious defenders of human dignity would be quite familiar then, and probably quite
comfortable, using this initial approach in a conversation about human dignity: I may
not know what dignity is, but I can give you a long list of what it is not! So, lets see if
we can agree on indignity. Notice that here we have not been forced to argue about
dignity based on whether there is a god-likeness or divine nature inside humans or
whether humans are actually gods in some sense. An indignity thesis could at least
forestall this debate while we at least come to limited moral consensus on its meaning
and that it ought be avoided.
B. Consequentialist approaches. Consequentialist approaches take the hardest
line toward human dignity. Dignity is a useless concept says bioethicist, Ruth Macklin
whose very brief article has perhaps received the greatest written response in the
journals.
50
Bagaric and Allan go a step further calling human dignity a vacuous
concept.
51
James Rachels uses evolutionary biology to deny any unique moral concept
of dignity for humans, while Peter Singer has possibly the most biting comment of all,
suggesting that human dignity is only a fine phrase used by those whove run out of
reasons and arguments.
52
Rachels recommends abandoning the concept of human dignity
altogether and replacing it with something he calls moral individualism.
53
Its pretty
safe to conclude that the consequentialist perspective finds the least use for the concept of
dignity. If indeed, as Kant has so famously pronounced, In the kingdom of ends

15

everything has either value or dignity. Whatever has a value can be replaced by
something else which is equivalent; whatever, on the other hand, is above all value, and
therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity,
54
then in the utilitarian kingdom
where everything must be value-calculated, it only follows that there is no such thing as
dignity. Is it any wonder then that the consequentialists look askance whenever the
concept is invoked?
Rather than seeing consequentialism as an outright rejection of human dignity,
Matti Hayry labels this view, the dignity of sentient beings and correctly identifies the
core value or consequentialist basis of dignity as a sentient being having the ability to
suffer.
55
That is, sentience or undifferentiated consciousness is to be valued equally by
all, but whether to call it dignity is admittedly what gets disputed. This is a bit of a
paradox defended under the utilitarian banner because some who would eliminate the
concept altogether at the same time want to extend dignity to include non-human sentient
beings and extend dignity to the act of suicide and assisted suicide, known otherwise as
death with dignity. Neither Jeremy Bentham nor John Stuart Mill used the term dignity
and it had not historically been used by utilitarians until the contemporary euthanasia and
animal rights debates. And so these two consequentialist concerns have taken center stage
in recent years: 1. to be able to die on ones own terms, minimizing pain and maximizing
whatever pleasure might be left in life as the ultimate utilitarian dignity; 2. to elevate
sentient animals to the same level of dignity as human beings in many areas with far
more rights than heretofore contemplated. It is not at all clear that these perspectives on
dignity are winning over great numbers in academic philosophy and they certainly
continue to be controversial topics in popular society.

16

On the other hand, the prospect for a more elemental concept of indignity could
be a more helpful, less controversial conversation starter. Never mind what position you
take on human dignity, a consequentialist might still agree with you that there is a kind of
instinctive indignity response that is triggered in the face of some needless suffering. That
is, it could be agreed that needless infliction of pain, (certainly a measurable unhappiness
quotient in the utilitarian calculus) being a stimulus to an indignity response, at least
among sentient beings, ought to be prevented. Whether animals are capable of an
indignity response is another question that might turn the debate a different direction.
56

But, one could remain agnostic on this question and still find agreement with
consequentialists that human sentient beings clearly exhibit this indignity response
especially on behalf of their own species not to mention animals.
57

Peter Singer and other animal rights utilitarians have taken the debate about
animal dignity further, ostensibly in the name of a mostly Kantian concept--human
dignity, which they ironically find no longer useful.
58
But it is still the case that we talk
ethically about the humane and inhumane treatment of animals and not the other way
around. There is no Planet of the Apes-like movement among humans to demand that
animals show more respect for the dignity of humans. Perhaps there is a prospect for a
different kind of discussion here. Instead of debating utilitarians on whether to attribute
dignity to animals and commencing the debate, it seems to make more sense to ask how
or to what degree humans ought to extend their sense of indignity to include animals.
59

Macklins dismissal of dignity, It means no more than respect for persons or
their autonomy, must now be reexamined in light of the offhand list she offers in which
dignity has no meaning. Each of the following items she lists in the medical field having

17

to do with respect for persons and their autonomy can be recast in terms of avoiding or
preventing indignity. Obtaining voluntary, informed consent is in order to prevent the
patient from experiencing the indignity of some procedure involuntarily. Protecting
confidentiality avoids a person having to suffer the indignity of some information about
the person getting into the wrong hands. Avoiding discrimination and abusive practices
is just another way of saying that one should avoid treating the person to any indignity.
An acceptable meaning of a concept is its ability to convey and represent some unit of
knowledge drawn from certain characteristics. What Macklin has effectively done with
this list is to describe, in part, the concept of indignitya word which is certainly capable
of bearing a great deal of content, something medical professionals love!
Interestingly enough, in an article defending the philosophical concept of moral
progress, Macklin had held the view that a societys recognition of inherent dignity was
one good indicator of its moral progress.
One culture, society, or historical era exhibits a higher degree of moral
progress than another if the first shows more recognition of the inherent
dignity, the basic autonomy, or the intrinsic worth of human beings than
does the second, as expressed in the laws, customs, institutions, and
practices of the respective societies or eras.
60


Apparently, Macklins position has evolved. But, she did say something in this earlier
article which, had she developed it, might have allowed her to forestall complete
abandonment of such a momentous concept in bioethics: (italics mine)
The notions embedded in my proposed analysis of moral progress focus
not on altruism and benevolence, but, rather, on tolerance of and
sensitivity to human indignity, suffering, and pain, as expressed in laws,
customs, moral beliefs, and practices.
61


The opportunity for moral progress, Macklin suggested, is embedded in a sensitivity to
human indignity! I concur.

18

One example of an attempt to offer some place for a consensus about human
dignity comes from what some view as a Pragmatist position. Examining the work of
Michael Ignatieff
62
(human dignity = idolatry) and Richard Rorty (human dignity =
sentimentality), philosopher Brian Schaefer sees these two as a couple of representative
members of the foundationless approach.
63
Put simply, human dignity is nice but when
it comes to human rights, no dignity-based foundation is necessary. Not many however,
are willing to go even further with professor Rorty in his moral skepticism when he
suggests, I do not think there are any plain moral facts out there in the world, nor any
truths independent of language, nor any neutral ground on which to stand and argue that
either torture or kindness are preferable to the other.
64
The point here is not that some
pragmatists defend torture, only that they see no need for some elaborate moral
foundation from which to argue the case. Schaefer as well as Nicholas Wolterstorff see
problems with these so-called foundationless approaches and note that they actually end
up offering a consequentialist account that merely defends a kind of negative view of
human rights.
65
This very much resembles a defense of the human indignity approach.
Again, what if consensus-minded philosophers, such as Rorty or Ignatieff, instead
proceeded with a more modest thesis of indignity especially as this applies to human
rights? Instead of asserting an ever-growing list of rights, (even if some construe them
only to be negative rights) they might say, We propose to talk about human wrongs, or
those things that clearly have consensus-backing as indignities that ought to be avoided.
Based upon a notion that there are certain indignities to the human person which have
nearly universal consent, these can then be drawn up into a declaration of negative rights
or human wrongs. Those of a more pragmatic bent (whether they call themselves

19

consequentialist or not), might well be persuaded to take up such a cause in opposition to
human indignity.
C. Deontological approaches. As quoted earlier, in Kants kingdom of ends
everything has either value or dignity. And so it follows that whatever has a value can
be replaced by something else which is equivalent. Then comes the deontological pice
de rsistance when it comes to the notion of human dignity: Whatever, on the other
hand, is above all value, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity.
66
Here is
the contrast to moral theories guided either by consequences of the moral action or by the
virtue of the moral agent. Deontological conceptions about ethics suggest that there
simply are moral obligations that are normative and binding upon us. They admit of no
equivalent. How they come to be duties or obligations is one way that these deontic
theories get categorized, but all of them concur with W.D. Ross that they are as much a
part of the fundamental order of the universe as geometry or arithmetic.
67
One of those
obligations is to respect or hold as an intrinsic value the dignity of other human beings
by treating them as ends in themselves and not as means only.
68
This is Immanuel Kants
great contribution to moral philosophy, the second formulation of his categorical
imperative.
69
Accordingly then, this obligation is categorical or that is, it is not to be
seen as a hypothetical kind of imperative. It is an absolute moral obligation which means
that it is a deontological kind of ethic in that it must be done as ones duty regardless of
the consequences.
70
And this is where the conflicts and the objections very often appear.
A standard objection is that there are circumstances where obligations appear to conflict
and circumstances where the consequences seem to suggest that an exception is clearly
warranted. When it comes to human dignity, the standard objection has to do with how

20

Kant seems to ground the concept in the autonomy of every human beings rational
nature.
71
Issues then crop up at both ends of human existence when the rational nature is
not so apparentthe human fetus in the womb, infants, humans with severe mental
disabilities from birth defect, injury, disease or age-related dementia. Where do we go to
find our duty or obligation concerning human dignity in these cases? It would seem that
the (Kantian) duty is lessened where the human dignity seems diminished.
On the other hand, rather than positing absolute, ultimate worth in the human
being, I could likely gain, as a deontological ethicist, an even wider hearing by proposing
that this universal instinctual response of indignity implies some moral obligations. An
indignity issue can be put forward in a way which perhaps many more could agree that
some indignity needs to be avoided, whatever the case may be. This intuitionist-sounding
kind of thesis, though more primitive, has some echoes of resonance with one of W.D.
Rosss prima facie duties of non-maleficence.
72
The duty, if we want to use that word,
to oppose or resist indignity is just there. People dont have to be reminded of their
obligation to righteous indignation. Indignity doesnt have to be introduced or even
explained as a duty. Whether this view is intuitionist-leaning or Kantian-leaning there
does seem to be due place for some deontological consideration of the notion of indignity.
D. Excursus on Kant. I suppose that aside from a religious conception, it is
impossible to discuss human dignity without somewhere, somehow, going through or
around Kant. As one philosopher quipped, It has often been said that in matters of
philosophy, one has to be either with Kant or against him. In relation to the idea of
human dignity, this commonplace offers a helpful starting point.
73
According to Kant,
the morally good attitude of mind as a rational being is able to universalize the moral law

21

and by this capacity of law-making there accrues a dignity or that is, an unconditioned
and incomparable worth... Autonomy is therefore the ground of the dignity of human
nature and of every rational nature.
74
Kantians have argued for years among themselves
about just exactly what this dignity-conferring property or capacity human beings might
possess which suffuses them with such dignity. Is it our autonomy or our rational
capacity or some combination of the two? And is it intrinsic and ontologically distinct? It
is traditionally understood that Kant seemed to think that the dignity-bestowing faculty
was simply a capacity for moral action (or a good will) but this view has recently come
under serious question.
Recent years have seen the development of a powerful reinterpretation of
Kant's basic approach in ethical thought. Kant, it is argued, should not be
read as defending the stark, metaphysics-laden formalism for which his
theory is so famous. Rather, the reinterpreters claim that the heart of
Kantian practical philosophy is the absolute value of humanity, or human
rational nature. Kant's ethics can thus be understood as a "theory of value,"
in which the singular value of our own end-setting capacity as rational
agents is taken as supreme, or even as the source of all value.
75


There appears to be an opening here among Kantians to talk more about this valuing
instinct over the notion of an intrinsic property. A case in point is the rather extensive
study that has been done by Oliver Sensen of every single use of the words human
dignity by Kant (110 instances) in all of his published works. Sensens conclusions are
striking in that he proposes a far more commonplace use intended by Kant for the term
than customarily thought. Sensens thesis is that Kant intended human dignity only to
mean a simple, elevated position of worth occupied by humans rather than positing an
intrinsic metaphysical property.
76
Prior to Kant, teleological premises were argued for
dignity on the basis of human nature (Cicero),
77
or that humans are created in Gods
image (Christian),
78
or that of humans somehow choosing a higher level of being (Pico

22

della Mirandola).
79
The difference with Kant was that, with his Categorical Imperative,
he proposed a normative rather than a teleological premise all the while retaining the
traditional paradigm of an elevated status for humanity. As Sensen suggests, Kant also
proposed two stages in this elevationthe first is an initial dignity which all humans
have according to certain capacities (reason, freedom) and the second is realized from the
first as one makes proper use of these capacities. But, what all this means is that some
Kantians are arguing that we may not need a full-blown ontology of dignity to accept this
more traditional elevation view which, Sensen says that, Kant intends with his
conception of human dignity. Assuming Sensens thesis is correct, this offers a more
straightforward way of looking at the opposite of elevate which is to lower. I propose that
there is a natural or instinctive tendency to resist anyone or any circumstance that might
tend to lower or send the human elevator (or lift if you prefer), in a downward direction
as a way denying or violating or robbing dignity. If dignity simply means elevation in
Kants terminology, all the more reason first to resist its opposite or the pressure in the
other direction to be shoved down the elevator shaft, as it were. Here we seem to have
returned to the ancient Hippocratic intuitionfirst do no harm. That is, first do not do
anything that lowers the elevation of another human being. This implicit recognition of
Kants view coupled with a primitive human intuition fits the indignity notion very well.
Indignity as a concept, needs elevating, you might say, in the Kantian moral cosmos!
E. Virtue Ethics approaches. In contrast to Kantian approaches, virtue ethics
theorists see a kind of schizophrenia at work in most modern ethical theories. This is
because they deal only with reasons, with values and with what justifies[and] fail
to examine motives and the motivational structures and constraints of ethical life. They

23

not only fail to do this, they fail as ethical theories by not doing this.
80
Instead virtue
theory beginning with Aristotles golden mean counsels in medio stat virtus or that
is virtue lies in the middle between the vices or the two extremes of excess and
deficiency. The moral individual will seek to achieve eudaimonia, or well-being, or a
state of human flourishing through the practice of these virtues. As a result, virtue ethics
prefers to think in terms of the virtuous motivations of the moral agent rather than moral
acts or principles as distinct or separate from the individual actor. Practices over
principles or manners over maxims are the glosses one hears in virtue ethics and all
with the aim (telos) of producing a flourishing individual. Since negations are considered
the easiest and quickest principles to grasp it follows that the notion of learning by
practice to first avoid indignity would be a natural early growth step in virtue ethics. A
child might learn many practices that are considered indignities that she should not do,
long before any attempt is made to instill what the abstract notion of dignity is supposed
to be. In fact, instilling practices that avoid indignity could be considered the necessary
steps to coming to understand the notion of dignity itself.
In the virtue ethics arena, one important example of how human dignity has come
to be a centerpiece study is in an area that has come to be known as virtue epistemology.
Linda Zagzebski, a leading virtue epistemologist, sees the possibility of an entire group
of virtues that cluster around respect for human dignity, and this group may include
justice, fairness, honesty, integrity, and trust.
81
But, going even further, Zagzebski
proposes that moral knowledge itself is to be seen as a kind of exercise in an intellectual
virtue. This leads us off into deep philosophical waters indeed! And not surprisingly, here

24

is where David Hume can be seen as a champion of this virtue ethics approach since
Hume considered as merely verbal the difference between moral and intellectual virtue.
82

Virtue ethics, in how it conceptualizes the debate, seems far afield from other
views of human dignity in moral philosophy which only serves to illustrate the numerous
and widely divergent opinions. Ironically, virtue ethics especially as expressed in
Aristotle, in the view of some, defends as human dignity the very thing that Christianity
condemns as sinful pride.
83
The Thomists who appropriate Aristotelian virtue ethics into
their philosophy are forced to offer some modifications here.
84
At least one of the Greek
words for dignity, megalopsychia, [or magnanimitas in Latin] or the virtue of being
great-souled, is also translated pride which carries the pejorative connotations
associated with the English word. Even so, Aristotle makes this the capstone of his
character virtues while Thomas Aquinas assigns it to be the greatest vice.
85

So, here is where I see a prospect for our indignity thesis to be on the table in the
virtue ethics discourse on human dignity. Instead of wading further into the Aristotelian-
Thomist debate about human dignity and the meaning of pride and so on, we might
follow a cue from David Hume whose ethics of virtue were certainly not grounded in
religious faith or even in the rational nature. Rather for Hume, reason could not offer the
ethical ends for a human, but only identify facts and the logic of relations of ideas.
Instead, for Hume, morals obtain from sentiment and the fundamental sentiment is
sympathy. Sympathy, however, is not a virtue, in Humes view, but instead permits us to
recognize and value the virtues. And so, we are disposed by our nature to approve
benevolence and disapprove cruelty.
86
A sense of indignity can reasonably be seen as an
attendant emotion to human sympathy. Indignant sympathy may be said to be sympathy

25

at its most intense level. Inspired by Hume then, we might say that the sentiment of
indignity as a companion of sympathy makes us similarly disposed by our nature to
approve benevolence and disapprove cruelty.
A more current example goes to the exigencies surrounding the global tension
over terrorism and the proper treatment of captured terrorists and prisoners of war.
Arguing for the relevance of virtue ethics particularly in avoiding instances of prisoner
abuse as in the Abu Ghraib U.S. military prison scandal in Iraq, United States Army
Major Daniel S. Oh essentially endorses the indignity thesis I have put forward.
A warrior who stops the maltreatment of prisoners-of-war (POW) knows
when justice and/or respect for humanity is violated and thus displays
virtues like personal courage, integrity, or duty to protect that basic human
dignity. In this case, personal courage involves not only the physical, but
moral fortitude as well. In this sense, consistent moral courage among the
soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison could have prevented such a scandalous
incident.
87


It is in the habitual practice of avoiding a violation of dignity, where the real work
or effect of a virtue can perhaps best be seen. While a young private may not have
a clue what human dignity is, or even what it means to truly respect another
individual, she can be trained in certain, concrete practices that aim to avoid
indignity or disrespect in the treatment of prisoners. Virtue ethics offers a wealth
of both ancient and current thinking on this topic.
There is another kind of human dignity in Matti Hayrys list of dignities that are
in current usage today. This is his dignity of important beings which is another
paradoxical line, and by some definitions, an oxymoron given its antiegalitarian approach.
It says that some extraordinary quality gives one human rank and importance over
another. Of course, historically this oppressive view of dignity is perhaps the oldest. And

26

even though it is considered obsolete by the Oxford English Dictionary definition,
Hayry points out that a majority of the worlds population (mostly in the East) probably
holds some form of this repressive societal belief.
88
And communitarian thinkers,
following an Aristotelian virtue ethics practice, emphasize the need to be sensitive to the
beliefs in real-life communities and are now trying to offer some Western philosophical
grounds for a measure of respect for this approach.
Here also is where an indignity thesis has a prospect to offer the most helpful
application. I would venture that regardless of the antiegalitarian system worldwide, there
will be also in place, at some level, always a proscription, qualification or legal limitation
against certain actions toward another human that might tend to be labeled with a word
that could translate as indignity. This is not to say that these tribal and cultural mores are
not regularly and brutally violated. But, it may also be that the most persuasive call away
from these cultures of death in Rwanda or Darfur for example, is to start with this very
basic and primitive appeal to a kind of basic virtue ethic that it is a grave indignity to
inflict harm on another human being. The fact that their very culture is not flourishing is
perhaps testimony enough.
It may be, in fact, that there are already more societal injunctions in place at all
levels of dignity in Eastern societies allowing for the avoidance of what might be
considered an indignity. This ancient, mostly Asian and Middle Eastern, cultural concept
has even sifted almost completely intact into English idiom as face-saving and is most
prevalent in what Edward T. Hall has termed high context cultures where the group
tends to be valued over the individual.
89
Rather than a source of conflict over who should
be accorded what dignity, a virtue ethics kind of dialogue which cuts across class, caste

27

and culture hierarchy about what might constitute an indignity to any person, even
cultural aliens (an idea already long-accepted within these cultures) might provide a rich,
human rights vein to pursue. Here again, it is indignity which gets the dialogue going
again, perhaps allowing for some real progress toward moral agreement
F. Phenomenalist approaches. As one might suspect, the phenomenalists
approach is to position themselves above or outside of all four of these domains of ethical
inquiry seeing themselves more as historians and observers of the phenomenon of or the
experience of human dignity.
90
Mette Lebechs summary below is an example both of the
helpful nature of this philosophical stance and its weakness in not offering very much in
the way of moral action-guiding.
The experience of human dignity underlies the idea and principle of
human dignity. The idea was, however, thought of as relying upon
different aspects of the human being: on its nature; on relativity to God; on
reason; or on social integration. The differing accounts were identified and
analysed in different historically-based frameworks (the cosmo-centric,
the Christo-centric, the logo-centric and the polis-centred frameworks),
which exemplify various possible ways of justifying human dignity.
Whereas the explanatory factors of the various frameworks indicate the
essentially human, none of them taken in isolation provides us with a
sufficient condition for human dignity. As indicators of the human they
point towards the being whose existence is of fundamental value.
91


What Ive been trying to make clear from the outset (and will especially take up with the
indignity response idea) is that an even stronger phenomenalist case might be made for
the actual experience of indignity over any supposed phenomenon called dignity. Reports
of experiences of indignity seem to be far more commonplace than whatever someone
might intend to mean by an experience of dignity. Even the unpacked meaning of a
remark that someone was treated with dignity, I would venture to guess, could be even
more effectively communicated if one listed all the ways in which potential indignities

28

were avoided. They did not shout, they did not speak in a condescending or a demeaning
way, they did not curse or use vulgar language, they did not touch, push or shove or use
aggressive body language in any way, they did no physical harm to persons or property
and so on. In other words, the person concludes, I was treated with dignity even
though there is not even a hint of what dignity might mean in all the preceding
explanation. We have only offered concrete negations that are phenomenally observable.
Of course, a typical objection to Phenomenalism as an epistemological theory,
that it commits us to having to posit a brand new category of ontological object,
sensibilia, provides a nice segue for a new direction we will consider in the next
chapter. But for now, it seems apparent that this matter of human dignity is far from
anything approaching much semblance of agreement in philosophical circles and it is just
as clear that the concept of indignity offers some philosophical merit for consideration.
G. Summarizing how indignity could be a tenable alternative. From the above
approaches one could summarize that dignity-conferring properties seem to fall into 3
categories: 1) intrinsic capacity; 2) extrinsic efficacity; 3) virtuizing quality. None of
these lets us lay our hands on what dignity actually is. But, what we can lay our hands on
is anything that appears to damage or preclude or hinder these conferring properties,
namely indignity. Referencing Richard Ashcrofts distinctions, noted earlier, lets see
what weve done so far with indignity versus dignity. In terms of coherency, taking one
step back into a negating mode (pace the remarks on Macklin) at least offers some
actionable and substantive ideas on the typical issues in bioethics. While dignity might or
might not be reducible to autonomy, its easier to see how the denial of autonomy could
amount to human indignity than to go into lengthy argumentation to prove dignity

29

reduces to autonomy. Similarly, as dignity pertains to a web of perceptions about human
capacity, function and social interaction, in whatever explanation is offered for these,
there is less controversial footing whenever the description is rendered proscriptively.
That is, when we describe these as being denied, prevented or violated in some way,
were talking about indignity. The final Ashcroft distinction, that dignity is a
metaphysical property possessed by all and only human beings, is easily the most salient
lightning rod for controversy in human rights debates. This is where indignity is allowed
the agnostic position while still offering a denotative way forward. For the sake of
getting around the human dignity impasse, here is all the more obviating cause for
offering some ratiocination that offers to get at the same function (protecting humanity
from itself) only in a more palatable, consensual form. So, let us delve into indignity as a
word in our language with perhaps more muscular cogency than at first glance!
III. Indignity and language

... the inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of
veneration in respect to what it denies us than in (respect to) what it has
granted. - Immanuel Kant
92


A. Wittgenstein on our real need. This numinous-feeling
93
quotation from
Kant is at least a small recognition of how we try to grasp the meaning of our existence
through the language of negation as through positive assertion and this idea serves to
point us in a new direction. It may be that there is some heretofore overlooked insight of
meaning in how we talk about indignity (the notion of dignity-denied) which is no less
worthy of veneration. One tantalizing idea from Wittgenstein on how our language
games really work might send us off in this direction. In the immediate context of the
following quote he has been talking about how we cannot bargain down the logical

30

rigor of language even when we notice that what we call sentence and language do not
have the formal unity we might imagine or want them to have for communicating
meaning. Instead, Wittgenstein suggests in a famous line, One might say: the axis of
reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real
need.
94
I am going to suggest that the real need, when we use language to talk about
human dignity, is actually to talk about what happens when we believe an indignity has
occurredthat is, the sense that weve been denied something. Indignity, instead of
dignity, might turn out to be the axis of reference we should start to examine more
closely. That is, it is not so much the physical properties of human dignity that most
people are interested in but rather what we are trying to do with these words. As
Wittgenstein puts it a few lines later
We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language,
not some non-spatial, non-temporal chimera. [Note in margin: Only it is
possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways]. But we
talk about it as we do about the pieces in chess when we are stating the
rules of the game, not describing their physical properties.
95


More often than not, when we want to suppose that human dignity is the thing that is at
stake, instead it turns out that the clearly observable, indignity response of a human being
offers us the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language needed to convey the
required meaning.
B. Austin on ordinary language and trouser words. Just here is where John
L. Austins trouser word language argument for real and unreal can serve to further
motivate my focus on the notion of indignity. It might be that, similar to the way that the
words real and unreal function in ordinary language, so too the way dignity and
indignity actually function. That is, there appears to be more ordinary language

31

provenance to draw upon in making a case for indignity versus dignity. I will, in turn,
offer a few analogues along this line which serve to bulwark this language use idea.
Indignity could turn out to be the more useful term especially for what it is that we
humans want to zero in on when we pass our great universal declarations and bravely
make our stands against all manner of tyranny, oppression and torture.
Professor Austins insights on the way we use the word real and unreal in
ordinary language,
96
could have possible application to how dignity and indignity are
used in a similar fashion. One caveat is needed regarding Austin and metaphysics before
going further. I do not aim to have anything to say regarding the ontology of referents
symbolized with the words dignity and indignity, i.e. real dignity and unreal
dignity. My interest lies in which of these two words (dignity and indignity) might turn
out to be the more helpful and constructive in ethics debates where one or both sides
claim in some sense to be grounded upon the notion of human dignity. Austin proposed
to take the word real as an example of a word that doesnt have
one single, specifiable, always-the-same meaning.Nor does it have a
large number of different meaningsit is not ambiguous....[R]emember
what philosophers have said about the word good; and reflect that many
philosophers, failing to detect any ordinary quality common to real ducks,
real cream, and real progress, have decided that Reality must be an a
priori concept apprehended by reason alone.
97


Austin then goes on to inspect a number of examples of how the word real is used in
everyday speech. He then aims to tidy things up by offering four salient features
(substantive-hungry words, trouser words, dimension words, adjuster words) that he sees
in how we use the word real.
98
While perhaps all of these features might apply in some
way or another in a similar consideration of dignity vs. indignity, for our limited purposes
it is Austins most famous sense and sensibilia notion that we will consider, that is, the

32

trouser-word.
99
In the key paragraph, Austin turns the affirmative use of a word like
real upside down and forces us to consider how we actually use the words, real and
unreal in everyday or ordinary language.
It is usually thought, and I dare say usually rightly thought, that what one
might call the affirmative use of a term is basicthat, to understand x,
we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this
apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with real (as we
briefly noted earlier) it is the negative use that wears the trousers. That is,
a definite sense attaches to the assertion that something is real, a real such-
and-such, only in light of a specific way in which it might be, or might
have been, not realthe attempt to find a characteristic common to all
things that are or could be called real is doomed to failure; the function
of real is not to contribute positively to the characterization of anything,
but to exclude possible ways of being not real,
100


Like the word, real, I propose that the word dignity can be taken also as a kind of
Austinian trouser-word. That is, it may be that the definite sense that attaches to an
instance of dignity is to be found only in light of a specific way in which it might be,
or might have been, NOT dignity or, an instance of indignity. This means that our
intuitive notions or our typical, everyday understandings of the meaning of indignity give
us more to sink our teeth into, more substantive action to condemn, and more interesting
things to say about what dignity is not. It is this negative use of dignity that wears the
trousers to again use Austins phrase, and guides more of the meaning that we intend in
ordinary language when the context seems to call for a reference to human dignity. If
there is more of a definite sense in the term indignity then this seems to provide us with
a reason to steer more of the human dignity talk (and even more the rights talk
101
which
generally is seen to be grounded in some notion of human dignity) toward what we mean
by indignity. Let indignity wear the trousers more often in human dignity debates and

33

the discussions might turn out to be more fruitful in the political discourse about human
rights.
You find yourself in some high-level meeting with world diplomats at the United
Nations and the discussion turns, as it often does, to human rights. An argument ensues
involving some human-caused calamity which continues unresolved because at its core it
revolves around competing views of the meaning of human dignity. This would certainly
be apropos to the cases of the 1994 Rwanda genocide of Tutsis by Hutu militia or the so-
called hidden apartheid against the lowest castes in India.
102
Tutsis claimed to be the
race of God who see everyone else therefore like animals or at least that was the
propaganda used to inflame Hutu hatred. The core meaning of the Hindu caste system in
India is arguably centered around an anti-egalitarian notion of a dignity of important
beings (Hayrys term). Back to our paralyzed U.N. discussion. There seems to be an
insurmountable cultural impasse since neither side is likely to persuade the other that
their view of human dignity offers the sure footing needed for coming to some larger,
international moral convergence. At this point, you step in to suggest (humorously of
course) that they change trousers. Instead of these cul-de-sac conversations on dignity,
you say, what if we try talking about what we might agree constitutes human indignity?
It could be that Austin has given us just the opening that we need in order to get
around the impasse that has occurred between those who try to ground their opposition to
human mistreatment upon some notion of human dignity. It could be, for example, that
such a notion of human dignity, defensible though it may be, is not absolutely required
for defending humans against indignitiesat least some of the indignities that seem to
provoke universal censure. The point from Austin (and by extension perhaps also from

34

Wittgenstein) is that, by our use of language, we tend to zero in on what we think it must
mean to have human dignity more in terms of how we respond to indignity. That is, we
are trying to rotate the axis of our reference point, to borrow from Wittgenstein, in
order to get at the real need behind our everyday use of the phrase human dignity. When
we rotate the axis or change the trousers, as it were, then our conceptions about indignity
instead of dignity start to control the language game. Of course, there are questions to be
raised and objections to be considered, but perhaps at least the door has been opened on a
different front for profitable inquiry. Again, let indignity have a say and see how far it
can take us in the human rights debate. I will return to this thinking strategy later to see if
there are different ways in which indignity is experienced (like the different ways in
which things are thought to be unreal) that could illuminate the discussion even further.
IV. The indignity response: a tropism?
In fact, more often than not as I have already asserted, when claims are being
made about human rights based on some arcane conception of human dignity, they are
typically proposed in the negative indicative or by using more often, the notion of
avoiding an indignity. Dr. Jonathan Mann suggests to
Perform the following experiment: recall, in detail, an incident from your
own life in which your dignity was violated, for whatever reason. If you
will immerse yourself in the memory, powerful feelings will likely arise
of anger, shame, powerless, despair. When you connect with the power of
these feelings, it seems intuitively obvious that such feelings, particularly
if evoked repetitively, could have deleterious impacts on health.
103


While this might be a bold, empirical health claim that Mann makes, there is no denying
that something happens that constitutes the experience we are calling an indignity or a
violation of dignity. But, what is it thats going on when this response, this sense of
indignity wells up inside us? Even if we step back one level, imagining ourselves as

35

bystanders, there still remains an instinctual response even as mere observers of some
circumstance of indignity. Say Im in a grocery store aisle and I see a child sitting quietly
in a pushcart. Suddenly, out of nowhere an adult comes around the corner and violently
strikes the child across the face for no reason whatsoever. Then, let us say, the adult
begins to laugh at the childs tears. Given generally this set of circumstances, in the vast
majority of cultures, some kind of indignity response would likely occur. There is more
going on here than some vague physiognomy. While I do recognize that I am
generalizing about the typical human observer, I would even venture to say that no
human culture exists where an indignity response is never attached to what that culture
might perceive to be needless pain. But, lest I overstep and appear to assert some
empirical anthropological claim, in our case, it is sufficient only to identify a common
response without reference to its universality.
Let us liken this very natural human reaction (which I am calling an indignity
response) as being homologous to a tropism from elementary school biology.
104
It is
the simple scientific observation of an organism turning (from the Greek tropos, to turn)
in response to an environmental stimulus. We dont need to be able to explain the internal
mechanism that is triggered by a stimulus (sunlight, water, etc.) in order to properly
describe the response. But, it is important not to confuse the stimulus with the response.
Attempts to get at what dignity might mean can be likened to the involved scientific
explanations for how biological life actually worksits negentropy or negative
entropy.
105
While someone may not be able to offer much of an adequate scientific
explanation for the meaning of bios (what occurs to make a living organism living), that
same person can stand in front of a grade-schoolers tri-fold foam board, science fair

36

project and see and grasp the idea of tropismthe tropos, turning response, of a living
organism to a stimulus. Again, the point here is only to offer an apt analogy (or perhaps
even a homology) of how indignity can be construed without suggesting a full-blown
analysis in behaviorist or functionalist terms.
106

So, not only the underlying principles of human language, but even the empirical
observation of the way an organism responds to a stimulus appears to support at least this
analogous impression that indignity can offer us a more robust, pliable springboard for
many of the moral claims some attempt to ground within the concept of human dignity.
In this analogy, indignity is used to describe both an apparent stimulus (word, action,
event) which in turn triggers an observable, correlated response or turning or tropism
within an organism exposed to the indignity. This could include both the direct victim
and the observer or observers. I am calling this the indignity response. In the case of
indignity theres an analogy to a negative tropism at work, or that is, a growth away from
whatever the undesirable stimulus might be. We are able to clearly see both stimulus and
response without necessarily knowing much of anything about what ontological reality
might be inside the person undergoing the experience. Depending on the stimulus, the
more extreme the negative tropism an organism experiences the more stunted the growth
which may even produce an even more striking and exquisite response, interestingly
enough. Think, for example, of bonsai horticulture and the intentional pruning stimulus
that creates a dwarfed plant, essentially the result of carefully controlled and monitored
negative tropism in addition to any number of positive tropisms. This also might serve to
further illustrate the variety we see even in human organisms in their response to certain
indignities depending on how otherwise well-prepared they might be to respond to an

37

indignity. The point is clear however that there is an observable negative tropism or
indignity response.
Human organisms, however, like their counterparts in the plant and animal
kingdoms, have amazing adaptive capabilities which could be considered in light of the
kinds of analogous stimuli they receive, leading either to human flourishing or non-
flourishing. Such an analogy might offer an answer to what I will call the Chief
Bromden problem or the rara avises cases [rare or unique people] and analyze later in
more detail. What are we to make of the Chief Bromdens, the Thomas Moores, the great
religious saints
107
of all faiths or the Stoics through the ages whom we applaud for
seeming to exhibit great resilience in response to multiplied indignities? When many
observe this phenomenon of human resilience despite or in the face of the most extreme
indignities the paradoxical conclusion reached is that here is evidence of human dignity!
But, perhaps a simpler, less paradoxical explanation can be found in our explanation of
indignity as a tropism-like response. We are simply noting and using ordinary language
to describe that which is plainly visible, yet is plainly not the typical tropism response to
such painful stimuli. Here is the ne plus ultra, the rare bird we say, a rara avisa that we
greatly admire or the more clichd phrase, a paragon of virtue. Such cases are hardly
quotidian images which is why they loom so large in literature.
When Chief Bromden escapes the asylum, the applause in the theatre is, in itself,
a kind of collective tropism, an ovation to overcoming indignity. The triumph of dignity
(whatever we think it means) over indignity? Perhaps, but as already noted, the
suggestion of tropism at work is not meant to explain all the whys and hows, only that
there is something clearly observable. What is also fascinating is that this human

38

indignity response, when being observed, can also be experienced vicariously. Other
organisms do not exhibit tropistic responses without a direct stimulus or that is, there are
no sympathetic tropisms found in plant biology. This very human phenomenon seems
to go beyond plant tropism in some way perhaps due to the reality of human
consciousness or as Stephen Darwall has put it in his Second Person Standpoint,
the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it
presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another.
And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the
dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself.
108


That is, the human organism can be observed with this second-person tropism-like
capacity whenever we share in an indignity response with another human being. We can
conclude then that at least one of those central notions which is prior even to our
understanding of human rights and the dignity of persons is this indignity response
which can be observed and documented and even shared without ever positing a
metaphysic of human dignity.
V. Indignity response analogues.
There are a number of other possible analogues in support of this indignity
response phenomenon. A groundwork for such analogues comes simply from the
definition of indignity itself. It is not surprising that Oxford English Dictionary offers
words for indignity (besides the obsolete ones) almost mirrored to the definition offered
for dignity, except in some negative sense. And these fit our contemporary usage and
experience, as we might expect: [u]nworthy treatment; contemptuous or insolent usage;
injury accompanied with insult. With an and as a plural: A slight offered to a person; an
act intended to expose a person to contempt; an insult or affront.
109
But, our interest
turns to all the action words found there which seem to support the tropism analogy that

39

indignity is more of a negative response to a stimulus than anything else. This simple
perception of a negation (as with the definition of indignity itself) is far more accessible,
far easier for the mind to grasp and easier to adduce than is the more high-flying, positive
yet more fixed or static notion of dignity. Consider these examples,
A. Light/Dark. Take the topic of light, whether we argue for particle or wave, we
can obviously know or have the instinctual capacity to observe when light is not there. I
offer this analogy as it applies to dignity and our lack of a precise, satisfying definition.
Yet, when we introduce the darkness of an indignity, or a lack of dignity, then this
negative difference appears to be more readily accessible to the imagination. Indignity
appears to refer to the natural, human instinct to react when we perceive a dark instance
of mistreatment of some sort. We might say that whatever human dignity might turn out
to be, it is in some way either being denied or is lacking or is somehow under assault
whenever there is an instance of perceived mistreatment. Humans seem to have an
instinct here and merely this instinctual observation that light (dignity) is missing is as far
as our analogue needs to go. A person needs no preparatory training in the physics of
light or the metaphysics of dignity to sense when both are missing.
B. Heat/cold. Here the indignity correlation takes on a strong tactile sense
connected with the earlier tropism analogy where the indignity is experienced as a kind of
cold draft (when the weather is already uncomfortably cold, of course) from which we
instinctively turn away. We can observe and we can feel the sensation even when we
cant really explain Fouriers law or heat transfer rates or the first and second laws of
thermodynamics.
110
These more arcane scientific explanations might be comparable to
our attempts to explain human dignity. Scientists are quick to point out the subtle

40

distinction between heat as the transfer of energy or energy in transit vs. heat being
thought of as merely the measure of temperature in an object or something static as
though it is somehow contained within some object. The observable dissipation of heat
between substances of different temperatures might be likened to the observable
diminution of dignity which amounts, in its own way, to a kind of energy loss.
Elementary science says that [a] material at absolute zero in both the classical and
quantum mechanical pictures is a material from which no further energy can be extracted
by any means.
111
So too, we might say, the cold of indignity can be seen as the loss of
an energizing dignity and then add that (like some aspects of the meaning of heat) it is
still controversial to generalize about what people (especially philosophers) mean by the
notion of human dignity.
Another interesting aspect of this parallel is the effort that is made in cold climes
to prevent heat loss (think preventing indignity) through all kinds of insulating techniques.
Perhaps we might think in particular, of the extensive literature in Stoic or Buddhist
philosophy as essentially teaching a person how to emotionally insulate herself in
response to the potential cold indignities encountered in life. An old Scottish saying goes,
Ach lassie, I thackit muh hoosie afore tha storm! [I thatched the roof of my house
before the storm.] I think that humans tend to understand and respect this general outlook
on lifeknowing that not all indignities in this life can be avoided, the wise person is
mentally and emotionally prepared to withstand a certain amount. Its cold outside,
dont forget your coat! (Similarly we might say to our children, There are bullies at
school who will hurt you. Here are some tactics for dealing with their indignities.)

41

C. Health/Disease. Another parallel conception might have to do with health vs.
disease or salubrious vs. insalubrious. While the meaning of disease itself (not to mention
health) is debated philosophically, Christopher Boorses Bio-Statistical Theory
provides the most widely accepted definition.
112
That is, simply that disease is an
impairment or limitation of normal functional ability caused by environmental agents.
Then, the idea of health itself, Boorse defines in the negative as the absence of disease!
113

When questioned more closely, people who say they want to be in good health or live a
healthy life actually mean they want to be free of disease. The application to dignity and
indignity is clear. We could venture the claim that people who say they want to have
dignity actually mean that they want to have a life free of indignity. At least when asked
what they might mean by dignity, they will most often reply in the language of
negationnot being robbed of my freedom and autonomy, not being inflicted with
needless pain, not living in fear for life and limb, not being subjected to insults and
slander, and so on. That is, we are doing naturally what Wittgenstein saw in our language
games, we rotate the axis of reference to fit the most pressing need which, in this case, is
to avoid indignity instead of go off in quest of dignity.
D. Sanity/ insanity. Here too one might suggest the parallel with sanity vs.
insanity by laypersons in everyday vernacular understanding of these terms. The range
for what we allow to pass for sanity in free society is rather broad. In fact, when we talk
about so-called sanity tests what we actually are referencing are tests for insanity.
114
On
the other hand, there are certain tests of insanity used in the law that, while not meant to
be scientific definitions, allow society to determine moral responsibility and criminal
liability for actions. The tests assume certain capacities to make elementary moral

42

distinctions and the power to adjust behavior to the commands of the law. These legal
insanity tests are typically meant to reveal some volitional as well as cognitive incapacity
of character such that an average person on a jury would be able to identify that the
individual is disturbed in some way. But heres the important analogue with indignity. In
the legal system, there is no corresponding sanity test per se.
115
Just the two words in the
idiomatic expression, Hes certifiable! are enough to communicate the pejorative and to
reveal something about how ordinary language works. It might make Professor Austin
smile to say that in this case, insanity wears the trousers.
Notice the cumulative effect of whats going on in all these cases. Whether light,
heat, health or sanity the debates are ongoing as to the exact metaphysical nature of these
concepts. Yet, weve been able to function quite well and make significant progress in
working with the observations we make from the negated aspects of these phenomena. It
seems clear that there are analogous possibilities for the notion of indignity as well.
VI. Preliminary Summary.
Lets briefly summarize whats been said to this point. As it turns out, Schachters
observation can be unpacked of more meaning than one might attribute to it at first
glance: When it has been invoked in concrete situations, it has been generally assumed
that a violation of human dignity can be recognized even if the abstract term cannot be
defined.
116
What I have essentially done thus far is to try and answer how that general
assumption might work itself out. The compelling nature of the case for indignity to this
point can be seen in the way the concept fills out and offers a more comprehensive
perspective for the religious approach while also giving it a fall-back concept that does
not make a supernatural metaphysical claim.
117
Consequentialists can embrace the notion

43

because indignity offers the possibility of a measurable unhappiness quotientno
vacuous concept there. Deontology easily embraces the valuing instinct to not violate or
attempt to deny another persons dignity as supporting the notion of an a priori duty or
obligation arising from the existence of human dignity. Virtue ethics, of all the moral
approaches, most naturally accords with this thesis since it most champions the
cultivation of virtues within the moral agent which seek to avoid indignity.
Phenomenalists have the most to say when it comes down minimally to the experience
itself. Indignity seems to offer far more phenomenally-specific cases.
As to Ashcrofts divisions, indignity serves to move dignity talk into more
coherent dialogue by using Austins ordinary language approach to interpose a legitimate
yet often missing aspect into the discussion. And in the process, human autonomy is
factored in clearly without requiring that indignity reduce merely to the loss of autonomy.
The proposed tropistic-like indignity response is able to jibe very well with ideas that
see dignity nested within a family of concepts about functionings and social interactions.
And what Ive offered from the beginning is that this indignity thesis is agnostic when it
comes to positing any metaphysical properties. So, regardless of the dignity position
one might hold, it appears that our notion about indignity either extends, or relates to or at
the very least, does not contravene various philosophical notions about human dignity.
VII. An intriguing hypothesis: needless pain as a paradigm or standard
illustration of indignity. Perhaps the most visible symbol or most exemplary case of
the abstract notion of indignity is the universal moral claim that one ought not inflict
needless pain. I will explain in a moment why I use the term standard illustration,
(which comes from Thomas Kuhn) even though striking illustration will fit very well!

44

A. A puzzle about pain and indignity. By way of introducing this notion let us
first consider a puzzle from the moral question of euthanasia. Death with dignity is
perhaps the most widely recognized slogan from this debate that essentially concerns the
ethics of palliative care.
118
The biggest moral issue for caregivers seems to be about how
to allow terminally-ill patients to avoid needless paineither with drugs to assuage the
pain or drugs to annihilate the patient. But, what does dignity have to do with anodyne?
That is, how is human dignity ever clearly attached to dying either with pain or without
pain?
119
Medical ethicists are still searching for an answer to this question and it is little
wonder that the phrase hard cases paradigm of suffering
120
is often used to characterize
these concerns. While we may not solve that puzzle here, it does seem that the issue itself
could be better framed and holds plausibility as death without indignity.
Here is a stately, regal and refined Southern-belle grandmother (Ive known a few
in my life) whose greatest fear is to be subjected to any experience which might be
beneath her dignity. Her family gathers around her deathbed and assures her that the
DNR (do not resuscitate) orders have been signed by her doctors and that no extreme
measures will be taken to keep her body alive in such an undignified state. She has
suffered enough. She is ready to leave this life. She is at peace knowing that her body
will not suffer on needlessly, knowing that her family will not be left to endure every
wince on her face wondering if the pain medications are actually working at the moment
and knowing that she can thereby face her death without indignity.
In broadcast journalism it is a common visual synecdoche
121
to depict human
indignity by showing a person clearly suffering needless pain. Children with distended
stomachs covered in flies, through no fault of their own, dying of starvation in a land

45

where the rain simply did not fall and the crops dried up and there is widespread famine.
Or the camera pans across the faces of desperate families, bloody and bruised, agony and
pain written all over their faces, forced to flee their homes due to devastating floods or
bloody wars that spilled over from neighboring countries. People see this needless pain
and they are clearly intended by the journalist to feel indignity or the television may even
allow us to see and hear the indignant shouts of the people who are actually suffering
from some horrible needless pain.
B. An intriguing hypothesis. My point of departure with this puzzle about pain
and indignity has been simply to underscore this assumed and largely unexamined
connection between indignity and maleficence or inflicting needless pain that seems so
intuitive and universal. Consider an intriguing hypothesis. There appears to be a strong
case for suggesting that needless pain is emblematic or even let us say, paradigmatic of
indignity. That is, perhaps the most visible symbol of the abstract notion of indignity is
this universal moral claim that one ought not inflict needless pain. Let us see if the act of
inflicting needless pain can serve as the standing sentinel or the canary in the mine to
warn us of indignity.
1. Needless pain as emblematic or even paradigmatic. By definition
emblematic means that something can serve as a visible symbol for something abstract.
OED cites the etymology of emblem from Latin emblma and Greek cu|nuo
referring to the raised ornament on a vessel or an insertion and then offers a quote from
Francis Bacon to illustrate how the word emblem may be used in abstract cases:
Emblem reduceth conceits intellectual to images sensible. And in the wider sense, an
emblem is defined as a symbol or typical representation; sometimes applied to a person

46

as the type or personification of some virtue or quality.
122
The adjective, emblematic,
can also refer to something exemplary or typic or refers to a thing being or serving as an
illustration of a type. For example, the free discussion that is emblematic of
democracy; or this action was exemplary or emblematic of his conduct.
123

By paradigmatic I do not wish to offer the more formal and sometimes
maligned paradigm case argument which is designed to answer a certain
epistemological skepticism.
124
The modern expositor of paradigm in the philosophy of
science in last half of the twentieth century has been Thomas Kuhn. Yet, by one
accounting Kuhn uses paradigm in as many as 21 different senses
125
in his widely
influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
126
Just one of Kuhns definitions
will suffice which is simply the standard illustration.
127
This clearly aligns with the
OED definition: 1. A pattern or model, an exemplar; a typical instance of something, an
example.
128

Let us pose this hypothesis. An instance of needless pain is emblematic or offers a
paradigm of what it means to suffer indignity. Such an instance where needless pain is
inflicted is generally taken to be a universal moral claim
129
summed up in the ancient
proscription, first do no harm, from the Hippocratic Oath that I began with. In other
words, in the simple moral intuition that it is wrong to inflict needless pain we might
find an emblematic or paradigmatic case for indignity. The hypothesis would be that in
the typical case needless pain is a sufficient condition for an indignity to exist. That is,
when needless pain is inflicted there is a characteristic response to react with or feel a
sense of indignity. On my account the needless pain then, would be the raised ornament,
the physical manifestation, the image sensible of what indignity means. Needless pain,

47

in other words, would be a quite striking, yet standard, illustration that one might use to
refer to indignity. While the mere observation of or even the personal experience of
needless pain does not in and of itself constitute the indignity, it is this needless pain
experience that serves to emblemize or offer us a paradigm for indignity. As we will see
later on, the perception of what constitutes needless pain is a bit slippery and so this
would follow accordingly with indignity. This is why the proposal is couched as it is,
paradigmatically in terms of a powerful and vivid illustration rather than a formal
assertion of necessary and sufficient condition.
Say that you and I lived in a different era. We are ethnically African slaves living
in the American Antebellum South in the mid-19
th
century. We escape from our cruel
owners and find ourselves together along the underground railway. I begin to share my
experience of degradation and inhumanity. You respond, I too have suffered the
indignities of slavery, as you begin unbuttoning your shirt to reveal a horribly lacerated
back literally covered in scars. The scars not only represent needless and horribly painful
experiences, (scars can often continue to be painful to the touch) but you show them to
me, not so much for me to see the pain as to prove in an emblematic way the indignity
that you have experienced. The slaves scars, as a direct result of the needless pain
inflicted by a cruel master, serve both to himself and to me as a fellow ex-slave as
emblems, typical instances or potent paradigms of indignity. It does seem absurd to
doubt if the infliction of needless pain is ever an indignity. As weve already noted, an
indignity by dictionary definition involves some experience of pain coupled with insult. It
also seems reasonable to go further and say that in general, inflicting needless pain
amounts to an indignity. However, the key question seems to be whether a proscription

48

specifically against needless pain fits the bill as being the emblematic or paradigmatic of
a proscription against indignity. It seems so from this first example of the slaves scars.
But, if we can test this hypothesis with further examples and successfully respond to
possible objections then there could be a plausible and even compelling basis or
grounding for a moral comity related to many of the issues that heretofore were appealed
upon the more shaky metaphysical ground of human dignity when it turns out that simple
human indignity would suffice.
2. Non-maleficence as a universal moral claim. Let us first briefly consider the
universal moral claim aspect of our hypothesis, specifically the notion of non-maleficence
or the seemingly self-evident moral intuition that it is wrong to inflict needless pain.
130

This ancient negative obligation seems to fit the traditional claim of self-evidence that is
typically cited for a moral principle to be considered universal.
131
Of course, when
something is self-evident we often just say that to understand it is to believe it. Every
human being with red hair is a human being, is a kind of self-evident claim. What does
not seem to be self-evident is to say, for example, that human beings have human dignity.
Of course, W.V.O. Quine, in his little classic, The Web of Belief in a chapter on self-
evidence shows how high the standard for self-evidence can be set where even absolutely
demonstrable logical truths can fail to be self-evident. Quine notes toward the end of the
chapter that
Self-evidence is sometimes ascribed to judgments of moral value. A
moral precept that perhaps has more of a claim to self-evidence is One
should not inflict needless pain. Mostly however, what the ascription of
self-evidence to a moral precept is apt to reflect is just a resolution that the
precept is to be regarded as basic and hence as exempt from discussion.
We resolve to treat such a maxim as a starting point rather than as standing
in need of support itself.
132



49

I cite Quine for two reasons: a. for the origin of the line, One should not inflict needless
pain as possibly a self-evident moral precept; and b. for conceding that such a maxim
appears to carry a somewhat lower standard for self-evidence than the more stringent
metaphysical rules for which he argues. I take the traditional ascription which he
recognized and with Robert Audi, at least allow some space for a rationalist intuitionism
concerning this particular moral claim.
133
Thus, the moral value that one ought not inflict
needless pain is a precept to be regarded as basic and as a kind of starting-point maxim
upon which most people agree. There seems to be, at the very least, many epochs of
historical precedent on the side of this particular moral value.
C. Hypothesis fits with previous concepts of language, tropism and analogues.
1. The hypothesis is less ontologically difficult to work with. Despite the
ontological concession regarding self-evidence, there is something to be said for the
hypothesis that non-maleficence as a universal moral claim could be paradigmatic of
indignity. After all, ontologically we are talking about an illustration of not something
thats there but something thats not there, and the word we use is indignity. A father
once advised his son, If theres an elephant in the room, son, you ought at least go over
and introduce yourself to the elephant! It seems to me that metaphysics is the elephant in
the room when a philosophical discussion turns to the idea of human dignity. Of course,
the very notion of an ontology of value is widely disputed
134
and this would be only one
of many reasons why the topic of human dignity is considered such a notoriously difficult
moral concept. Not that I am altogether dismissing the importance of the question of the
ontological value of human dignity; I am instead choosing to take a step back and
examine whether a less contentious claim (one about indignity) might shed some light on

50

the topic of dignity itself or at least provide some language space for making claims at
least about indignity. Hence when I ask, Is it the nature of humans to possess something
called dignity? I am asking on at least one level, a metaphysical or ontological question.
On the other hand, if I simply show a connection with one of the most basic of universal
moral proscriptions as being remarkably like a physical, human tropistic response to a
sense of lack or absence of something, we are notably dialing back from a metaphysical
claim. So, lets be clear at this point about the values we are trying to connect together.
There is a negative value (in the form of a proscriptive universal moral claim) which is
clearly used as the go-to image of the negative value claim, namely indignity.
135

2. The hypothesis fits with ordinary language observations. To try and clearly
link just about any moral intuition which is considered universal with a something
(human dignity) which is considered by many to be unidentifiable is a daunting
challenging even though our ordinary language seems to be trying to grope for this
explicit kind of value. But, what I have done with Austin however, in the earlier language
analysis, is to propose that we do not require a hard metaphysic assumption to support the
indignity claim. We are talking about a value yes, but only in the negative sense which
seems to make a lot of difference according to Austin in how we use ordinary language to
describe such things. The exigency of our hypothesis stands even clearer. If we find
ourselves at a loss to even clearly describe in the language of moral value whats at stake
when someone is in needless pain; or if on the other side we find ourselves at a loss to
even clearly describe what we mean by human dignity, all the more reason to be
hypothesizing about what could be going on there. Drawing from our earlier language
analysis, the trouser word for what we are trying to say whenever we get upset over

51

some needless pain is best summed up with the word indignity rather than our trying to
explain or describe our lost human dignity and demanding that it somehow be found and
returned to us immediately.
In ordinary language then, the hypothesis could be phrased variously. It is that
needless pain can serve as the usual suspect or be seen as an emblematic culprit or
carry some paradigmatic weight for or be an illustrative exemplar to what we mean by
human indignity. So, lets try and make another pass at the possible connection between a
universal moral claim against inflicting needless pain and this matter of human indignity.
It is not controversial to say that by definition, human dignity valorizes something that is
uniquely human. But, what that something is, seems to be the tantalizing puzzle. Human
existence itself is an ontological puzzle. To be or to exist, is of course, not the same as
merely to be the value of a bound variable,
136
as Quine is so famous for asserting. So,
what is this value associated with human dignity that seems to be more than the cold
ontology of a bound variable? Again, as Ive shown from the start of this writing, we are
stymied when we try to find some ground for an answer. But, there does seem to be some
ideas from the philosophy of language on the side of what the absence of dignity might
amount to. The Austin-inspired notion suggesting indignity as a trouser-word needs to
be pondered more closely. The connection appears to be quite simple and intuitive and a
matter of ordinary language use. Humans seem instinctively to get very upset when they
sense what they perceive to be deprivation of their dignity. This sense of indignity
becomes particularly acute in the circumstance of some needless pain being inflicted.
3. The hypothesis appeals to a principle absolutist position. Alan Gewirth
has argued for an absolute right not to be tortured to death
137
(which is roughly

52

equivalent to our claim about needless pain) and he has labeled this kind of assertion,
principle absolutism. He then directly equates the proscription against torturing
someone to death to that of treating someone as if they had no dignity. In other words, the
moral proscription that one ought not to inflict needless pain is
an obligation so fundamental that it cannot be overridden even to
prevent evil consequences from befalling some persons . Agents and
institutions are absolutely prohibited from degrading persons, treating
them as if they had no rights or dignity. The benefit of this prohibition
extends to all persons, innocent or guilty; for the latter, when they are
justly punished, are still treated as responsible moral agents who are
capable of understanding the principle of morality and acting accordingly
and the punishment must not be cruel or arbitrary.
138


We may never agree on what actually constitutes human dignity but there does seem to
be some assumed sense of agreement that there is a universal moral proscription against
inflicting needless pain and that this represents a kind of paradigmatic loss of, denial of,
or intentional depriving of dignity. This lack or violation is the idea that is typically
labeled by definition as indignity. Merely allowing this typical case hypothesis to be our
starting point is important. What we are saying is that at least part of what it means to
experience indignity in the typical case is to experience needless pain.
4. Hypothesis could stand behind philosophy of caring notions. Feminist
philosophy has argued in similar fashion that our moral intuition that its wrong not to
care is a place to start for understanding human dignity.
139
That is, in the philosophy of
caring, humans are worthy of dignity because they have the capacity to care. And whats
more, whatever care they are capable of delivering to others can, in fact, be dignifying.
Our hypothesis recommends that even behind this claim about caring is a simple and
basic moral proscriptionthat one ought first care enough not to inflict needless pain
first do no harm. And this simple negation or assertion of a universal, negative obligation

53

serves as a typical representative case for the indignity response. On this view there could
be ground for some measure of future convergence in moral philosophy or at least some
sense of moral accord over a kind of irreducible minimum or standard below which we
dare not slip. First do no harm [which, in a representative case, is that which deprives
dignity] this is the moral ground upon which all humanity can stand regardless of ones
personal position on what human dignity actually amounts to. Whatever human dignity is
we can agree that there is at least this one thing which deprives a person of it, namely the
inflicting of needless pain.
5. Hypothesis works well with a negation approach. Rather than trying to
navigate the more slippery slope of linking the positive notion of dignity itself with the
avoiding of or the protection against needless pain or injury, our hypothesis turns the
connection around to look at whether maleficence itself is directly linked to the negative
notion of indignity. This pervasive moral intuition almost seems to assume that this is the
case without question. As we noted earlier with Austin, ordinary language users may be
at a loss to tell you what dignity is but they can tell you quite emphatically if they
perceive that their sense of worth, of respect, of dignity is being diminished. And that
appears most dramatically when they are inflicted with pain needlessly. In other words,
the widespread moral principle that one ought not inflict needless pain seems to be
imbedded in this natural human urge to react against what humans perceive to be an
indignity. If we accept this moral principle or indignity response as being more or less
universal then we can see it at work like a tropism when we witness or experience
needless pain being inflicted and perceive these cases to be clear instances of indignity.
From this we can draw a transitive conclusion that as indignity is related to this universal

54

moral principle then preventing indignity might help to resolve many of the most
troublesome issues that tend to hang up on the meaning of the expression, human dignity.
If this is the case, then we might not really need absolute perspicacity in this matter of
human dignity in order to make headway on many human rights issues. Such an
acknowledgement could help inform the philosophical perspective of those in positions
of influence when attempting to achieve global agreement on acceptable treatment of
other human beings under any conditions. But, before such lofty reflections on the
implications of our proposal, we must take up possible objections or offer some tests to
the hypothesis as proposed.
VIII. Testing the hypothesis. Now, while we may have been successful thus far in
providing some grounds for our hypothesis suggesting that inflicting needless pain
provides the paradigm illustration for human indignity, the logical next step is to test
what weve proposed.
A. What about indignity without physical pain?
1. Keep in mind that certain deeds, never mind how execrable or chthonic, would
not fall within purview of this hypothesis if no physical harm or needless pain was
inflicted. So, the first consideration with this test is to ask whether the obvious
contingency of indignity without physical pain is even an objection at all. Instead it might
be easily conceded with little consequence to the hypothesis. That is, the hypothesis is not
proposing that there are no painless indignities. It does not follow that allowing
indignities clearly not associated with physical pain means that inflicting needless pain
cannot therefore be a compelling exemplar of human indignity. For example, the
following instances which might be termed physically painless yet obvious, indignities

55

Jews in World War II forced to wear the Star of David on their sleeves; Muslim
women forced to remove their veils before being granted their drivers licenses;
intentionally desecrating a holy book or object (prison guards flushing a book of The
Koran down the toilet) in the presence of a devout believer, etc.only show that there
are clearly other instances that do not involve physical pain. While my hypothesis does
not contemplate the extent to which emotional anguish amounts to physical pain, Dr.
Jonathan Mann has argued from empirical medical science that [w]hen you connect the
power of these feelings, [of indignity] it seems intuitively obvious that such feelings,
particularly if evoked repetitively, could have deleterious impacts on health.
140
Certainly
there are indignities without any apparent physical pain or harm. But, our hypothesis only
proposes the clearer emblematic or illustrative connection due to its less agent-relative or
subjective quality. Physical pain is certainly more quantifiable and far less culturally
relative than whatever might cause another person emotional distress or humiliation
which in turn might be labeled indignity.
Again, while I find Manns above suggestion (feelings of indignity having an
impact on physical health) intriguing and I imagine that it might be argued under some
expanded definition of pain which includes mental anguish, this seems to lead us into the
subjective world of psychology and the psychosomatic and an ever-expanding relativistic
list of pains and of what therefore constitutes a personal indignity. Mann is taking on a
much broader project, namely the intersection of public health and human rights, which is
not the task at hand in this paper. While I can allow that there could be circumstances in
which the perceived pain is subjective or is more emotional or psychological, maybe less
physical in nature (yet with deleterious health consequences) or where there appears to be

56

a palpable indignity but without some identifiable, externally-inflicted pain source, this
again still does not directly affect the hypothesis.
2. Further along this line, I dont even need to say that painless indignities
(whether an empirical health claim might be upheld or not) have any less validity
whatsoever. It is one of the most demonstrable facts of anthropology that shaming and
humiliation have great motivating power within a culture. Perhaps an over-arching, cross-
cultural, irreducible minimum
141
list of indignities (never mind whether needless pain is
involved) which are deemed humiliating and somehow inhumane could be drawn up and
agreed to by some international body.
142
Maybe this has already been done! Just because
an indignity does not involve some physical pain does not make it any less compelling or
appalling to some other person. But, neither does this kind of an indignity (which does
not involve needless pain being inflicted) affect the hypothesis that were testing. We
concern ourselves here with a much more modest effort than any sort of gargantuan
attempt to try and catalog all that might be considered humiliating, for example, to
humans.
143

3. Instead of asking if there can be indignity without physical pain, a better question
will be its obverse, Under what circumstances can there be needless pain inflicted
without an indignity ever being involved? I think the answer for humans might be,
never. But, for now in this writing, our hypothesis does not take up, much less deny, the
question of needless pain without indignity. Noting the obvious, that there are clearly
indignities without pain, does not weaken the instancy of our exemplary case idea
because, as weve noted, these other types of indignity can be culturally relative or
involve subjective psychological claims. What we consider as the paradigmatic case

57

seems to have more experiential punch due to its intuitive quality as a universal moral
claim. So, I can admit to circumstances where an indignity might not involve pain and
not see it as a serious challenge to this hypothesis.
B. What about indignity and the second-person standpoint? This next cluster of
objections seems to involve some lack and opens the door for some helpful exploration
into how humans experience needless pain as indignity. Just as indignity can be defined
as a lack or deficiency of dignity, so too the circumstances involving needless pain as
lack of second-person human agency. The question is whether the actual presence of
another human being (a second person) is required in order for there actually to be a
circumstance of indignity. In other words, what if I experience some needless pain but
theres no one around to witness it? Is it still an indignity? Stephen Darwall (perhaps best
known for his work on the notion of respect, relates his ideas about respect with what he
terms the second-person standpoint) would seem to say yes. This is because there is the
first-person imagination always in a reciprocal mode with itself.
The dignity of persons, I contend, is the second-personal authority of an
equal: the standing to make claims and demands of one another as equal
free and rational agents, including as a member of a community of
mutually accountable equals. And respect for this dignity is an
acknowledgment of this authority that is also second-personal. It is always
implicitly reciprocal, if only in imagination. As respects root respicre
suggests, it is a looking back that reciprocates a real or imagined
second-personal address, even if only from oneself.
144
[Italics mine]

That is, Darwall recognizes that his claim (even about dignity itself involving respect)
must also involve the imaginary 2
nd
person. This point about the irrelevance of another or
a second, physical presence where indignity is concerned will indirectly affect and color
the entire hypothesis yet easily leave it intact. Indignity without a physical human witness
(in actuality or only in imagination, second person standpoint) is still experienced as

58

indignity in the first person standpoint. Im walking along the sidewalk and suddenly
stumble awkwardly over my own feet and fall. Imagine that no one actually sees my little
accident. Im physically skinned and bruised and left with some aches and pains for a few
days, but as I tell my friends in recounting what happened, My dignity was the worst
thing bruised. The first thing I did was jump up and look around to see if anyone had seen
me. This is the second-person standpoint of the imagination or existential Other.
Accordingly, I offer only a simple hypothesis in this regardthat the infliction of
needless pain as it relates to indignity does not require as a necessary condition any other
physical presence other than the person upon whom the pain is inflicted. I will have more
to say a little later about the correlative notion of an ideal observer.
This human sense of a kind of dialectical interiority has been noted, of course,
since Augustine,
145
and entered our own contemporary popular idiom coincidentally the
same year (1923) in existentialist philosophy with Martin Bubers I and Thou (Ich und
Du)
146
and in psychology with Freuds The Ego and the Id (Das Ich und das Es).
147
Of
course, an existentialist reflection on this constant awareness of someone watching is
perhaps most famously reminiscent of my being-as-object the Other in Sartres keyhole
thought experiment.
Here I am bent over the keyhole; suddenly I hear a footstep. I shudder as
a wave of shame sweeps over me. Somebody has seen me. I straighten up.
My eyes run over the deserted corridor. It was a false alarm. Is it
actually my being-as-object for the Other which has been revealed to me
as an error? By no means. the Other is present everywhere, below me,
above me, in the neighboring rooms, and I continue to feel profoundly by
being-for-others.
148



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The notion of an instinctive sense of indignity seems to carry this aspect of interiority.
Jerome Neu has recently cited this famous Sartre thought experiment in a philosophical
treatment of insults (closely related to the concept of indignity) and sees this issue as
metaphysically subtle. Acknowledgement and recognition by others
may be important to our consciousness of self, perhaps to our very
existence, as suggested by Sartre in his story of the keyhole you hear
footsteps coming down the corridor. All of a sudden, everything changes.
From being aware of nothing but the scene, you become aware of the
existence of another and of the others point of view, and you realize that
from that point of view you are an object of perceptionyou become
aware of your body and aware of yourself. You become embodied,
conscious, conscious of yourself, self-conscious (in both the
psychologically uneasy and ontological senses), embarrassed and ashamed.
Our existence, our consciousness and self-consciousness, depends on our
being embodied and on the existence of others and of their consciousness,
of external points of view from which we can be seen. (Kant provides a
more elaborate argument for this in his Transcendental Deduction of the
Categories in the Critique of Pure Reason, but Sartres anecdotes may
sometimes be sufficiently compelling.)
149


Our primary concern here is to note that a circumstance of indignity in the experiencing
of some needless pain does not require the physical presence of another human being.
Yet, with indignity and needless pain, this might also be the hardest issue to confront
because needless pain seems to involve the problem of evil itself and why pain and
suffering exist at all. Humans the world over, suffer horribly every day from needless
pains without a witness much less a human perpetrator. Famine, flood, and disease, these
can all be maladies not of human origin and can be experienced in remote places where
no one sees and no one cares to see. That is hardly a reason to suggest that no human
indignity occurs whenever these kinds of needless pains are contemplated. As seen from
all of the above, it has been difficult to find the mot juste for this internal sense especially
as indignity relates to it. What about, for example, the inevitable (yet still seemingly, at
the cosmic level) needless pain of physical realities that may have nothing to do with

60

human agency? The recent Christmastime tsunami of 2005 that hit Southeast Asia
inflicting untold misery on millions appears hideously needless and might be seen as a
kind of cosmic indignity to the planet itself.
150
Say you are the sole survivor of some
weather-related plane crash in a remote jungle or snow-covered mountainside. All your
clothing is burned away and you are in terrible pain from your injuries. No one is there to
actually see this horrible indignity of your circumstances or to hear your pitiable,
indignant cries for help. There is, let us call it, being caught up in a cosmic indignity,
that is, an indignity just in the environment itself, without any actual second-person
human agency except that of the abstract conception of it in our minds as we imagine
such circumstances. The pain appears needless and the indignity intense, yet any rational
person hardly need ponder what the world would have to be like in order for such pain
not to occur. In our sense of indignity over needless pain, we do not sincerely expect that
the laws of gravity should have been suspended so that planes do not lose airspeed due to
engine malfunction at 30,000 feet altitude. Only the most childish and delusional mind
imagines the physiology of the human body related to malleability or flammability be
arbitrarily superseded cartoon-like at certain times or in certain places or with certain
persons.
Gravity can clearly be said to be needful, but the pain that results from some
aspects of gravity at work, seems to be needless and results in human indignities. I slip
and fall on the ice. I suffer a bruise and a sense of a loss of dignity even when I get up
and see that no one else on the street seems to have noticed. So it is that even without
anyone else around, humans can experience needless pain and a sense of indignity. That
is, devoid of any second-person human agency, when we fall and bump our head we feel

61

this instinct of indignity. But, it can also be obviously argued that such pain is not
needless when it keeps me from walking carelessly across an icy sidewalk or stepping off
a roof or putting my hand on a hot stove. Recalling our second-person standpoint test, it
appears that the hypothesis remains intact despite these examples because, a) interiority
substitutes as the second person and b) cosmic indignities are perceived to be just as
painful and just as apparently needless. As we ponder this objection, it gradually begins
to shift ground into other objections related to pain perceived as retributive punishment
and there the questions concern issues of correlation and proportion which I will take up
in a moment. Throughout history it seems that when humans could not directly connect
some needless pain with some human perpetrator, the issue of divine retribution creeps in.
C. What about indignity and autonomy? The pain may be said to be needless in
circumstances where the one upon whom the pain is inflicted is coerced or is robbed of
her autonomy or power to choose. If there is one notion that is able to clearly tie needless
pain to indignity it could be this concept of autonomy, but even here (similar with
indignity) the issue of negation crops up. I take autonomy to mean a kind of negative
freedom or a freedom from all external constraint or an independence consisting of self-
determination.
151
Similarly, when we put in- before dependence we are noting
something that is not dependent. But, the further we go in understanding autonomy as
being positively self-determined, the more complicated things become. This is the
Ashcroft dignity camp with which I am most in sympathy, not because I want to defend
autonomy as that irreplaceable something which gives humans a dignity, but rather
because a circumstance of deprived autonomy is when it is most intuitively evident as
indignity. If we view needless pain as coerced pain we are back to our hypothesis.

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Coercion (negated autonomy) plus pain is one equivalent of needless pain. Doctors
sternly explain to a patient, as orderlies strap down his arms and legs, Sir, this is for your
own good. Then the physicians proceed to perform some painful surgery which the
patient had been refusing. Regardless of the claimed efficacy of the surgery (here is a
needful pain in the view of a medical professional) if the pain that is inflicted robs the
autonomy of the individual experiencing the pain then such pain can be said to be
needless and therefore can be classified a standard case-in-point of an indignity according
to our theory. The medical profession likes to say (use the form of words) that the solemn
right of a patient to refuse treatment respects the persons autonomy or dignity. But, the
actual function of these words could be clarified by saying the right of a patient to refuse
treatment is the right not to be constrained against her will particularly the right not to be
inflicted with pain which she deems to be needless and thus would be experienced as an
indignity.
In Larry McMurtrys novel, Lonesome Dove, Texas Ranger, Captain Augustus
McRae autonomously chooses the palliative of bad whiskey and good friends while
allowing the gangrene in his leg to kill him rather than to allow the doctor to inflict what
he deems to be needless pain to sever his only good leg. Gus is allowed this dying wish
of autonomy rather than having to suffer (even ostensibly for his own good) the
indignities of being coerced to a) undergo the pain of an amputation and b) the difficult,
painful life of an amputee. And his cowpuncher partner Captain Woodrow McCall
honors both this request for autonomy and the request to be buried back down in south
Texas.
152
Here weve come back to our hard cases paradigm of suffering as it relates to
autonomy. Though admittedly needless pain does not seem to be the dominant issue, it is

63

still there lurking in the picture. The pain being inflicted is itself, very often, the
autonomy-robbing agent and thereby becomes a conspicuous instance of indignity. At
least, if I can get back some measure of my autonomy then, I think, Ive recovered some
of my dignity. But, just because some indignity might be removed with some autonomy
restored does not leave needless pain any less culpable as emblematic of indignity within
the scenario.
Here again, this particular lack involving autonomy also may not necessarily
involve another person directly. Yet the pain is just as real and the sense of indignity is
just as intense. Say that I find myself trapped under the rubble of my house after a
devastating earthquake. My autonomy of movement is taken away.
153
After a day and a
half, a television camera finds me, my contorted body half-exposed, lying in my own filth,
moaning incoherently. Both the circumstance of my indignity, and my own sense of it,
did not suddenly appear only when I was discovered by rescue crews. In fact, I could
have been found already dead and still have suffered complete loss of autonomy, needless
pain and thereby indignity. There is simply the indignity of the lack of autonomy in this
case from a painful circumstance that was neither inflicted by another human being nor
potentially ever even witnessed by another human being.
Now lets consider a well-known and clear case of indignity that contemplates
both issues of autonomy and the second-person standpoint. It is the circumstance of the
nine year-old Vietnamese-Canadian girl, Phan Th Kim Phc, who was the subject of one
of the most famous photos from the U.S.-Vietnam War by war photographer Nick t.
154

She is spotted by a photographer (2
nd
person) running naked along a road, severely
burned and terrified after South Vietnamese war planes had dropped a napalm bomb on

64

her village in Trang Bang, South Vietnam. This is the senseless, needless pain of an
indignity that completely robs the individual of all autonomy over ones own body. The
second-person agent, presumably among hundreds of others fleeing the bombs, turns and
snaps the photo. An indignity now seems frozen in time. Fast forward whatever length of
time it took for the photo to hit the international news wires. Now what has happened to
real-time, second-person human agency? The number of persons feeling indignity over
this childs circumstance has increased in magnitude astronomically while the actual
second-person standpoint is left (as Darwall specifies) solely to the imagination. She
doesnt know that the whole world has experienced indignity vicariously through her
circumstance. Were not even sure if she has the language capacity to translate the pain
and the abject fear and the relative loss of autonomy which shes experienced into a word
that means indignity in her native tongue.
Nonetheless, the photo serves to reify the imagination for the viewer. Never mind
even how the child came to be in such a state. A grease fire in the kitchen at home
couldve gotten out of control. She couldve been fleeing from an abusive, sadist relative
for all we know, at first glance without the caption. Never mind even how far in the past
or how recent the indignity might have occurred at the moment when we view the photo
for the first time. Regardless of the specifics, through the ubiquity of the camera lens and
the empathy of the imagination, I (in the second-person standpoint yet literally half a
globe away) was still there very much feeling the pain and the indignity with that child,
yet I was not there. Some who see this photo werent even born when it was taken yet
they respond with the same indignity when they see it. What is going on here? Our
hypothesis becomes even clearer in the understanding at this point. Even when we take a

65

step back and couch our hypothesis as the needless pain of a person robbed of autonomy,
minus actual, second-person agency and offer it simply as a thought experiment, it
engenders the same response of indignity.
D. What about indignity and the pain of punishment?
1. Lack of correlation. When there is no correlation of the pain meted out as some
measure of justified punishment either offered by the punisher or understood by the
victim then the pain would seem to be needless. Correlating the punishment to fit the
crime is an ancient aspect of legal tradition. When this correlation is missing, the sense of
indignity and cries of injustice appear. On the other hand, where there is a clearly
understood correlation between punishment and pain (perhaps even meekly accepted by
the one being punished) then the pain turns from needless to presumably needful. In such
cases, there appears to be less of an instance of indignity as one of recognized reparation
for wrongs committed. By extension, there is no longer perpetrator and victim but
punisher and punishee.
155
The right of the state to inflict pain to some degree or another
as punishment for a crime (whether perceived as indignity or not) is therefore not under
consideration. Swatting a child in the seat of the pants for bad behavior may be a rather
undignified and a temporarily painful moment for the child but if the correlation to bad
behavior is clear then the pain does not appear to be needless. Thus, these examples fall
outside the hypothesis under consideration.
Here however is where an opening appears for those who would argue that
criminals, especially those guilty of war crimes, deserve all the indignity that can be
heaped upon them, especially the inflicting upon them of what would otherwise be
deemed needless pain. It is reasoned that such criminals deserve whatever indignity

66

societal justice metes out. In other words, some crimes are deemed so heinous to the
point that there can be no correlation of punishment to crime therefore even torture is
justified. It is interesting to observe whats taking place in such cases. The heinous crime
(most likely involving needless pain) triggers an indignant response where people call for
a lex talionis, eye-for-an-eye, pain-for-pain, indignity-for-indignity kind of retributive
punishment. The baby (indignity) is thrown out with the bath water. That is, all the sacred,
hands-off quality (something that ought not be removed is being removed, something that
ought not be violated is being violated) entailed in the notion of indignity disappears.
And as a result, even the universal aspect of our moral intuition about needless pain starts
to break down. Society reverts back to the more ancient laws of the clan and the caliph
where indignity only applies genetically or in other anti-egalitarian forms. But even here
our hypothesis could hold about the emblematic nature of needless pain as the typical
representative of indignity. Within the confines of my own clan, inflicted needless pain
with no apparent correlation between the pain and any officially adjudicated or readily
observable deserved punishment would remain an indignity.
A bully in school trying to hit another child instead accidentally hits a concrete
wall; pain is self-inflicted and she hurts her hand. We say, Serves her right. Why?
Because there is clear correlation of desert between pain and deserving recipient. When
that correlation is lacking and the bully instead inflicts pain upon another child for no
reason other than to hear them cry out in pain then the pain seems needless and the
obvious indignity arises. Indignant parents may step in to insist that a child needlessly
inflicting pain upon other children must be punished. (The widespread disapproval of

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bullying in schools worldwide would seem to be another example of the universal nature
of the case.)
2. Lack of proportion. In a similar vein as that of correlation, when the pain is all
out of proportion to the offense then we might say the pain is needless or over the top.
So, needless pain can be also a matter of degree. In legal terms we say that the penalty
should fit the crime. Here is Victor Hugos Les Misrables character, Jean Valjean
sentenced to five years with the miserable ones in the torturous bagne of Toulon 19
th

century French prison merely for stealing a loaf of bread. Lack of proportion between
offense and punishment leads to the sense that there is needless pain being inflicted, thus
an indignity against the person, leading to moral indignation. With the ubiquitous video
camera, there is instant moral outrage and disgust when we see a brutal police beating of
a suspect for an apparently minor offense. The indignity of the pain is due to its lack of
proportion to the alleged offense. There appear to be at least two extreme or hard cases
to consider however.
E. What about the hard cases?
1. A ticking bomb scenario speaks directly to this matter of utilitarian proportion.
In which direction the proportion is weighted is what seems to be at stake. One might ask,
What is the pain of waterboarding one terrorist compared to the pain of a ten thousand
innocents whose very lives hang in the balance with a bomb ready to explode, its
whereabouts known only to the terrorist? On the other hand, another may object and ask,
How can we weight the pain of a tortured victim against anything? The latter view of
proportion has a Kantian tilt and seems weighted in favor of ignoring the human versus
human, needless versus needful distinction in order to avoid all inflicted pain that

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involves any weighting of the pain of one human over another. In this view of the human
equation, there is something of such elevated worth (dignity is the word that comes
mind, of course) that is so infinitely incalculable that the utilitarian calculations
themselves are rendered worthless.
156

So, there is fierce disagreement over whether such intentionally inflicted pain
upon a terrorist falls under the universal moral pronouncement that it is wrong to inflict
needless pain. If there is the slimmest of chances that one tortured terrorist could save one
hundred or one thousand totally innocent noncombatants then there seems to be no doubt
that the proportion favors the indignity of the one over the indefensible death of
thousands. Here is an American movie currently at the box office about a team of
righteous assassins with the moral accord, kill one, save a thousand.
157
The seeming
inexorableness of such cold calculation overwhelms us but still gnaws at the human
conscience. That is, we might reluctantly accept that a victim must be tortured for some
seemingly just and utile end but most of us might resist being designated the torturer.
158

On the other side of the equation, the well-known predilection in U.S.
jurisprudence is that it is better to let 100 guilty persons go free as to unfairly convict a
single innocent person. Benjamin Franklin wrote that this partiality in the law has been
long and generally approved; never, that I know, controverted.
159
Though the intent of
the law seems to favor a principle of morality over a product of math, it is human nature
to want to be given some precise calculation. With the ticking bomb however, this sort of
calculation is turned on its head. That is, it is stipulated that we may know absolutely that
the avowed terrorist is guilty of planting a ticking bomb. It is further stipulated that the
likelihood is high that the terrorist would break under pain of torture and give up the

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whereabouts of the bomb. (Of course, we realize that such stipulations are hotly debated
nowadays.) Given such requisites, how many innocents must be at risk before we are
morally allowed to inflict needless pain on one guilty perpetrator?
But, isnt this the question behind the rather arbitrary predilection (100:1 ratio of
guilty to innocent) in U.S. law? That is, how many more innocents will be at risk (of
being inflicted with needless pain) if we let 100 guilty ones go free in order to avoid a
single, unjust conviction of (inflicting needless pain upon) a single, innocent defendant?
Of course, the difference here is that the issue is not one of judgment of innocence or
guilt (the terrorist is already judged guilty of planting a ticking bomb) but whether any
person irrespective of guilt or innocence can be inflicted with needless pain ostensibly in
order to prevent needless pain upon a larger population according to some utilitarian
calculation.
So, does the universal moral claim against the indignity of inflicting needless pain
not apply in such cases where inflicting needless pain upon one could lead to avoiding
the same for hundreds of thousands of others? This way of framing the issue seems to tie
us up in all kinds of moral knots that seem to go beyond just the sacrifice of one life in
order to save many lives. Utilitarian justification of torture adds another dimension
entirely and seems to introduce a very real and very slippery slope. The torture of a
terrorist in a ticking bomb situation appears at first to be the means to a lofty endthe
rescue of innocents. But, just in case the torturer doesnt break or the information turns
out to be wrong or misleading and the innocents are actually killed, then the actual end or
justification of the torture changes from rescue to retribution. Ends/means becomes a
moving target. With either contingency, the torturers appear to have covered themselves

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in a righteous utilitarian cloak. Now, keep in mind that in all of this we have not really
mounted a challenge to our original hypothesis which says that either way, an indignity is
being inflicted which is emblematized by needless pain! So, this utilitarian consideration
of how to theoretically weight indignities against each other is beyond the scope of the
hypothesis. Whether our relative loss of dignity is weighted as a matter of utility or
respected as a matter of ultimate worth, it is the tangible and observable needless pain
which serves as the emblem of it and survives this first hard cases test.
2. Torture in general. Admittedly, that which humans accept as constituting
needless (as opposed to needful) pain has been a moving target through time. The sordid
history of human torture is depressing testimony to the notion that inflicting the most
horrible pains imaginable was in fact, not only considered needful in the prevention of
crime but even counted as somehow righteous before the gods. Nonetheless, the claim
we are testing is that even throughout such gruesome times, some general understanding
of needless pain has always existed and that a wrong occurs when inflicting it or
experiencing it. Another thing to keep in mind is this natural revulsion humans seem to
have always had toward torture especially when there is no other intent than the torture
itself. It takes us straight back to the discussion of a universal moral abhorrence against
inflicting needless pain. Clearly not to discount the sad, sorry tale of torture in human
history, the distinction we make has to do with human instinct over human excess. The
histories of torture coincide here in chronicling various institutional attempts to justify
torture, never mind how sick and twisted contemporary culture may retroactively judge
these awful practices.

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What follows is my own summary of these attempted justifications. Inflicted pain
was deemed to have been somehow a needful practice for at least five reasons.
160

a. Ostensible justifications for torture. Here is my own summary of the material
that I have surveyed. Torture has been justified in order
i. To purge the soul of iniquity by recanting from some heretical belief or
repenting of some criminal act (In theological terms, we think of the many, bloody and
sometimes deadly rituals with this aim that have been invented in the name of a religion);
ii. To produce the truth by force via magic or divine intervention about some
crime that had been committed when perhaps other methods of obtaining the truth had
been exhausted. (In ancient and now mostly, obsolete legal terms, this was the so-called
trial by ordeal dating back to the Mosaic, Hammurabi and Ur-Nammu law codes.
161
);
iii. To pressure a subject to give up information that could be vital to saving the
lives of others. (In criminal case terms in the investigation of crime, so-called coercive
interrogatory methods are used with captured kidnappers or in wartime with the capture
of agents having knowledge of secret codes, troop positions and so forth);
iv. To prevent an enemy (especially one that is clearly more powerful) from
considering a future attack due to the high torture price to pay (In natural or military
tactical terms, we think simply of the unbearable sting of a tiny insect, relative to its
much larger enemy.
162
So the ancient, primitive thinking here is that torturing the captured
enemy of a much more powerful invader could serve to warn away other would-be
invaders knowing the heavy price to pay if any of their soldiers are ever captured alive);
v. To punish a perpetrator on behalf of a victim sometimes with the same eye for
an eye method that the perpetrator may have used to commit the crime. (In modern state,

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legal institutionalized terms we think of retributive punishment here. But, even in more
lawless states the practice of so-called vigilante justice often involved torture
frequently prior to carrying out a death sentence).
b. Many justifications can indicate a problem. Here a question emerges.
Does alleging that the universal moral claim remains intact as long as none of the above
justifications are present, start to become an empty declaration? Given these many
excuses for human torture, how can there be a universal moral claim against inflicting
needless pain? I would maintain quite the opposite. Multiplied moral justifications for a
practice can sometimes indicate its morally dubious standing. For example, the moral
arguments have been stacked quite high in the past to justify human slavery, infanticide,
eugenics, and all kinds of cruelty, inequality and pain in the name of race, male
chauvinism or sexual preference or the breeding of an ubermensch race. Perhaps not
every human generation is destined to be so nave that we do not recognize that
sometimes a supposed universal moral consensus grounded in things like human greed or
lust for power, (things other than deeper intuitions such as the indignity response) do not
translate so well into universal moral praxis.
c. Psychological considerations and torture. We began this section talking
about what constitutes needless pain as a way to probe into the notion of what may be
involved in a paradigmatic case for indignity. In cases of crime and punishment we found
that there can be circumstances of needless pain when there is a lack of correlation or a
lack of proportion between the pain and the supposed reason for the pain. But, what we
begin to discover in considering these hard cases is how psychologically subjective this
can be especially as the subject is under duress or coercion. It seems that random human

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subjects, placed in certain contexts, do not necessarily behave according to universally-
recognized codes of moral consensus. But rather than address the vexing aspects of the
autonomy issue for example (Kantians are still going strong here) there is the more
practical issue of simple moral agreement over what to do despite humanitys poor track
record of moral practice under duress. Perception of a moral problemespecially a
moral crisisis often cause for philosophical reflection, says University of Munster
philosopher Kurt Bayertz, Astonishingly, concerning the concept of consensus this has
rarely been the case.
163
In other words, Bayertz goes on to suggest, that it appears that
any universal moral consensus requires a steady state or stable context where all
explicative and evaluative features can be adequately addressed.
164
The facts on the
ground, as the clichd example goes, can tell a different story. And what happens when
the pall of psychological fear is draped globally so that any stable context or steady state
is virtually impossible? Examples would be times of worldwide economic collapse,
disease pandemic, or war, or in the contemporary case, radicalized religious factions
embracing terror tactics against civilians on a global scale.
Psychological experiments suggest in microcosm what happens cosmically when
a moral crisis like global terrorism and torture hinders moral consensus. One of the more
famous examples of how ordinary people put into extraordinary circumstances can
violate some of their own sacred internal moral codes is seen in the infamous Stanford
Prison Experiments.
165
More recently, two eminent American social psychologists, Carol
Tavris and Elliot Aronson have also documented this phenomenon in a recent book with
a provocative title: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs,
Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.
166
A central thesis is that a context such as prisoner

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torture can play havoc with our standard notions of cognitive dissonance and self-concept.
Heres the point about universal consensus on torture and inflicting needless pain.
Despite human proclivities to the contrary, if inflicting needless pain was not considered
so morally repugnant and was instead widely seen as quite useful for achieving some
good end, then we might expect to have seen a greater intellectual embrace and
philosophical justification for its practice worldwide. Instead what we see is the all-too-
human tendency to offer up indignity to counter indignity in the vicious downward spiral
of terrorism and torture of captured terrorists.
What our hypothesis implies however is that even in the midst of widespread,
repugnant practice there seems to have always been some sense of wrong, some foulness
associated with the inflicting of needless pain regardless of its ostensible justifications
and psychological pressure. For example, if forced personally to be the actual torture
perpetrators (even if some righteous, moral protection of good or retribution for evil etc.
is at stake) history suggests that humans seem to want to move beyond such casuistic, lex
talionis, eye-for-an-eye ways of living. Whats more, despite humanitys horribly
checkered past in this matter of human torture, there does not seem to have ever been a
human propensity to horizontally institutionalize inflicting of needless pain as accepted
practice to the point of social and cultural saturation. By this I mean, you do not find
within the ancient wisdom texts of civilizations right up to the accepted, modern canons
of human wisdom today, any hallowed acclaim for some exquisite ability to torture
another human as being some kind of lofty virtue. There are not texts, for example, that
urge the following: My friends, I exhort you all, in the name of god and the common
good let us torture one other needlessly. And though torture has a long history in

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jurisprudence, one does not find the practice, for instance, (even with some ostensibly
needful justification) being held up (ancient or modern) as a virtuous means of working
out differences in monetary or property claims or as a way of treating wives or children
or even animals.
167
Certainly state-sponsored torture has been practiced throughout
human history but we consider not the political needs of the state claiming to act for the
good of the many but rather the personal or the individual in this matter of inflicting pain.
In the name of some state-related (needful) end such as the purported common good,
torture is sanctioned but universal moral consensus has never seemed to fully embrace it,
especially as a social norm for how we should treat one another in everyday human
interaction.
168
And so, our hypothesis continues to offer some sense of rational bearing
as to how typic a universal moral claim can be in helping protect against indignity.
3. A Rowes fawn
169
type of needless pain seems to be the hardest case.
This example considers the notion of evil itself as constituting indignity. I refer here to
William Rowes famous thought experiment involving the matter of proportion or that is
the surplus evil in the world as a counter-claim against the existence of a benevolent ,
omnipotent God. Why such needless pain exists is a question for which there seems to be
no satisfactory answer despite the various theodicies proposed. Therefore, some conclude
that since humans have never succeeded in finding a reasonable need for many of the
pains we experience, then all such unexplained pain is therefore needless. Here we have
jumped from ethics to a problem in the philosophy of religion having to do with the co-
existence of senseless, seemingly unjustifiable pain and suffering alongside a benevolent,
omnipotent god. Rowes fawn suffers (needlessly it would seem) in a forest fire, dying a
slow, painful, horrible death which seems all out of proportion to any sense of a need for

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the positive concept of some useful purpose for pain and suffering. Thus there seems to
be horribly needless pain being inflicted due to the lack of proportion involved. The point
to be made here is that even though it may be needful in the physical realm that fire, by
its nature, burns, this doesnt keep us from characterizing the burning of a fawn in such a
way, in a slow, painful death a horrible, senseless indignity even for an animal. Never
mind whether or not we may believe that animals experience indignity in the same sense
that humans do. Rowe could just have easily replaced his fawn with a human infant, but
he intends to offer up the most perspicacious example possible to try and focus solely on
the perceived evil in its essence.
But, for our hypothesis, it is the circumstance of perceived indignity that is
relevantwhere we witness (even abstractly in the imagination) the inflicting of needless
pain upon another sentient being. In the hard case of Rowes fawn, lack of proportion is
of a fundamentally different variety becausea. there is no human offense or injustice or
insult to be considered; and b. there is no moral control switch that might regulate a fire
to only burn the deserving victims (animal or human) and spare the innocent its painful
indignities; and c. this resembles the cosmic indignity encountered earlier of flood,
famine and now fire. But, again even here, the instance of needless pain, regardless of its
inexplicable evil proportion, is still a matter of indignity to the observer. I do not ponder
in this example whether animals like fawns can or cannot suffer indignities, only that the
circumstance appears to be an indignity in relation to the needless pain contemplated in
the example. The issue is how we come to understand a circumstance as involving pain
that seems needless, one of those circumstances being the out-of-proportion ratio of
apparent innocence up against excruciating suffering. In terms of human indignity, the

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notion of surplus or horrendous evil must remain a supernumerary. Weve not done so
well accounting for why evil exists at all but we must, nonetheless, allow it as an actor on
the human dignity stage but without a speaking part since no one has been able to write
an acceptable one for it. But, our hypothesis suggests that our understanding is aided
when we see this kind of needless pain as a really striking illustration of something being
taken away, an absence, or a lack which we call indignity. Perhaps it might even be urged
that the higher the ratio, the greater the indignity. Whether or not this is the case, the
hypothesis recommends to us that some proportional ratio does exist which tells us that
the pain inflicted is now needless and thereby indicates indignity. It appears then that the
perception of needless pain very much involves this sense of a lack of proportion and that
it can be connected in a more or less paradigmatic way to a sense of human indignity.
IX. Extending the hypothesis.
A. Can needless pain be autonomously chosen? There are circumstances where
inflicting pain does not seem to involve the same perception of needless pain. What if, for
example, the needless pain is autonomously chosen? Or perhaps the pain might not be
chosen but the response to the needless pain can still be autonomously decided.
1. What about the psychological dysfunction of sadomasochism for example?
Two lines of analysis allow us to set aside this question rather quickly. One is that the
heart of the case has been built around a norm of moral consensus which states that one
ought not to inflict needless pain. Sadomasochism (or even the more widely-tolerated
schadenfreude
170
) by definition clearly falls outside this norm. To derive pleasure, even
sexual pleasure from inflicting needless pain upon oneself is seen as an abnormality.
Second, and perhaps even more to the point, what occurs in this counterexample ends up

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reinforcing the hypothesis. Whatever I might want to call a dys-function, nonetheless has
a comprehensible function which is very much perceived as needful within the mind of
the one deemed to be engaged in a sadomasochistic act. It is not needless pain to her
therefore, if she derives some kind of pleasure from it.
2. Frankels notion of inner freedom. There are, of course, other cases of
autonomously-chosen needless pain that are not so easily set aside and need to be
examined. There are, for example, the heroic cases of concentration camp prisoners
(made famous by Victor Frankel and others) who chose to transcend their painful
circumstances and discovered they still had a measure of autonomy left within. They find
that they still have an inner autonomous capacity to accept needless pain even though it
appears to be forced upon them. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under
such circumstances, decide what shall become of himmentally and spiritually. He may
retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.
171
Our hypothesis suggests that
whatever he might be retaining, it is most certainly an ability that some have to maintain
a sense of ones own autonomy (the last inner freedom cannot be lost as Frankel puts
it) despite senseless atrocity. Human autonomy (or Frankels inner freedom) may not
magically transform needless pain into needful pain. But, as it relates to the perception of
indignity, autonomy seems to be the underlying capacity required. And this capacity to
withstand indignity and choose needless pain as it were, did not appear to be automatic to
Frankl who observed that if the man in the concentration camp did not struggle against
this in a last effort to save his self-respect, he lost the feeling of being an individual with
inner freedom and personal value his existence descended to the level of animal
life.
172
While this kind of question can tend to lead in utilitarian directions, it does not

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necessarily imply that we must fully embrace this course. There also does not seem to be
any substantive objection to our hypothesis here, but it is important to further extend and
differentiate what we mean by needless pain involving indignity and the idea of
autonomously chosen pain that, while being accepted as involving some measure of
perceived indignity, does not always necessarily elicit the kind of tropistic response that
we might expect. There appears to be a kind of positive tropism at work in some cases
where we might expect a negative tropism. So, it appears that the relationship between
the concept of indignity and the existence of needless pain turns on the presence of
human autonomy in the following cases.
3. Cases where the pain is needless (it could be easily avoided) yet chosen for
healing ends. There do exist ostensibly needless pains, or that is, pains that could be
avoided. Yet humans, without any apparent psychological dysfunction, autonomously
choose sometimes, under certain conditions to accept or even embrace such ostensibly
needless pains. The sense in which these pains are needless then seems to turn upon the
issue of human autonomy itself. Humans have this autonomous, rational capacity to
choose pain for a number of reasons. a. When the ultimate end is healing to the pain
sufferer. This one would appear to be the most obvious. Here is the pain of surgery or the
setting of a broken bone or even the healthy pain of vigorous exercise in order to
rehabilitate a muscle or a joint or in order to maintain a healthy body. Even when the pain
sufferer cannot give consent as in the case of a baby requiring some painful procedure
such as chemotherapy or a semi-conscious accident victim needing surgery, we agree that
inflicting pain in these cases ultimately does no ultimate harm. While it is obvious that
neither an infant nor an unconscious person can consciously experience indignity, it

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remains true that an observer is able to report a circumstance of indignity there. An
abandoned newborn suffering needless pain in a dumpster by the side of the road is
observed as being in a circumstance of indignity though the child will never have any
memory of the experience itself. The same can be said for the adult in a state of
unconsciousness. But, for both adult and baby undergoing a healing yet painful surgery, it
is the end or purpose that is at stake which allows one to endure some measure of
indignity to achieve a state of wellness once again. The distinction is teleological in that
the ultimate end of the pain is meant to achieve something more than merely the
experience of pain. Had the unconscious person been in an autonomous, conscious state
with the capacity to choose the pain, then we can safely say that the person would accept
any and all such healing pain along with whatever temporary, perceived indignity that
might entail.
b. When the ultimate end results in complete recovery for the pain sufferer and
healing to others. In a slight but clear distinction, here is the temporary pain of giving
blood or more drastically of donating a kidney. The pain is needless only in the sense that
it is autonomously chosen. That is, I could opt not to undergo such pain on behalf of
another. I do not need to do this. But, I choose to experience the pain and go through
the ostensible indignities of the surgical knife, the catheter and the hospital gown. But my
needless, yet chosen, pain is leading to the healing of another. Personal liberty determines
what is deemed as needless or needful pain. Paradoxically, undergoing these painful
indignities sacrificially for a greater good on behalf of another, leads some to accord
great dignity to the one offering up her own vicarious pain in this way.

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Again there is a caution in taking this idea too far down a utilitarian for-the-
greater-good path where some might try to allow some justification for coercive (anti-
autonomous) tactics with prisoners. Why not, for example, require that all prisoners with
healthy blood be forced to give blood or better still, be forced to donate a kidney or part
of a liver since they can recover from this pain as well and it would bring healing to
others? (I imagine this has happened in nations governed by totalitarian regimes.) Or
further what about prisoners who have information that might lead to saving innocent
lives. But, it seems that forcing a prisoner to undergo a temporary, recoverable indignity
of what would otherwise be considered needless pain, in order that the person might be
persuaded to offer up life-saving information does not seem to fall neatly into the
utilitarian calculus. This, of course is a traditional criticism of any liberty-abridging
utilitarian approach.
173
There is a slippery slope feel to this idea when the pain sufferer
is coerced and all autonomy is taken away. Again, coercion seems to be the key (that is,
the pain is needless if Im experiencing it under coercion) and autonomy is the issue at
stake. Under these circumstances, whether or not one accepts the indignity of being
inflicted with some needless pain on behalf of another, becomes subjective and relative
to the viewpoint of the one in pain. Needless pain can still be perceived as an indignity,
but the insertion of autonomy in choosing the pain leads us to consider a third category
and creates some interesting outcomes for potential moral development which I explore a
little later.
3. When the ultimate end is received by the pain-sufferer autonomously but for
some higher, altruistic purpose. Here weve moved well beyond any end that might
benefit the pain sufferer in her life in any direct way. This circumstance carries us to the

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more extraordinary supererogatory cases where one person (say a complete stranger) lays
down his or her life and may suffer horribly in the process in much pain and agony for no
other reason than that of the welfare of a child with no other selfish intent whatsoever.
That is, there is no expectation of ultimate recovery by the one who suffers the indignity
of such pain. The indignity of the pain inflicted is solely for the benefit of another. The
altruist may even grant that the pain inflicted is seemingly needless and seems to do
ultimate and permanent harm. Even if one believes that altruism is actually impossible
(that such a motive can never truly exist within the human animal) there is something that
appears on the outer perimeters of the radar screen of human experience which we have
difficulty explaining.
174
Here is an indignity willingly suffered and, it would seem,
wholly on behalf of another without any apparent expectation of recompense. So there it
isthis phenomenon which is clearly within human experience and hard to deny or
explain any other way but with the word weve invented for italtruism. But, an
indignity willingly suffered is an indignity nonetheless and does not appear to affect our
hypothesis.
Here are the questions that come to mind. What tropism-related phenomenon
might be at work when an indignity is freely autonomously chosen? What must be dealt
with in each of these increasing levels of acceptance of needless pain seems to be the
character and motive of the human agent? Answers to these questions involve what I will
consider next as further extensions of our hypothesis.
B. Notions of the ideal observer and the circumstance of indignity. Up to
this point, I have only alluded to some distinctions in the way in which the meaning of
indignity in the hypothesis might be regarded. That is, there are some extensions, or

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denotations that need to be brought forward in order to see how our thesis fits in. Two
concepts are of particular interest, namely the ideal observer and the circumstance of
indignity. These two ideas are helpful in potentially deepening the meaning of what a
human tropism called an indignity response might turn out to be.
The main idea of an ideal observer theory is that ethical terms are to be defined
according to a kind of model that proposes the following: "x is better than y" is supposed
to mean that "If anyone were, in respect of x and y, fully informed and vividly
imaginative, impartial, in a calm frame of mind and otherwise normal, he would prefer x
to y. This also typically includes stipulations that the observer has all the so-called
nonmoral facts relevant to making a moral judgment and not prone to logical fallacies or
mistaken inferences.
175
I dont really have anything more elaborate in mind when I use
the term, so in our case, the ideal observer is simply one who would make the kind of
moral judgments that an ideal observer would make. The other idea I have offered is the
notion of a circumstance of indignity. The intent of this notion is to try and pull out just
the essential data of a case thereby lessening its subjective nature. My indignity may be
different from your indignity in some subjective sense or another. But, there do seem to
be paradigm-like clues indicating circumstances of indignity. These can be brought out
in the context of hypothetical thought experiments and are helpful for explicating certain
aspects of what might constitute indignity. So, these two ideas of the ideal observer and
the circumstance of indignity can be useful thinking tools especially in tandem.
1. Kinds of circumstances. Before considering some examples let me make some
distinctions about kinds circumstances of indignity in the view of an ideal observer.

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a. As we have already discussed, the first kind is the circumstance of needless
pain that is chosen autonomously. Such a circumstance seems to turn on the perception of
the victim or receiver of the ostensibly needless pain. An ideal observer is able to see an
indignity of needless pain transformed as it were by the victim into something whereby
the victim uses it to her gain or advantage.
b. A second, darker circumstance is coerced needless pain. The victims outward
autonomy is taken away completely. Here is the category where our hypothesis seems to
have the most effect and offer the most insight since our ideal observer can plainly see a
circumstance of indignity in its clearest light and thus moral convergence is more likely
to occur moving a wider spectrum of advocates to take some corrective action.
c. A third category is coincidental, whereby the needless pain is neither chosen
nor coerced but is only a coincidence of time, place and person. Though accidental and
apparently agentless, the pain is just as real and seems just as needless. But, even the
coincidence of needless pain without a human agent involved still leads an ideal observer
to note a circumstance of indignity. Some might object and propose an omnipresent
divine agent who might even be the inflictor of the pain! Still the ancient figure of Job in
the Jewish scriptures felt extreme indignity in his unexplained suffering and demanded a
court hearing with his god!
176
Even if we grant the insurance professionals term acts of
God, this still leaves the hypothesis intact since we only need to note that such a
category exists even if we do not address whether there is an agent in this category.
2. Kinds of clarifications. Now we turn our attention to some examples of how
these two ideas help further clarify the original hypothesis. a. Helps clarify absence of
pain issues. Here is an objection we proposed earlier. If needless pain is a standard

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illustration for indignity, why do we prohibit so-called violations of the dignity of a
human corpse? Indeed, where is the indignity in the stabbing of a corpse? Or what
about the case of the mother whos fallen into a diabetic coma, while her crying toddler
stabs her with a knife trying to get her mother to wake up? Here is the needless inflicting
of what turns out to be not real pain since the mother is in a coma and the corpse is by
definition, lifeless? So, in both cases, the pain receptors are either gone, as in the corpse,
or in some sense blocked as in the unconscious state.
Although, as weve already noted, painless indignity is irrelevant to our
hypothesis, there is a way to bring in these examples by extension when an ideal
observer is interposed and we call these examples circumstances of indignity. That is,
an ideal observer, when confronted with the circumstances described above, is
indignantly repulsed by the circumstance. Or that is, the person reacts with our previously
described tropistic indignity response at the very thought of these kinds of
circumstances. Here we would say that the absence of pain seems to be a subjective
aspect in which an ideal observer can be useful for offering moral judgment. That which
makes the circumstance one of indignity is that the ideal observer imagines an ordinary
person having to experience the circumstance and in that case, if the response is one of
indignity then we seem to have a workable theory.
b. Helps clarify absence of autonomy/rationality issues. So, what about cases
where the injury or pain is clearly there but the accompanying insult (see earlier OED
definition) appears not to be? Here the examples might include the following: a) persons
in persistent vegetative state;
177
b) persons in a state of severe or extreme mental
incapacity; c) infants; or d) sentient beings other than humans (animals). Again, whatever

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the circumstance that might be present, if we allow for our ideal observer to imagine a
circumstance of indignity or that is, what would ordinarily be an indignity if either
experienced personally or witnessed by an ideal observer, then the conclusion supports
our claim that needless pain will be (we might even say), a leading symptomatic indicator
for indignity for, any of the subjects proposed above. The only question my hypothesis
asks in such cases is this. Would you be perpetrating a circumstance of indignity upon
this person by the lights of an ideal observer?
178

The ideal observer approach could even offer a possible application of our
indignity thesis for animals. Though animals may be absent the measure of autonomy or
rationality of humans, it is easy enough for an observer to assign these attributes where
there is some measure of sentience. So, there occurs this vicarious sense in some pitiable
circumstance wherein it would be perceived as an indignity to the creature to be inflicted
with needless pain. Note that there is no claim here to innate dignity for animals in this
observation. Yet, millions have played the ideal observer role when they became
indignant in movie theaters the world over at the needless pain of Disneys favorite fawn,
Bambi in the 1942 film based on a 1923 story written by Felix Salten originally translated
from German by Whittaker Chambers.
179
But, this indignant instinct is not rendered
irrelevant with the word anthropomorphizing and the blithe wave of a dismissive hand.
Beginning filmmakers know very well that the mere cartoon depiction of a living creature
in needless pain can trigger just as strong a tropistic indignity response, though they will,
of course, use their own dramatic cinematography terminology, and not mine.
180
This
concept at least echoes Kants in an analogue of human dignity. [O]ur duties towards
them [animals] are indirect duties to humanity. Since animals are an analogue of

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humanity, we have duties to animals, in that we thereby promote the cause of
humanity. Kant goes on to suggest in the example of a mans inhumane treatment of his
dog, he thereby damages the kindly and humane qualities in himself.
181

What we have here is the recognition that for whatever interior understanding we
care to attach, there is clearly a sense of indignant response in an ideal observer over a
circumstance of indignity which is otherwise absent the typical rational, autonomous
features we normally prefer to attach to a discussion of human dignity.
c. Helps clarify absence of perviousness/vulnerability issues. Now we have come
to the rara avises casesthe exceptions to the rule, the nonpareils, the bloody but
unbowed, the abused yet ultimately triumphant Chief Bromdens, the Sir Thomas
Mores,
182
the Stoics
183
who are seemingly impervious to pain and to whatever torturous,
outrageous indignity may be forced upon them. What are we to make of these cases that
seem to defy what an ideal observer might view as a clear circumstance of indignity
involving horrendous needless pain that would normally trigger an immediate, indignant
tropistic response? Frankel saw a kind of acquired virtue nourishing an inner freedom.
There may be no question that an intense circumstance of indignity exists. We might
even imagine interviewing the sufferer and hearing an admission of the same. Question:
Do you realize or sense that you are suffering a horrible indignity in how you are being
treated? Answer: Yes, of course. Question: Then, why are you not breaking down
under the stress of it, not crying out in pain, not showing that you are human and
vulnerable, not retaliating somehow with righteous indignation? What interests us at this
point is that the motivation behind the answers to this last question might well turn out to
be as numerous and varied as the number and variety of sufferers. That they are the

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exceptions to the rule seems clear enough, but why this is the case is far from clear. What
does seem clear is that no one recommends that a person ought to seek out such
circumstances of indignity merely for the purpose of achieving these ostensibly good
ends. The point is, I dont hear anyone suggesting that robbing or violating another
persons dignity or inflicting needless pain are good things that need to happen more
often or even that people ought to seek out opportunities to be violated in this way so
they can learn to be better people.
184

Returning to rara avises cases and ideal observers of circumstances of indignity,
the issue seems to be one of intentional, autonomous, rational variation from the typical
human response to inflicted needless pain. Those with a studied absence of these
vulnerable qualities seem impervious, even indurate, to what an ideal observer would
deem to be an enormous indignity done to them. Going back to our tropism analogy, we
know from biology that there are observed cases of tropisms that respond in an opposite
direction from the expected movement. There are also cases of organisms with an
unusually highly-developed traumatotropism or response to a wound lesion.
185
The
analogy suggests that the human psyche might be able to develop such a traumatotropism
capacity. Through the centuries of human history many mental and physical responses to
pain have been touted as the secret to the good life or eternal life or some other mystical,
higher realm of life. The great practitioners of Taoism and Buddhism, the Stoics, and the
famed martyrs of various religious faiths come to mind. These rara avises cases seem to
reflect a studied denial of all pervious or vulnerable qualities which are natural to the
normal human condition. To make oneself impervious to pain or invulnerable to suffering
is the aim. While it is not the aim of this paper to analyze the pros and cons of these cases,

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it would seem to be a way forward if human rights groups devoted at least part of their
time and resources to using such cases to show people whove suffered horrible
indignities that there are proven ways to respond to indignity and evince resilience that
have been shown through the centuries to be healing to the human spirit.
C. Needless pain and a note on Virtue Ethics: vulnerability, invulnerability
and resilience. On the other hand, there seems to be an interesting extension from the
hypothesis that sees these rara avises cases in a more dysfunctional light. There is an
interesting virtue theory claim from George Harris who sees a neglected area of human
dignity as it relates to moral luck and human vulnerability.
186
He proposes the idea of
vulnerability as a dignity-conferring quality and asserts that this is overlooked by the
standard Kantian, Stoic and even Christian take on human dignity. That is, the
circumstance of being vulnerable to benign integral breakdown is a necessary condition
of human dignity.
187
And this breakdown can come about as the result of some addictive
vice such as a chemical (alcohol) or behavioral (gambling) addiction. Or the breakdown
can be traced to something less malignant such as the lack of exceptional character
qualities that might fortify a soldier under the stress of battle to help prevent a stress-
related psychological disorder. The soldiers understandable breakdown of falling short
of absolute all-out courage is not the same as cowardice, of course. So, Harris wants to
call this kind of non-vicious or benign breakdown a vulnerability that must be associated
with human dignity.
As far as I can tell, Harriss vulnerability can be seen as simply reducing to the
human capacity for psychological stress. But a Kantian might argue that this capacity is
subsumed by and assumed in the larger categories of elevated rationality, autonomy and

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consciousness. No other creatures have the faculties for experiencing this particular kind
of stress than those with human, conscious, autonomous, rational capacity. But, one
might begin to sense that a subtle sidetracking has occurred along the social rails of
human psychology. If this is the case, then human vulnerability belongs in an exclusive,
psychological category and needs separate consideration under that academic discipline.
Further toward the thesis at hand there is, with or without the notion of moral luck,
the idea of resilience that seems to be imbedded along with vulnerability. More often than
not, it is actually the experience of human indignity which gives rise to the human
capacity for resilience (instead of breakdown) in the face of a certain sense of externally
inflicted pain. But, here is a key distinction to be made. Resilience cannot be viewed as
the same thing as invulnerability. In fact, the antonym of resilience is rigidity. Stoic-like
rigidity or invulnerability might even be seen as an excessindurate and impassible.
Here also is where Stoicism, in the admittedly limited knowledge I have in this
area, seems to miss out on a uniquely human abilitythat is, to emerge from some
horrible pain, not rigidly impervious or impassible to it and thereby supposedly stronger
but rather victoriously resilient over it, all the while able to vividly recall the various
aspects and horrible effects of the pain in contrast to the Stoic who blocks even the
memory and sees the passions or emotions as wholly irrational.
188
So, I would modify
Harriss thesis to instead allow this kind of vulnerability (complete psychological
breakdown) as an Aristotelian deficiency, and invulnerability (severely rigid
psychological suppression) as the excess and then let resilience (flexible restraint
sufficient for survival with reasoned post-stress reappraisal) become the Aristotelian
golden mean.
189


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Might this also go to the heart of why it seems so self-evident that inflicting
needless pain is to be prohibited as a human indignity? Could it be because we humans
sense that in this very act both torture perpetrator and torture victim are most vulnerable
to breakdown? At the very least we have seen this to be the case in the many
documentations of torture in recent times. Resilience, in this context, becomes the human
antidote or protective cohort whenever pain inflicted needlessly is experienced as
indignity. Still, we mind ourselves not to overstep the thesis and say much more about
human indignity as it pertains to human vulnerability other than the assertion of an
apparently self-evident moral aversion toward inflicting needless pain. Nonetheless, it
could also be that this aspect of Harris is a kind of convergent nexus. That is to say,
without the capacity to experience this particular kind of pain (benign integral
breakdown) which Harris calls a vulnerability, there is no circumstance of indignity.
A corollary would be that to refrain from exploiting this vulnerability is a minimal
assumption of what an ideal observer would expect as a way to avoid a circumstance of
indignity. So, we simply regard this capacity as a vulnerability to pain, then what Stoic
philosophy wants to call dignity is not the fullest and most complete elevation of the
human but instead a more negative notion of immunity or insusceptibility or, if you will,
a certain kind of rigidity. On the other hand, if Harris is right and dignity is about
vulnerability then the opposite of dignity is invulnerability. But if dignity is about
resilience then vulnerability, as well as invulnerability, are simply entailed in the virtuous
meaning of resilience. Resilience in the face of indignity may not be THE definition of
human dignity, but here it seems we are coming within range at least from a virtue ethics
perspective.

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X. Conclusion.
A. Summary thoughts on the needless pain hypothesis. Show me a clear case
of needless pain being inflicted upon another human being and I will, in the typical case,
show you a case of indignity. We have already pointed out that a sense of indignity may
not always necessarily be experienced as such by the person upon whom the needless
pain is being inflicted. These are the noted extensions from the case: comatose patients,
the cognitively less-developed (infants and those with severely-impaired mental function),
and the so-called rara avises individuals. But, even in all these cases an ideal observer
readily notes that a circumstance of indignity has occurred whenever these persons are
forced to undergo needless pain.
Here is a rejoinder question for those reluctant to accept the hypothesis. How can
one deny needless pain as a potent prototype of indignity without resorting to some form
of subjectivity or cultural relativity? We could perhaps try saying that spitting in the face
is a standard illustration of indignity but for all I know this could be a cultural norm
expressing honor in some culture. Inflicting needless pain however, appears to transcend
this issue. This is not to say that there couldnt be other standard illustrations. But, to
argue against needless pain as a nadir type of case appears to lop off half of the definition
itself which joins harm with insult. Of course, we all know that some insults in one
culture do not translate to other cultures. But, add in the incendiary of needless pain
and youve clearly opened the door for indignity.
Since weve already allowed that not every case of needless pain necessarily results
in indignity, weve at least tried to bring to the surface and clarify this important aspect of
the definition, namely that a powerful paradigm of indignity involves needless pain. Why

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has the ancient first do no harm oath been so widely adopted and revered across
extremely diverse cultures? It certainly appears to be more than just medical courtesy!
And what does the oath actually mean if it does not somehow involve (1) needless
physical pain and (2) something further that reaches down into a primal, instinctive urge
or sense which, in English, is labeled with the word indignity?
If there is some reluctance to use the word indignity as a way to identify this
tropistic-like response to needless pain in the typical case, then a problem might arise in
what word to use to adequately describe what we are feeling. Ive been wronged, one
might say, or Ive been harmed. Precisely! Or should we say, Imprecisely! For, how
much more our language is enriched with a word like indignity which is able to allude to
something deeper than an insulta wrong yes, but a wrong that has violated something
about what it means to be human without requiring us to specify exactly what. Perhaps
not in every single case where needless pain occurs, but in the standard case where some
pain is inflicted needlessly, there could hardly be found a better or more striking
illustration of indignity to an ideal observer.
One might imagine any number of other, possibly synonymous, descriptive
phrases: My autonomy was denied! I was treated inhumanely! My values were
trampled on! While helpful enough, all of these carry more connotative baggage that
wants to be unpacked. What does it mean to be an autonomous human with values?
Before pondering each part of that question, a preliminary shortcut description would be
to say simply that whatever happened, it was an indignity. Even if I cannot explain what
it means to be a human with dignity, there is palpable meaning communicated and
understood with the word indignity. Here we have a perfectly cogent and plausible

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hypothesis of meaning. Whats more, its capacious quality has been left mostly untapped
in human rights talk with its myriad branches. If we resolve to prevent indignity, while
understanding it as a modern paradigm of the ancient primum non nocere imperative,
then we could also again find the similar common ground that this primeval oath has
enjoyed for so long.
B. Here are the highlights of what has been said in summary form:
1. Non-maleficence (specifically that one ought not inflict needless pain) is a compelling
moral intuition supported by ancient tradition.
2. Indignity in response to maleficence seems to be a pervasive human instinct.
3. Dignity as a grounding notion for other ethical claims remains controversial.
4. Indignity, on the other hand, offers a useful and relatively untapped vein of ethical
discussion regardless of ethical approach.
5. In ordinary language, indignity appears to offer clearer and more commonly
accessible connotative meaning than does the notion of dignity.
6. The indignity response to maleficence appears to behave like biological tropism.
7. A number of analogues support the ordinary language and tropism observations.
8. The connection between maleficence (inflicting needless pain as the specified nature
of the maleficence) and indignity motivates the hypothesis that needless pain can
offer a paradigm case for indignity.
9. It may be that our indignity hypothesis provides support (a kind of moral convergence
platform?) to the following two simple modus ponens propositions:
A: If moral declarations against maleficence and indignity retain widespread
approbation then actions which serve to prevent maleficence and indignity
retain widespread moral approbation.
B: Moral declarations against maleficence and indignity retain widespread
approbation.
Conclusion: Actions which serve to prevent maleficence and indignity retain
widespread moral approbation.
--------------------------------------
P: If a typical case for indignity involves maleficence, then non-maleficence
avoids indignity in a typical case.
Q: A typical case for indignity involves an act of maleficence.
Conclusion: An act of non-maleficence avoids indignity in a typical case.

While this paper has not set out to prove the above propositions, it has laid out a plausible
hypothesis to support some propositions along this line.

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C. Is there more than a trivial claim being made here? 1. Presuppositions
matter. I suppose that the answer to this question depends on the presuppositions one
brings to the human dignity debate. As weve already alluded to, some believe there is no
such thing as human dignity and that we waste far too much precious time debating a
vacuous concept. Others argue just as vehemently on a metaphysical level that, in fact,
there is some immaterial substance variously labeled as some kind of life spark or the
Judeo-Christian imago dei, while other forms of idealism suggest a phenomenalist
system of some sort. And perhaps it might be said that many in philosophy are content
meanwhile to see human dignity as mostly a psychological phenomenon and let the
debate simply evolve. But, there seems to be more at stake. As Alasdair MacIntyre has so
famously noted, the language of morality is in [a] state of grave disorder wherein
the only thing left to us, MacIntyre concludes, is emotivism.
190
But, even if all we end up
with are a bunch of well-meaning emotivists shouting, Down with indignity. Down with
inflicting needless pain! or Hooray for refusing to inflict needless pain! Hooray for
refusing to wreak indignity! then, I suppose that if the multitude is large enough and the
shouts are loud enough, the claim in this paper is far from trivial.
In addition, the claim is not trivial and merits consideration for going beyond a
utilitarian view which would (as I have previously noted) provisionally accept the
prohibition against inflicting pain but reject its connection with human dignity. Jeremy
Waldron has noted that Non-utilitarian theories [of rights] often contain little more
than a bare assertion that certain rights are intuitively evident or are at any rate to be
taken as first principles.
191
But, what if the assertion is linked to the matter of dignity in
this negative way thats been laid out? I suggest that like Waldrons admission that

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certain rights may be intuitively evident, the intuitively evident principle not to inflict
needless pain provides at least part of a foundational understanding if it is linked with the
additional, intuitively evident assertion that needless pain amounts to an absence of
dignity or that is, indignity, regardless of ones definition of human dignity. Humans
sense when there is indignity on account of this universal moral principle claim that we
ought not to inflict needless pain. Where there is more or less universal consent or an
ideal observer could detect that a circumstance of indignity has occurred, there
appears to be some ground for moral agreement on, at least, how not to treat others which
is at bare minimum attached to the notion of human dignity.
Perhaps even utilitarians might agree to assent to this kind of generalist proposal
defining generalist as a species that uses or is able to exploit a wide range of
resources.
192
Let the claim in this paper be of the generalist variety and see how much
light it might shed on the issue of human dignity. Another way of seeing our hypothesis
is from evolutionary biology which uses the term fitness landscape often conceived of
as a range of mountains. An evolving population typically climbs uphill in the fitness
landscape by a series of small genetic changes, until a local optimum is reached.
193
It may
be that we can view the uphill trek from indignity to dignity in these terms and while we
may disagree on the specifics of how the concepts are evolving we can agree on the
origins of the genotypedont inflict needless pain. Of course, the utilitarian view
would always continue to hold that sentience (the ability to suffer) requires that we
extend the prohibition to animals and still maintain that most assertions regarding a
uniquely human dignity amount to a vacuous concept.
194
Indignity however seems to
fill the avowed utilitarians vacuum quite nicely. If it can be accepted that there is an

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ideal observer who perceives a circumstance of indignity which all can respect by not
inflicting needless pain then this is far from a vacuous notion or a trivial claim whether or
not one is able to make sense of the concept of human dignity. There is something there
that I value somehow and it reveals itself in its most basic form when it is removed
especially when one human decides to inflict needless pain on another human. And such
a value statement is far from trivial.
2. Including the non-cognitivist. This universal moral prohibition (plausibly
conceived as a moral proscription of indignity) could thus prove tenable to a broader
array of philosophical views since it makes no necessary claim to ontological value or
even a Kantian kind of privileging of human rationality as a ground for dignity.
195
This
idea that there can be some measure of moral agreement growing from the idea of not
inflicting needless pain as a prohibition of indignity says that there are two large issues in
play, namely (1) the sheer preponderance of intercultural applauders to this moral
language throughout human history
196
and (2) the contemporary, universal abhorrence of
the amoral, sadistic torturers themselves. (Since a non-cognitive emotivism says that
moral judgments merely express our feelings at any given point in time and since feelings
are notoriously subjective and tend to change over time, it appears that emotivism owes
an explanation for why universal moral principles such as this one have held so strong, by
so many for so long.) The nearly universal and timeless moral prohibition against
maleficence cannot be adequately accounted for without some cognitive
acknowledgement of this fact.
Rather than reducing to a noncognitivist assertion (whether emotivism,
prescriptivism, expressivism et al) a convergence thesis seems to point in another

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direction. Here we might apply a bit of philosophical judo (turning the opponents
strength) upon the noncognitivist claim. That there exists this seemingly self-evident
value (not inflicting needless pain) might be described as an emotive a priori as Max
Scheler asserted.
197
That is, values can only be felt and the mind can only sort out the
value categories after a lived experience has happened. Virtue theorists have interpreted
Aristotle to mean that emotion itself simply is the perception of value.
198
In this case, a
convergent thesis says that the experience of seeing that one ought not inflict needless
pain and sensing this is indeed a paradigm of an ultimate, proscriptive value labeled
indignity, might be prior to reason itself. So, what you are doing when you express or
emote certain moral feelings could have a type of a priori yet cognitive value which
seems to turn emotivism itself upside down. You are expressing a universal moral
principle as an a priori value when you say that one ought not inflict needless pain. This
must go deeper than a mere non-cognitive expression of feeling. If not consilience,
perhaps at least a conciliatory stalemate could be declared on this moral debate flank.
More recently along this same line, John Barger has argued that [t]he conceptual
character of value-words gives them a formal objectivity lacking in mere manifestations
of feeling; the meaning of value-words contains a claim to objectivity arising from the
ontological claim to objectivity of value itself. [italics his]
199
Without necessarily
arguing for the ontology of value itself, the take-away point for this paper is that even
those who see moral claims merely as emotion claims need a story to tell as to how some
moral judgments appear to be grounded in something other than just the mere subjective
feeling itself on the part of the emoter. What if feeling can only be felt like color can
only be seen? While Schelers emotive a priori is admittedly controversial, it does

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seem that some values do have this self-evident quality about them. At least, this is as far
as I want to go in offering a convergence olive branch to a view that, by definition, does
not after all pronounce any moral judgment as true or false. I suggest that my claim
would not be trivial even to the moral non-cognitivist.
3. A simple illustration. While the approach taken here might also appear to lend
support to some older notions such as vitalism (an immaterial life force)
200
to account
for why humans refrain from inflicting pain and why they ascribe dignity to humans or to
the theory known as personalism (the person, as separate from the particles of matter in a
human body, is taken to have absolute reality, ontological value and freewill),
201
it has
not been my intent to argue for either of those positions. They need some honorable
mention however since these ideas still figure prominently in much of the popular
literature on human dignity and human rights. It would seem that this is especially true in
a post-Christian Europe where these ideas seem to serve as the heir-apparent notions of
earlier Christian doctrines on human dignity. But, all of this aside, the hypothesis being
put forward in the last part of this paper is simply: That a human being ought not inflict
needless pain is a universal moral principle which appears to be a typical illustration
when we want to claim that a violation of dignity has occurred. And as weve seen, this
adds up to a lot more than just a triviality related to a widely-accepted moral proscription.
C. Possibilities of moral consensus or convergence. Despite the simple claim I
am making, with this moral convergence proposal I am prompted by some ideas from
Kurt Bayertz to say that something more is being offered here than what he has called a
psychologically relevant or politically beneficial longing for harmony.
202
This is because
something which is psychologically relevant or politically beneficial is not necessarily

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ethically significant. I have noted from the outset that the concept of human dignity
clearly has problematic dimensions. Bayertz, a prominent German philosopher, in
writing about the concept of moral consensus, says that to propose a moral consensus
thesis (rather than my less ambitious, convergence thesis) it would need to offer 1.
explicative featuresa more precise definition of moral consensus, that is, a. who agrees;
b. what is agreed upon; and c. how is agreement reached; and 2. evaluative featuresor
the moral status of the consensus itself. In other words, there is the need to examine the
moral authority behind consensus.
203

The only moral authority our thesis requires is already taken to be self-evident in
the conventional sense but the missing element in the human dignity conversation seems
to be this very recognition that at least one necessary condition is the avoiding of
indignity which is part of what avoiding needless pain means.
204
I take this claim to be a
pre-existing moral philosophical convergence if not a widely-recognized consensus.
Nonetheless, while this convergence approach seems to meet Bayertzs features above, I
see a need to distinguish between consensus and convergence. Consensus implies some
form of consent by definition while convergence does not. I define convergence as
merely a specific observation of tendencies. It is more like a meteorological observation
of atmospheric conditionsthe atmospheric conditions exist for winds from varied
directions to come together in a specified region. Stronger winds blow after widespread
or widely-publicized atrocities occur, e.g. holocaust atrocities at Auschwitz and
elsewhere during World War II; the recent abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility
in Baghdad, Iraq. Consequently, moral judgments regarding human dignity appear to
converge even though the constituents have not sat down together with a consensual aim

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in mind. As to the evaluative feature, I have proposed that this is of the self-evident
variety. Evidence of convergence only adds to the self-evidence claim and thereby carries
with it, its own moral authority.
Finally, I will repeat a qualification that I think I have tried to make clear from the
outset regarding what this thesis is NOT trying to accomplish: a. that any philosophical
claim or hypothesis put forward is expressly not intended as a defense of any particular
ethical theory pertaining to human dignity; b. that there is no claim being made for or
against the utilitarian sentient being, animal rights, animal liberation positions regarding
inflicting needless pain. c. that, in fact, there has been no attempt to stake out a sufficient
condition for human dignity; only that we have put to the test and found plausible a
simple hypothesis that a sufficiently typical, even strikingly illustrative condition for an
indignity is an instance of needless pain.
I do believe, however, that a solid footing has been established for offering a way
forward for some moral convergence in the area of human rightsat least a
rapprochement among thoughtful activists derived from recognition of indignity. And as I
mentioned in the beginning, I believe that at least an invitation has been issued to show
how, from each of the varying moral standpoints about human dignity, due place can be
given to the facts about indignity. Since, as MacIntyre, has put it so forcefully in
response to the practical fact that emotivism (in some form or another) is now the
dominant cultural consensus in ethics, we live in post blank world. In closing, I make a
similar appeal to the one made by Cass Sunstein in the 1994 Tanner Lectures on human
values in his defending the wisdom of incompletely theorized agreements in the moral
discourse surrounding global health.
205
I suggest that this approach can be embraced and

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expanded to apply to the concept of human dignity and indignity which is appealed to in
all sorts of contexts of moral concern. Every day people act out of moral concern over
some keenly perceived indignity but without moral clarity. But, in light of the twin moral
concerns of terrorism and torture, a minimal agreement over at least the meaning and
importance of human indignity can be bolstered with some minimal philosophical
consilience of conscience.
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ENDNOTES

1
The Latin phrase primum non nocere is said to have originated from an
ancient Greek text of Hippocrates Epidemics, Bk. I, Sect. XI Declare the past,
diagnose the present, foretell the future; practice these acts. As to diseases, make a habit
of two thingsto help, or at least to do no harm, this last phrase translated into Latin by
the famed Roman physician and philosopher Galen of Pergamum (129-216 CE). See
W.H.S. Jones, trans., Hippocrates, Vol. I: Ancient Medicine, Airs, Waters, Places,
Epidemics 1 & 2. Oath, Precepts, Nutriment, Loeb Classical Library, (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press 1984); Cedric M. Smith, Origin and Uses of Primum Non
NocereAbove All, Do No Harm!, Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 45 (April 2005):
371-377; Maurice B. Strauss, ed., Familiar Medical Quotations (New York: Little,
Brown & Co., 1968), 625; see also W.H.S. Jones, Philosophy and Medicine In Ancient
Greece (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press 1979).

2
The expressions, infelicitous and felicitous under the general heading of
speech acts belongs to the father of Speech Act theory, John L. Austin.

3
Gilbert Ryle explores the concept of a bogus predicate but not specifically as
it relates to human dignity. My thesis is not to argue that human dignity is (or is not) a
bogus predicate; only to raise the issue in order to introduce a possibly less contentious
and more defensible idea related to the matter of human indignity. Ryles bogus
predicate refers to a class of statements of which the grammatical predicate appears
to signify not the having of a specified character but the having (or not having) of a
specified status. But in all such statements the appearance is a purely grammatical one,
and what the statements really record can be stated in statements embodying no such
quasi-ontological predicates. from Ryles essay Systematically Misleading
Expressions in Richard Rortys, The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 85-100.

4
indignity, n. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition 1989. OED Online,
Oxford University Press, URL = http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/
50115360?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=indignity&first=1&max_to_show=10

5
In this paper I take the notion of indignity in a deeper core sense to denote
something more than a mere, social status-related affront or the mock so-called clown
indignity. Here we are thinking of something that involves physical pain or loss of
autonomy. Thomas E. Hill Jr., (a prominent Kantian philosopher and considered a
leading authority doing work in the area of human dignity) has at least had something to
say about the issue of snobbery as it relates to the matter of dignity. See Thomas E. Hill
Jr., Social Snobbery and Human Dignity in Autonomy and Self-Respect, [original
publication date 1980] (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1991), 155-172.

6
Oliveira, Luiz Manoel da Silva, Rethinking McMurphys Idenitity in Ken
Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Revista Garrafa, Edicao 2, no. 11 (Oct.-
Dec. 2006): stable URL= http://www.letras.ufrj.br/ciencialit/garrafa11/v2/luizmanoel.html

104


7
Ibid. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of
Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. It was
only the 2nd time ever (It Happened One Night in 1934 was the 1
st
time) for a movie to
win all five major American Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor in Lead Role,
Actress in Lead Role, Director, Screenplay), an accomplishment not repeated until 1991,
by The Silence of the Lambs. This is interesting since this later movie (and the novel upon
which it is based) also involved some of the most horrible descriptions of torturous
violations of human dignity ever portrayed on screen. Again there seems to be something
of which artists are intuitively aware regarding this visceral human response in the matter
of human indignities. That is, it seems self-evident that it is wrong to inflict needless pain
on another human being.

8
The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, URL =
http://www.osce.org/odihr/ is based in Warsaw, Poland. Also the Institute of National
Remembrance Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation
whose stated mission is to preserve the memory of citizens' efforts to fight for an
independent Polish State, in defense of freedom and human dignity; and to fulfill: the
duty to prosecute crimes against peace, humanity and war crimes; [and] the need to
compensate for damages which were suffered by the repressed and harmed people in the
times when human rights were disobeyed by the state. The Czech Helsinki Committee
http://www.helcom.cz/en/index.php publishes an annual report on the state of human rights in
the Czech Republic; protection against violations of human dignity is a primary aim in
stated initiatives and declarations. See http://www.helcom.cz/en/search.php.
Perhaps the best-known Czech and the Eastern Europes most eloquent defender
of human dignity is former playwright, poet and President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav
Havel. In 1996 Havel started a foundation, Forum 2000, as a joint initiative with the
Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. Its
mission statement includes among other goals the aim to support the civil society, [and]
respect for human rights. Havel delivered a speech at Pragues, St. Vitus Cathedral,
October 16, 2001 (on the first anniversary of the organizations conference forum) to a
gathering of major representatives of the worlds religions and closed his message with
these words: We believe the time has come to create a kind of Grand Spiritual
Coalition, which would enhance the existing endeavors at the co-operation of the
worlds religions, and their joint efforts to confront together the forces of destruction
in the name of respect for life and human dignity, the brotherhood and equality of
nations, and a just world order, as well as concern for the interests of future generations.
The task of such a spiritual coalition would be to seek and promote the basic ethical
values shared by people of good will everywhere, and in the spirit of those values to
influence the life of the world community.
http://old.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/2001/1610_uk.html

9
Mirko Bagaric and James Allan, The Vacuous Concept of Dignity, Journal of
Human Rights 5, no. 2 (Apr.-Jun. 2006): 262. See for example, Article 1, paragraph 1 of
the German constitution: Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it
shall be the duty of all state authority. Constitution online at
http://www.bundestag.de/interakt/infomat/fremdsprachiges_material/downloads/ggEn_download.pdf ;

105


Still the question is being pondered in ponderous seminars: Human Dignity-A
Universal Concept? Seminar, Oslo, Norway, December 9, 2008, The Norwegian
Academy of Science and Letters, in co-operation with the Centre for the Study of Mind in
Nature (CSMN) at the University of Oslo, and the International Peace Research Institute,
Oslo (PRIO) cordially invites you to a seminar to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of
the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights program available online at
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/news/2008/12/human-dignity-a-universal-concept-seminar-oslo-9th-
december-2008/

10
Glenn Tinder, Against Fate: An Essay on Personal Dignity (Notre Dame, IN:
Notre Dame University Press, 1981) 3.

11
Matti Hayry, Another Look at Dignity, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare
Ethics 13, no. 1, (Winter 2004): 12 (also see Endnote #5). One thing to be noted is that
dignity is not a very old concept in modern philosophy. For instance, Frederick
Coplestons comprehensive nine-volume A History of Philosophy, (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist
Press, 19461975) makes no reference to it. And given that this work explains reliably
almost everything in philosophy, I can only conclude that in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s
and 1970s, when the book was originally written and published, dignity was not a
proper word in the philosophers vocabulary.
I would add that the same can be said for another widely-read eight-volume work,
The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Paul Edwards, Editor in Chief, New York: Macmillan
Publishing, 1967) where the word dignity does not appear either as a main entry or
even as an index citation.
Mette Lebech (President, Irish Philosophical Society) has further noted that even
[t]he use of the word human, to designate what pertains to the human race, is also
apparently of relatively recent date. Various etymological dictionaries affirm that the
word was in use only from the seventeenth century onwards. Before then the term
humane was used, with a more normative sense. The expression human dignity
occurs, and human dignity is a prominent theme, in the papal encyclicals from the middle
of the nineteenth century onwards. See What is Human Dignity? Maynooth
Philosophical Papers ed. by Mette Lebech, (National University of Ireland, Maynooth,
2004) pp. 59-69, stable URL = http://eprints.nuim.ie/perl/user_eprints?userid=22 This paper was
also presented at the Association for Legal & Social Philosophy annual conference June
28-July 1, 2006 at University College, Dublin, Ireland, available online at stable URL:
http://www.ucd.ie/alsp2006/programauthor.htm

12
Bertram Morris, The Dignity of Man, Ethics 57, no. 1 (October 1946): 57.
Even as early as the turn of the century, New York University philosopher Charles Gray
Shaws book The Value and Dignity of Human Life, As Shown in the Striving and
Suffering of the Individual, (original copyright date 1911; reprint Whitefish, MT:
Kessinger Publishing, 1998) wrestled with the ambiguous nature of the concept. In order
to counter a so-called naturism philosophy where values are received externally Shaw
proposed a brand of humanistic idealism whereby we somehow learn to hear the voice of
universal humanity speaking with us and we call this human dignity. A reviewer noted
the serious limitation of the work in the vagueness of its supreme conception.

106


William K. Wright, Value and Dignity of Human Life: book review, The Philosophical
Review 21, no. 2 (March 1912): 241-242.

13
David Hume, Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature, in Essays: Moral,
Political and Literary by David Hume, originally published 1741 (New York: Cosimo
Books, Inc., 2006), 81.

14
Richard Horton, Rediscovering human dignity, The Lancet 364 (September
18, 2004): 1081. Horton, a physician, edits this widely-respected medical journal based in
London and New York and serves as visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine.

15
Richard E Ashcroft, Making sense of dignity, Journal of Medical Ethics 31,
no. 11 (Nov. 1, 2005): 679.

16
Richard Pierre Claude and Burns H. Weston (eds.), Human Rights in the World
Community: Issues and Action, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2006), 11.

17
Michael S. Pritchard, Human Dignity and Justice, Ethics 82, no. 4 (Jul.,
1972): 299-313.

18
In their Amnesty International Report 2007: Facts and Figures there were
documented cases of torture and ill-treatment by security forces, police and other state
authorities in 102 (of the 194 countries currently recognized by the U.S. State Dept.
http://www.worldatlas.com/nations.htm) in 2006. See online media briefing at
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/POL10/007/2007/en/dom-POL100072007en.html Though not
always documented yearly, on average two-thirds of the worlds countries are believed to
be engaging in torture as a state practice although not necessarily officially sanctioned.
See Claude & Weston (eds.), Human Rights in the World, p. 68, 82.

19
Ronald Dworkin, Lifes Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia
and Individual Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 198.

20
Oscar Schachter, Human Dignity as a Normative Concept, The American
Journal of International Law 77, no. 4 (Oct. 1983): 849.

21
Jeremy Rabkin, What We Can Learn about Human Dignity from International
Law Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 27, no. 1, (Fall 2003): 145.

22
Herbert Spiegelberg, Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary
Philosophy in Rubin Gotesky and Ervin Lazlo (eds.), Human Dignity, This Century and
the Next: An Interdisciplinary Inquiry into Human Rights, Technology, War, the Ideal
Society (New York: Routledge, 1970), 39-40.


107


23
Ibid, p. 62.

24
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1977), 198.

25
MacIntyres word was animality. See Dependent, Rational Animals: Why
Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), xii.

26
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harcourt Brace,
1973), ix. See also Jeffrey C. Isaac, A New Guarantee on Earth: Hannah Arendt on
Human Dignity and the Politics of Human Rights, The American Political Science
Review 90, no. 1 (Mar. 1996): 61-73: [Arendt] believed that human rights were not a
problem of moral speculation or legal philosophy so much as a problem of politics, a
matter of mobilizing new and effective forms of solidarity and concern. p. 61.

27
The religious conception of human dignity as being divinely bestowed in some
way has perhaps been around the longest in one form or another. For a sampling of
historical summaries see, Goran Collste, Is Human Life Special?: Religious and
Philosophical Perspectives on the Principle of Human Dignity, New York: Peter Lang,
2002; R. Kendall Soulen and Linda Woodhead, God and Human Dignity (Grand Rapids,
MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2006); R.C. Sproul, In Search of Dignity (Ventura, CA: Regal
Books, 1983) also later published as The Hunger for Significance (Ventura, CA: Regal
Books, 1991). One telling reflection is found in the preface of Soulen and Woodheads
God and Human Dignity: The concept of human dignity has been stripped from its
traditional context in Christian thought, becoming a moral trump frayed by heavy use,
but a compelling alternate vision has not yet emerged.

28
Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936).

29
University of Munich philosopher Kurt Bayertz has an excellent essay
documenting this history in his Human Dignity: Philosophical Origin and Scientific
Erosion of an Idea, Kurt Bayertz (ed.), Sanctity of Life and Human Dignity (Dordrecht,
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), 73-90. See also Goran Collste, Is
Human Life Special? (2002).

30
James Rachels in The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4
th
ed. (New York:
McGraw-Hill 2003), 132 might be hinting at his own consequentialist/utilitarian leanings
with his comment in this widely-used primer on moral philosophy that Kants
conception of human dignity is not easy to grasp; it is probably the most difficult notion
discussed in the book. On the other hand, I imagine that few Kantians would disagree
with him!

31
G.E.M. Anscombe, The Dignity of the Human Being ch. 7 in Human Life,
Action and Ethics: Essays by G. E. M. Anscombe, Mary Geach and Luke Gormally, eds.,

108


(Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2005), 67-76; Michael Slote, Virtue Ethics and
Democratic Values, Journal of Social Philosophy 24, no. 2, (Sep. 1993): 5-37; Daniel
Russell, Aristotle on the Moral Relevance of Self-Respect in Virtue Ethics: Old and
New, Stephen M. Gardiner, ed., (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2005), 101-124.
On the problem that Thomist philosophers face in appropriating Aristotles ethics in
regard to human dignity see Richard Taylor, Aristotles Ethics: Pride as a Virtue and
Aristotles Ethical Elitism chap. 10 in Virtue Ethics: An Introduction, (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books 2002), 64-67.

32
Thomas E. Hill, Jr. tops any scholarly list of representative Kantian
perspectives on human dignity. Here is a sampling of books, book chapters and articles
by professor Hill addressing the topic: Human Welfare and Moral Worth: Kantian
Perspectives, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Respect, Pluralism, and
Justice: Kantian Perspectives, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Dignity and
Practical Reason in Kants Moral Theory, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Die
Wrde der Person: Kant, Probleme und ein Vorschlag (Human Dignity: Kant,
Problems, and a Proposal) English translation by Joachim Schulte in Menschenwrde:
Annherung an einen Begriff, Ralf Stoecker, ed., (Wein: bv&hpt, 2003), 153-73;
Respect for Persons, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 8, Edward Craig, ed., (New
York: Routledge Publishing Co., 1998), 283-287; "Making Exceptions Without
Abandoning the Principle; or How a Kantian Might Think About Terrorism" in Violence,
Terrorism, and Justice, Ray Frey and Christopher Morris, eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), 196-229; an earlier, widely-reprinted article, Servility and Self-
Respect, The Monist 57, no. 1 (Jan. 1973): 87-104.

33
John J. Drummond, Respect as a Moral Emotion: A Phenomenological
Approach, Husserl Studies 22, no. 1 (Feb., 2006): 1-27; Aurel Kolnai, Dignity,
Philosophy 51, no. 97 (Jul., 1976): 251-271. This essay by Kolnai also appears later in
Robin S. Dillon (ed.), Dignity, Character and Self-Respect, New York: Routledge 1995,
pp. 53-75. Mette Lebech, What is Human Dignity?; Gloria Zuniga, An Ontology of
Dignity, Metaphysica 5, no. 2, (Oct., 2004): 115-131.

34
For more recent, typical examples see Doron Shultziner,Human Dignity:
Functions and Meanings in Jeff Malpas and Norelle Lickiss, eds., Perspectives on
Human Dignity: A Conversation, (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer 2007): 73-92; Jeffrie
G. Murphy, The Elusive Nature of Human Dignity, Hedgehog Review 9, no. 3, (Fall
2007), 20-31; or Matthew Crippen, The Totalitarianism of Therapeutic Philosophy:
Reading Wittgenstein Through Critical Theory, Essays in Philosophy: A Biannual
Journal 8, no. 1, (Jan. 2007), URL = http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/crippen.html.

35
Thomists claim a version of Personalism best represented in the work of
Jacques Maritain. See Donald DeMarco, The Christian Personalism of Jacques
Maritain, Faith & Reason, (Summer 1991), http://www.cfpeople.org/Apologetics/page51a054.html.
Although not a widely-held view in analytic philosophy, Personalism, as a
Phenomenology-based, Max Scheler-inspired, ideology has had famous defenders in

109


recent times in the extremely popular, late Pope John Paul II, the 2
nd
longest serving pope
in history and the revered U.S. civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. For the
personalist philosophy of Pope John Paul see Derek S. Jeffreys, Defending Human
Dignity: John Paul II and Political Realism, (Ada, MI: Brazos Press 2004); Tracey
Rowland, John Paul II and Human Dignity, Public Lecture for Feast of Sts Peter &
Paul, (June 2005) at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, Melbourne,
Australia. URL= http://www.jp2institute.org/media/JP%20II%20and%20Human%20Dignity.pdf
Boston University, where King studied, was the stronghold for Personalism in
America in the early 20
th
century. On the personalism of MLK, see Warren E. Steinkraus,
Martin Luther King's Personalism and Non-Violence, Journal of the History of Ideas
34, no. 1 (Jan.-Mar., 1973): 97-111; Lawrence E. Carter, The African American
Personalist Perspective on Person as Embodied in the life and thought of Martin Luther
King Jr., The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 20, no. 3, (2006): 219-223; Rufus
Burrow Jr., God And Human Dignity: The Personalism, Theology, And Ethics of Martin
Luther King, Jr., (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press 2006).
Resembling Personalism in many respects, Communitarianism appears to be on
the rise in recent years and offers a vigorous philosophical defense of human dignity. See
the Communitarian Network Platform Text from the Institute for Communitarian
Policy Studies at George Washington University available online at
http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/platformtext.html With its correlations to Personalism and Thomistic
philosophy, Communitarianism has many prominent philosophical defenders including
Charles Taylor, Michael Sandel, Amitai Etzioni, Michael Walzer, and Benjamin Barber.
Although Alasdair MacIntyre is often listed, he resists the label. In the matter of human
dignity, an example of this apparent overlap of Personalism, Communitarianism and
Thomism can be seen in Kevin Dorans Solidarity: A Synthesis of Personalism and
Communalism in the Thought of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II, (New York: Peter
Lang Publishing 1996).

36
Given that such wide notional chasms have opened up in the field of moral
philosophy it is not surprising that even a concept so sacred as human dignity would
fall in. It is not that there is no claimed meaning for human dignity but rather that there
are so many competing claims for meaning, even ones that claim to be foundationless. In
light of this crisis of meaning, Alasdair MacIntyre says we live in an after virtue world
or that is a post-enlightenment, post-virtue world bereft of any real moral meaning
leaving only those who find themselves forever seeking after virtue. See Alasdair
MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2
nd
ed., Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame
University Press, 1984. In commenting on the impact this has had in international
politics in a post-cold war environment the French political philosopher Zaki Ladi noted
that there has developed a kind of insatiable nationalism in many countries whose
people are hungry to find some measure of a sense of personal dignity. It is striking to
see the strength of national disenchantment in republics which were supposed to have
rediscovered their dignity and their identity.This is clear in the Ukraine, for example,
from Zaki Ladi, A World Without Meaning: The Crisis of Meaning in International
Politics, (New York: Routledge 1998), 62.


110


37
As one philosopher and prominent member of the UNESCOs International
Bioethics Committee and involved in the drafting of the 2005 Universal Declaration on
Bioethics and Human Rights remarked, [H]uman dignity is one of the very few common
values in our world of philosophical pluralism. This principle is universally accepted as the
ground of human rights and democracy, and its reasonableness is not discussed at the political
and juridical level. Most people assume, as an empirical fact, that human beings have an intrinsic
dignity. This common intuition may be called the Standard Attitude. However, in recent years,
an important debate concerning the rational justification of this notion has taken place. The
deconstruction of the perceived assumptions of philosophical tradition also attempts to challenge
the idea of human dignity. The new situation raises, of course, extremely difficult problems.
Roberto Andorno, The paradoxical notion of human dignity, Rivista internazionale di
filosofia del diritto 2, (2001): 151-168. A copy of this article from the original Italian
journal was also published by permission in the Argentine journal Persona, Nmero 9,
Septiembre del 2002 and is available online at the following URL=
http://www.revistapersona.com.ar/Persona09/9Andorno.htm#_ftn1

38
This report is available online at http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/

39
Steven Pinker, The Stupidity of Dignity, The New Republic, May 28, 2008.
URL= http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=d8731cf4-e87b-4d88-b7e7-f5059cd0bfbd

40
In his disdainful little jeremiad full of ad hominem attacks, Pinker calls
philosopher Leon Kass pro-death and anti-freedom, labels all the bioethicists on the
Council theocons and charges them with imposing Catholicism.

41
Daniel Tarantola, Sofia Gruskin, Theodore M. Brown, & Elizabeth Fee,
Jonathan Mann: Founder of the Health and Human Rights Movement, American
Journal of Public Health 96, no. 11, (November 2006): 1942-1943.

42
Jonathan M. Mann, Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights,
The Hastings Center Report 27, no. 3, (May-Jun., 1997): 11.

43
Lennart Nordenfelt and Andrew Edgar, The four notions of dignity, Quality
in Ageing (Brighton) 6, no. 1, (Jun., 2005): 17-22.

44
Hayry, Another Look at Dignity, 7-14.

45
Ibid, p. 11.

46
Darryl Pullman, Universalism, Particularism and the Ethics of Dignity,
Christian Bioethics 7, no. 3, (Dec. 2001): 334.

47
James Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, Vol. 1, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 70.


111


48
See as a typical example, Matthew Eppinette and Andrew Ferguson, Human
Dignity Still Defying Devaluation, Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of
Bioethics 22, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 5-8.

49
So-called apophatic theology has had its most significant impact through the
writings of the Cappadocian Fathers and Pseudo-Dionysius whom Aquinas quoted
hundreds of times. See Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The
Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism, (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1993), 115. Most of the great religions include some
form of apophatic theology: Judaism beginning with the ineffable name for God;
Christianity from Neoplatonists to Augustine to Aquinas to contemporary Thomist
philosophy; the Lahoot salbi or negative theology of Islam; the neti neti chants from the
Upanishads of Hinduism; the very first statement in the Tao Te Ching is that the Tao
(way or truth) that can be articulated is not the constant or true Tao. See apophaticism
in Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu, Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy,
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2004), 39.

50
Ruth Macklin, Dignity is a Useless Concept, British Medical Journal 327
(Dec. 20, 2003): 1419-1420.

51
Mirko Bagaric and James Allan, The Vacuous Concept of Dignity, Journal of
Human Rights 5, no. 2, (Apr.-Jun. 2006): 260. When examined closely it appears that
the concept of nonconsequentialist rights is vacuous at the epistemological level.

52
James Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism,
(New York: Oxford University Press 1990), 4; Peter Singer, Unsanctifying Human Life,
Helga Kuhse, ed., (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2002), 91. Philosophers
frequently introduce ideas of dignity, respect and worth at the point at which other
reasons appear to be lacking. But this is hardly good enough. Fine phrases are the last
resource of those who have run out of arguments.

53
Rachels, p. 5.

54
Immanuel Kant, Grundlegen zur Metaphysik der Sitten, originally translated
from German and published in English as Fundamental principles of the metaphysic of
ethics, translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, (London: Longmans, Green, 1911);
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Irwin Edman and Herbert W.
Schneider, eds., (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing 2004), 41.

55
Hayry, Another Look at Dignity.

56
There is fascinating scientific research to suggest animals possess this
indignity response and far more empathetic potential than we previously realized or
appreciated. Emory ethologist, Frans B.M. de Waal has done some of the leading work in
this field. For a nice introduction, see Waal, Do Humans Alone Feel Your Pain,

112


Chronicle of Higher Education, (October 26, 2001): B7, URL=
http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i09/09b00701.htm ; also Waal, On the Possibility of Animal
Empathy in Feelings and Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium, edited by Antony
Manstead, Nico Frijda, and Agneta Fischer, (New York: Cambridge University Press
2004), 381-401; and Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2006), 21.

57
The very existence of Humane Societies and more recently the worldwide
animal rights movement suggests that an indignity response by humans even on behalf of
animals is widespread and continues to grow. How we humans ought to behave ourselves
toward animals and on what grounds, has been essentially the theme of one of the grand
old debates between utilitarians and Kantians for more than a hundred years. See
Immanuel Kant, Of Duties to Animals and Spirits, 27:459 (On Morality, No. 61,
Student Notes of Georg Ludwig Collins, Konigsberg, Winter Semester, 1784-85),
Lectures on Ethics, Peter Heath, trans., J. B. Schneewind, ed., (New York: Cambridge
University Press 1997), 212-213. Also see, Jeremy Bentham, A Utilitarian View, sec.
XVIII, XVIV from An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1
st

published c. 1820. From Bioethics: An Anthology, Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, eds.,
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2006), 566-567.

58
Singer, Unsanctifying Human Life, 2002.

59
Although there seem to be some implications to be drawn, in this paper, I do
not address any possible far-reaching conclusions that the human indignity response
might apply in some way how we think about the human treatment of animals.

60
Ruth Macklin, Moral Progress, Ethics 87, no. 4, (Jul. 1977): 372.

61
Ibid, p. 379.

62
Michael Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror,
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2005). Ignatieff asks provocatively in the
opening sentence, What lesser evils may a society commit when it believes it faces the
greater evil of its own destruction? p. 1.

63
Brian Schaefer, Human Rights: Problems with the Foundationless Approach,
Social Theory and Practice 31, no. 1, (Jan. 2005): 27. See Michael Ignatieff, "Human
Rights as Idolatry," in Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, ed. Amy
Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 53-98; Richard Rorty,
Human rights, rationality, and sentimentality, in Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, eds.,
On Human Rights: the Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993, (New York; Basic Books, 1993),
p. 111-134. Singer, Unsanctifying, p. 90Contemporary philosophers have cast off
these metaphysical and religious shackles and freely invoke the dignity of mankind
without needing to justify the idea at all.


113


64
Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press 1989, p. 173.

65
See Ignatieff, Human Rights as Idolatry, p. 57; and Nicholas Wolterstorff,
Response: The Irony of It All, issue title Human Dignity and Justice, Hedgehog
Review 9, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 67.

66
Kant, Fundamental Principles, p. 41.

67
The moral order expressed in these propositions is just as much part of the
fundamental nature of the universe (and, we may add, of any possible universe in which
there were moral agents at all) as is the spatial or numerical structure expressed in the
axioms of geometry or arithmetic. W. D. Ross, The Right and The Good, [originally
published 1930] Philip Stratton-Lake, ed., (New York: Oxford University Press 2002),
29-30.

68
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals [1785], 435:77, H.
J. Paton, trans. 1948, (New York: Harper & Row: 1964), 102. In the kingdom of ends,
everything has either a price or a dignity. If it has a price, something else can be put in its
place as an equivalent; if it is exalted above all price and so admits of no equivalent,
then it has a dignity. [Boldface mine]

69
Kant, Groundwork, 429:66,67, p. 96.

70
Even here there is some disagreement as to whether Kant actually recommends
a deontological ethic, despite these lines from Kant: Now morality is the condition under
which alone a rational being can be an end in himself, since by this alone is it possible
that he should be a legislating member in the kingdom of ends. Thus morality, and
humanity as capable of it, is that which alone has dignity. Groundwork, 435:78
[Boldface mine]; Allen Wood suggests nonetheless, something Kant argued twenty
years earlier in his prize essay, Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of
Natural Theology and Morals (1764). No specifically determinate obligation flows from
[any formal grounds of obligation] unless they are combined with indemonstrable
material principles of practical cognition They cannot be called obligations as long as
they are not subordinated to an end which is necessary in itself (2:298-299). To those
who think of Kants ethical theory as deontological in the sense that it is a theory
which regards moral principles as binding independent of any end served in
following them, it should be enlightening to find Kant explicitly rejecting any such
position, and to realize that it is this rejection which lies behind the Groundworks
argument that a rational will can be motivated to obey a categorical imperative only by a
distinctive kind of end. Allen W. Wood, Humanity as an End in Itself, in Paul Guyer,
ed., Kants Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, (Lanham, MD: Rowan &
Littlefield 1998), 168. [Boldface mine]

71
Kant, Groundwork, 436:79, p. 103.

114



72
W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good, p. 20-22. NOTE: maleficence, (accent on
the le syllable) which means doing harm or harmfulness is to be distinguished from
an assumed homophone when incorrectly pronounced as, malfeasance, which most
typically refers to official misconduct by a public servant.

73
David Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword, Human Dignity in Bioethics and
Biolaw, (New York: Oxford University Press 2001), 51.

74
Kant, Groundwork, 436:79, p. 103.

75
Matthew Caswell, The Value of Humanity and Kant's Conception of Evil,
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 44, No. 4, (October 2006), pp. 635. A good
example of Caswells point here would be Richard Dean, The Value of Humanity in
Kants Moral Theory, New York: Oxford University Press 2006, p. 87.

76
Oliver Sensen, Kants Conception of Human Dignity, paper presented for the
North American Kant Society program at the 2007 Pacific Division meeting of the
American Philosophical Association meeting, San Francisco, Vol. 80, No. 3, April 6,
2007. Sensen earlier presented this thesis in 2004 at a conference in Chicago. Sensen,
Oliver, How Human Dignity Grounds Human Rights: Two Paradigms Paper presented
at the annual meeting of the The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House
Hilton, Chicago, Illinois, April 2004. URL http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p82957_index.html
Sensen distinguishes what he takes to be three historical paradigms of human dignity.
The archaic paradigm is from ancient Roman usage of the Latin, dignitas which was
seen primarily as a political construct referring to an elevated position within society.
An important bridge to the subsequent traditional paradigm came with Cicero who
universalized the archaic view to apply dignitas to all human beings. By virtue of the
human capacity for reason and our greater autonomous capacity to choose a course of
action, humans occupy an elevated position within nature. The condition of our being
elevated makes humans special in nature and is thought to generate certain duties which
develop this elevated position in a proper way. This understanding is closely related to
the idea of a hierarchy of being that Arthur Lovejoy has traced from Aristotle and
Plotinus up into the 19th century. [See earlier Endnote.] But, the traditional paradigm,
while possible to be expressed ontologically in terms of good, with Kant means only
that this elevated level has more being instead of an ontologically distinct property in
the sense of G. E. Moore. And this leads to Sensens third characterization which he calls
a contemporary paradigm in which a non-relational value property belonging to
humans must be explained. One significant conclusion Sensen capably defends is that it
is an incorrect reading of Kant to attribute to him this later contemporary view of
human dignity. Sensen claims that the contemporary paradigm involves only a one-place,
non-relational predicate while the more traditional paradigm is a two-place predicate
which expresses a relation. This contemporary approach in turn necessarily requires one
to argue in some way for an absolute inner value attributed to human beings which
involves a teleology of some sort. This, in turn, has led to the insistence upon personal

115


rights based upon this teleological conception of dignity rather than the more traditional
recognition of personal duties based upon a deontological conception.

77
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis Book I, xxx, 106, Loeb Classical
Library: Cicero, Vol. XXI, On Duties (De Officiis), Walter Miller, trans., (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press 1913), 109.

78
See for another example, Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity.
79
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, trans. A. Robert
Caponigri, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing 1956).

80
Michael Stocker, The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories, The
Journal of Philosophy 73, no. 14 (Aug. 12, 1976): 453-466; this article also appears
under the same title in Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, eds., Virtue Ethics, (New York:
Oxford University Press 1997), 66-78.

81
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of
Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy,
(New York: Cambridge University Press 1996), 252. For her definition of virtue see p.
137A virtue, then, can be defined as a deep and enduring acquired excellence of a person,
involving a characteristic motivation to produce a certain desired end and reliable success in
bringing about that end. What I mean by a motivation is a disposition to have a motive; a motive
is an action-guiding emotion with a certain end, either internal or external.

82
David Hume, from Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, in Stephen
Darwall, Virtue Ethics (Blackwell Readings in Philosophy) Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing 2003, pp. 63-102; Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind, p. 138.

83
Richard Taylor, Virtue Ethics: An Introduction (2002), chap. 10, Pride as a
Virtue and Aristotles Ethical Elitism, p. 66It was for him [Aristotle] the very function of
ethics to nourish and increase their inequality, to enable those who are naturally better to rise as far as
possible above others with respect to individual worth. Indeed, if we had to suppose that all persons
are by nature of equal worth, then what would be the point of talking about human goodness or virtue
in the first place? Virtue is the perfection of function and if it is possessed merely by being a person
any personthen there is clearly nothing left to perfect. Of course it is not difficult to see why the
ancient and the modern views are so divergent here. We are the product of long religious and political
traditions that were entirely unknown to Aristotle and his predecessors. Basic to that religious tradition
is the doctrine of the inherent worth of each individual human being, expressed in the first book of the
Bible in terms of the metaphor of Gods image. It culminates, in the New Testament, in the claim that
it is the meek and the humble who are blessed, who are the very salt of the earthclaims that would
have seemed to Aristotle, and to every other philosophical moralist of antiquity, not only laughably
absurd but a dangerous inversion of values. Our political tradition, which cannot be considered
independent of the religious one, also rests upon the presupposition that all persons are by nature of
equal worth. But if the presuppositions of these traditions are correctif the least among us is as good
as the best, and if such equality is natural instead of conventionalthen almost the whole of ancient
moral philosophy is reduced to nonsense.


116


84
Michael A. Smith, Human Dignity and the common good in the Aristotelian-
Thomistic tradition, (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press 1995), 152-165; Romanus
Cessario, Virtue Theory and the Present Evolution of Thomism, in Deal W. Hudson
and Dennis Wm. Moran, eds., The Future of Thomism, (Notre Dame, IN: American
Maritain Association 1992), 291-299.

85
Raymond J. Devettere, Pride, the forgotten character virtue, Introduction to
Virtue Ethics: Insights of the Ancient Greeks, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University
Press 2002, p. 75; Thomas Aquinas, Of Pride, Second Part of the 2
nd
Part, Treatise on
Fortitude and Temperance, Question 162, in Summa Theologica, online edition
published by Kevin Knight, http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3162.htm#article6 also available at
URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.SS.iii.SS_Q162.html?highlight=pride#highlight

86
David Hume, Of Benevolence and Concerning Moral Sentiment in An
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Tom L. Beauchamp, ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 8-12, 83-89; Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A
Pluralistic View, (New York, Oxford University Press 2003), 93; Rachel Cohon,
Humes Moral Philosophy, (Oct. 29, 2004), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Edward N. Zalta, ed., URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/ ; James Fieser,
David Hume: Moral Theory, (2006), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, James
Fieser and Bradley Dowden, eds., URL = http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/h/humemora.htm

87
Daniel S. Oh, (Maj.) chaplain, U.S. Army Logistics Management College, The
Relevance of Virtue Ethics and Application to the Formation of Character Development
in Warriors, paper presented January 25, 2007, Hilton Springfield Hotel, Springfield,
VA to the International Society for Military Ethics annual conference, available online
courtesy United States Air Force Academy at http://www.usafa.edu/isme/ISME07/Oh07.html

88
Hayry, p. 29.

89
Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press 1976), 107.

90
I should clarify that Im not specifically referencing the epistemological theory
of Phenomenalism, [See Richard A. Fumerton, Phenomenalism, The Cambridge
Dictionary of Philosophy, 2
nd
ed., Robert Audi, gen. ed., (New York: Cambridge
University Press), 663] that physical objects are reducible to sensory experiences; that
they dont exist as things-in-themselves but only as perceptual phenomena. I am merely
trying to identify an ethical approach to the Human Dignity debate that seems to be more
characteristic of Continental philosophy without directly referencing Phenomenology
itself. The categories from Danish philosopher Mette Lebech, President of the Irish
Philosophical Society, seem to be along this line of just a historical description of the
lived, human experience of the concept of dignity. This is clearly different from the other
ethical categories and needed to be recognized since Lebech has done some major
philosophical work on human dignity. Another big reason for bringing up this category is
to point out that if you look at indignity and the indignity response merely as qualia, or as

117


a phenomenal property, there is a lot to be said about it from this experiential,
phenomenological perspective. See Kolnai, Dignity, Philosophy, p. 253Our
experience of Dignity is centrally of Height: a concept, alas, obscure and insufficiently
analyzed, yet widely and intimately familiar to men For further reference see Endnote
#33, Drummond, Dillon, Lebech, Zuniga.

91
Lebech, What is Human Dignity?

92
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), L.W. Beck, trans.,
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1956), 148.

93
By the word numinous I do not intend to reference Kants groundbreaking
theory of the noumenal world, but only in the more ordinary sense of the spiritually
transcendent or as OED has it, evoking a heightened sense of the mystical or sublime;
awe-inspiring. See numinous, Oxford English Dictionary online, URL =
http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uark,edu/

94
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), para.108, the German
text with a revised English translation, 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, translated
by G. E. M. Anscombe, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2003), 78.

95
Ibid.

96
John L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, [reconstructed from the manuscript notes
by G. J. Warnock] (New York: Oxford University Press 1962) p. 62-77.

97
Ibid, p. 64. The decoy duck illustration can sometimes unfortunately lead to
incorrect metaphysical comparisons. I believe it is a mistake to take Austins point about
real and unreal (real ducks vs. fake ducks) as a direct metaphysical parallel with other
word analogues. When talking about dignity, for example, we do not take the meaning of
indignity as somehow a fake dignity, or insanity as a fake sanity, or cold as fake heat, or
darkness as fake light. His point that I take for the purpose of this writing is that, like the
words real and unreal, a function of dignity may be to exclude possible ways of
something being indignity. I offer throughout a number of examples of how this might
be the case. I should also note that Austins ordinary language theory on this very point
has not been without its detractors. See D.J.C. Angluin, Austins Mistake About Real,
Philosophy 49, no. 187 (Jan., 1974): 47-62.

98
Austin, pp. 63-68

99
We recognize the, now antiquated and somewhat sexist, usage inherent in
Austins idiom wears the trousers. It was the 1950s when Austin used the term, of
course, and this was a common idiomatic expression for indicating who is in charge in a
family, see http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/wear+the+pants ; or the dominant person who
controls things in a relationship; URL =
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/who+wears+the+pants%3F.html

118



100
Austin, p. 70.

101
This is the phrase originally popularized by Harvard philosopher of law, Mary
Ann Glendon, Rights talk: the impoverishment of political discourse, (New York:
Maxwell Macmillan, 1991). Rights talk in its current form has been the thin end of a
wedge that is turning American political discourse into a parody of itself and challenging
the very notion that politics can be conducted through reasoned discussion and
compromise. For the new rhetoric of rights is less about human dignity and freedom
than about insistent unending desires Yet language, with its powerful channeling
effects on thought, is centrally implicated in our dilemma pp. 171, 172

102
Alison L. Des Forges, Leave None to the Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda,
(New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999). Philip Alston, Smita Narula, and Margaret
Satterthwaite, Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against Indias Untouchables,
report by Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
(CHRGJ) of New York University School of Law to the United Nations, Committee on
the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, submitted February 12, 2007; URL =
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2007/02/12/hidden-apartheid

103
Mann, Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights, p. 11.

104
By homologous I want to suggest a somewhat stronger relationship than merely
analogous. The wing of a bird is said to be homologous to the fin of a fish. Similarly, the
correspondence to this observable instinctive response to negative stimuli that we see in
nature seems more than just our saying, Ouch! when something hurts. There appears to be
a bios impulse or life instinct to turn away from that which hurts and turn toward that which
heals. The indignity response is a homologous tropism.
For tropism see Matthew Distephano, Homework Helpers: Biology, (Kristen
Parkes, Series Ed.) Franklin Lakes, NJ: The Career Press, 2004, pp. 309-310; tropism,
Encyclopdia Britannica Online: http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9073505
With this analogy I do not intend to reference an older, behaviorist theory (originally
proposed by Jacques Loeb) in Psychology which uses the concept of tropism in a direct
fashion to scientifically describe human and animal behavior. For example, see Arnold E. S.
Gussin, Jacques Loeb: The Man and His Tropism Theory of Animal Conduct, Journal of
the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 18, no. 4, (Oct., 1963): 321-336. See also
Mehran K. Thomson, The Springs of Human Action: A Psychological Study of the Sources,
Mechanism, and Principles of Motivation in Human Behavior, (Madison, WI: D. Appleton
and Co.), 1927.
Modern psychology still references the term, noting that the modern tendency is to
use tropism to refer to plants and taxis to refer to animals; also taxis may be used to refer
to a specific type of taxis. See tropism, Dictionary of Psychology, Raymond Corsini, ed.,
(New York: Brunner-Routledge 2002), 1023-24.


119


105
This common biological concept (negative entropy, negentropy, or syntropy)
was first introduced by Erwin Schrdinger, What is Life? The Physical Aspect of the
Living Cell, (New York: Cambridge University Press 1944).

106
Note also that I do not propose that the indignity response is necessarily
unidirectional toward or awayonly that a turning is observable. This allows for even
the morbid fascination we may observe when there is some horrible crash on the highway
and the inevitable onlooker slowdown, or even say, the near fixation some people have
with crime stories. Pace the long-favored media maxim, if it bleeds it leads. Here is the
tropistic response that I relate in my hypothesis to human indignity.

107
Here Im not thinking of the moral superlative sense as with Susan Wolf,
Moral Saints, The Journal of Philosophy 79, No.8 (Aug., 1982): 419-439; rather I refer
only to those who, for whatever reason, find themselves amazingly resilient in response
to the most horrible indignities.

108
Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and
Accountability, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), see the HUP Preface,
URL = http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/DARSEC.html.

109
indignity, n. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2
nd
ed., 1989, URL=
http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uark,edu/

110
Heres an example of the way the concept of heat gets discussed in the
philosophy of science: Stathis Psillos, A philosophical study of the transition from the
caloric theory of heat to thermodynamics: Resisting the pessimistic meta-induction,
Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 25, no. 2, (Apr., 1994): 159-190. On the
other hand, cold gets defined simply as the opposite or the absence of heat, Oxford
English Dictionary Online, 2
nd
ed., 1989, URL=http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uark,edu/

111
James Trefil, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science, (New York:
Doubleday 1992), 159.

112
Christopher Boorse, Health as a theoretical concept, Philosophy of Science
44, no. 4, (Dec., 1977): 542573;

113
Ibid; see Christopher Boorse, A Rebuttal on Health in James M. Humber and
Robert F. Almeder, eds., What Is Disease? Biomedical Ethics Reviews, (Totowa, NJ:
Humana Press 1997), 1-134; Peter H. Schwartz, Decision and Discovery in Defining
Disease in Harold Kincaid and Jennifer McKitrick, eds., Establishing Medical Reality:
Essays In The Metaphysics And Epistemology Of Biomedical Science, Philosophy &
Medicine, Vol. 90, (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer Publishing 2007), 47-63; Elselijn
Kingma, What is it to be healthy? Analysis 67, no. 294, (Apr., 2007): 128133; see also
Lennart Nordenfelt, George Khushf, and K. W. M. Fulford, Health, Science, and
Ordinary Language, (New York: Rodopi 2001).


120


114
The definition of a sanity test or sanity check is more typically in the math
and computer science vernacular referring to measures used to evaluate the validity or
invalidity of a claim or calculation. For computers, a sanity test checks the functionality
of a program, a system, and so on to make sure that everything is working properly. In
other words, the check for any insanity in a system. Free Online Dictionary of
Computing, Imperial College of London, Dept. of Computing, Denis Howe, ed., (1993).
URL= http://foldoc.org/index.cgi?query=sanity+&action=Search
A pop psychology website called PsychCentral.com claiming to be the Internet's
largest and oldest independent mental health social network today's modern voice for
mental health information and advocacy [with] the broadest online reach and
recognition of any mental health network online today, sponsors another website,
www.sanityscore.com with the top of the page headline, How Insane Are You?

115
Herbert Fingarette, The Meaning of Criminal Insanity, (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press 1974); Robert F. Schopp, Automatism, Insanity, and the
Psychology of Criminal Responsibility: A Philosophical Inquiry, Cambridge Studies in
Philosophy and Law, (New York: Cambridge University Press 1991); see also "insanity"
Encyclopdia Britannica online 2008, http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9042488 .

116
Schachter, Human Dignity as a Normative Concept.

117
Even if I claim theres no such thing as religious imago dei human dignity,
the negation approach (common to the great religions) insists that I still cannot deny
indignity phenomena though I may reference it by some other name. By use of the word
indignity, here then is a window, we might say, for shedding light on the issue. We can
agree that certain things are thought to be human indignities while continuing to disagree
on the meaning of human dignity itself.

118
A term widely used by medical professionals to refer to any form of treatment
whose sole aim is to alleviate pain and symptoms without eliminating the cause.

119
This very question has plagued the debate from the beginning. See Paul
Ramsey, The Indignity of Death with Dignity, The Hastings Center Studies 2, no. 2,
(May, 1974): 47-62. On the other hand, when those terminally-ill patients seeking out
physician-assisted suicide have been surveyed, it is not the pain that they say they are
seeking to avoid. Instead, it was more often the loss of autonomy or the control over
bodily functions that they cite in surveys as the reason to seek assistance in suicide, for
example, thus attempting to achieve death with dignity. See Jyl Gentzler, What is a
death with dignity? Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 28, No. 4 (2003), 461-487.

120
Courtney S. Campbell, Suffering, Compassion and Dignity in Dying,
Duquesne Law Review 35, no. 1, (Fall, 1996): 109. Campbell, a philosophy professor at
Oregon State, has outlined [t]he argumentative strategy of the proponents of legalized
physician-assisted suicide as displaying five recurrent features in debates over the
practice in philosophical, legal and policy contexts. (1) Patient possesses decision-

121


making capacity; (2) Life story prior to terminal diagnosis and prognosis of protracted
and painful dying; (3) Narrative of patients current suffering, experienced physically
through severe, debilitating pain, and psychically or spiritually through a perceived loss
of dignity and diminished quality of life; (4) Acknowledgement of the limits of medicine
and failure of pain control methods; (5) Conclusion that denial of access to lethal
medication is cruel, callous and unconstitutional. These features, Campbell says,
constitute the hard cases paradigm that advocates of physician-assisted suicide present
to the public and courts in their political and legal efforts

121
To be clear, by synecdoche, I do not mean a figure of speech like a metonymy
where one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated
such as using the word Washington to stand for the U.S. government. Here I am only
recognizing a journalistic device for depicting a concept by visual means, namely human
indignity represented visually by humans suffering needless pain.

122
emblem, n. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2
nd
ed., (1989): URL=
http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uark,edu/ Quotation from Francis Bacon, The
Advancement of Learning [1605] (Sioux Falls, SD: NuVision Publications 2005), 127.

123
emblematic, adj. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2
nd
ed. (1989), URL=
http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uark,edu/; see also the WordNet Lexical Database (2006) at
Princeton Universitys Cognitive Science Laboratorys, URL=
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=emblematic

124
paradigm case argument, Berent En, Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy,
2nd ed., Robert Audi, gen. ed., (New York: Cambridge University Press 1999), 642; A
Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. rev., Anthony Flew, ed., (St. Martins Press 1984),
261; Keith S. Donnellan, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 6, Paul Edwards, ed., (New
York: Macmillan Publishing 1967), 39-44.

125
Margaret Masterman, Nature of a Paradigm, Criticism and the Growth of
Knowledge, Vol. 4: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of
Science, London, 1965, Imre Lakatos, Alan Musgrave, eds., (New York: Cambridge
University Press 1970), 61.

126
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press 1962).

127
Masterman, p. 63, Kuhns definition # (11) As a standard illustration (p. 43)
These are the communitys paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures and
laboratory exercises.

128
paradigm, n. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd edition 1989. URL=
http://dictionary.oed.com/exproxy.uark.edu/


122


129
William Talbott, An Epistemically Modest Universal Moral Standpoint,
chap. 4 in Which Rights Should Be Universal? (New York: Oxford University Press
2005), 48-56.

130
The term non-maleficence was made more prominent in moral philosophy
by the famed Scottish, intuitionist philosopher Sir William David Ross, previously
referenced, in The Right and the Good, p. 21-26.

131
Kurt Bayertz, Four Uses of Solidarity, and Hans W. Bierhoff and Beate
Kpper, Relative Deprivation and Group Solidarity, in Solidarity: Philosophical
Studies in Contemporary Culture, Kurt Bayertz, ed., (Boston: Springer/Kluwer Academic
Publishers 1999), 8-9, 143. The idea of a general fraternity of all human beings, as well as the
postulate deduced from it that each individual is morally obliged to help other individuals without
differentiation, seems to overtax the moral capability of most human beings. The motivational basis
for a postulate such as this is extremely weak; it is thus just as demanding as it is powerless. Realistic
ethics cannot simply ignore the limits of sympathy between human beings. This is, however, no
reason to throw the baby out with the bath water and heave moral universalism overboard in favor of
a cult of the particularan idea that seems to have become post-modern recently. With regard to
negative obligations, universalism seems indispensable. Just because nobody is obliged to carry out
benevolent acts for the entire human race, it by no means follows that one my kill, injure, steal from or
discriminate against strangers. p. 8,9. [Italics mine]

132
W.V.O. Quine, Web of Belief, (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing 1978), 31.
This quotation hints at the pioneering work Quine has done in epistemology and
metaphysics that reopened the door for a revived version of moral intuitionism. See
Endnote #5. As Robert Audi has summarized, Intuitionism has been a force in the history of
ethics since at least the eighteenth century, but there are a number of reasons for its growing
prominence. One important point is that it speaks directly to both of the driving quests in moral
philosophy. It has a theoretical side expressible in a fairly simple metaethics; but in its richest forms it
also has a normative core that is, at least in its best-known version, developed by W. D. Ross, close to
the kinds of generally uncontroversial everyday judgments that any ethical theory seeks to account for.
These are the kinds of judgments that match our intuitions, or, on reflection, at least seem intuitive.
There are subtler reasons for renewed interest in intuitionism. For one thing, a half century's responses
to W. V. Quine's attack on the a priori, and indeed on the power of reason to reveal significant truths,
have restored in many philosophers a certain sense of epistemological freedom. I am not suggesting
that the existence of substantive a priori truths is now uncontroversial. But it is probably
uncontroversial that the concept of the a priori has not been clearly shown to be incoherent, or the
category of the a priori proven to be either empty or populated only by incontestable truths of formal
logic. There is thus more space for a rationalist intuitionism. I hasten to add that there is in any
case an empirical branch of intuitionist theorizing, not dependent on any appeal to self-evidence,
though it is like rationalist versions of intuitionism in taking some moral judgments to be non-
inferential. Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic
Value, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2005), 1. [Boldface mine]

133
Ibid, Audi, The Good in the Right, p.1. Audi defends a generalist form of
intuitionism as opposed to a particularist approach.


123


134
In many ways the discussion is as old as Platos Euthyphro Dilemma. That
is, pondering the ontology of value is like asking, Is something valuable because we
value it, or do we value it because it is valuable?

135
Compare here the concept of negative liberty from Thomas Hobbes
(Leviathan) and its contemporary proponents: Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Ronald
Dworkin and Amartya Sen.

136
W. V. O. Quine, On What There Is, Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 1, (Sep.,
1948): 21-38.

137
Alan Gewirth, Are there any absolute rights? The Philosophical Quarterly
31, no. 122, (Jan., 1981): 15.

138
Ibid, p.16. In the thought experiment leading up to this final assertion Gewirth
intentionally offers an extreme scenario with this very provocative concluding question:
Ought a son torture his mother to death in order to avert a nuclear catastrophe? p. 8.

139
Sarah Clark Miller, Dignified Agents and Dignifying Care: The Manner of
Meeting Needs as Moral Requirement, conference paper presented at the Tennessee
Philosophical Association 36
th
Annual Meeting, November 6, 2004, Vanderbilt
University. Miller said, [A] Humans caring capability is a unique moral power, similar
to rationality in its uniqueness, and one that demonstrates a humans inherent worth and
dignity. Not only are humans worthy of dignity because they can care, but the care they
deliver to others can, in fact, be dignifying.; Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice:
Womens Conceptions of Self and of Morality in Feminist Social Thought: A Reader,
Diana Tietjens Meyers, ed., (New York: Routledge 1997), 547-582; Ruth Groenhout,
The Virtue of Care: Aristotelian Ethics and Contemporary Ethics of Care, in Feminist
Interpretations of Aristotle: Re-reading the Canon, Cynthia A. Freeland, ed., (University
Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press 1998), 171-200; Nel Noddings, In
Defense of Caring, The Journal of Clinical Ethics 3, no. 1, (Spring 1992): 15-17.

140
Mann, Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights, p. 11. Mann
continues his fascinating empirical claim: An exploration of the meanings of dignity and
the forms of its violationand the impact on physical, mental, and social well-being
may help uncover a new universe of human suffering, for which the biomed-ical
language may be inapt and inept. After all, the power of naming, describing, and then
measuring is truly enormouschild abuse did not exist in meaningful societal terms until
it was named and then measured; nor did domestic violence. p. 12.

141
C. D. Broad seems to have popularized the expression irreducible minimum
in his 1923 classic Scientific Thought, in Chapter VII, Matter and Its Appearances: The
Notion of Sensible Appearance. I have now tried to point out what is the irreducible minimum of
properties which ordinary people consider must be possessed by anything if it is to count as a
piece of Matter. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.), 11. The same words were reproduced
again representing the Tarner Lectures delivered at Cambridge by C.D. Broad and published as

124


Mind and its Place in Nature, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd. 1925).
Digital Text International, Andrew Chrucky, ed., maintains a stable URL for both of
these volumes at http://www.ditext.com/broad/st/st7.html and http://www.ditext.com/broad/mpn/mpn.html
The conception here would also be similar to the ancient Aristotelian theme of the
minimal conditions for a worthwhile or good life. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,
III.1.1110a 27; IV.3.1124b 7; IX.8.1169a 20ff, Terence Irwin, trans. (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing 1999); also Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality, (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press 1977), 156-57, 183. In our hypothesis the minimal condition
would need to equal the absence of the inflicted needless pain which is equated with
indignity. So, the irreducible minimum, we might say, for avoiding indignity is to
avoid inflicting needless pain.

142
One example of just such a cataloging attempt is from the International
Institute for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies. See their website definition for
humiliation: http://www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/humiliationdefinition.php See also
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/whoweare/humiliationelimination.php The founding director,
proposes in an essay that humiliation is a historical-cultural-social-emotional construct
that changes over time, but at its core, humiliation amounts to a lack of recognition of
equal dignity. Evelin Gerda Lindner, In Times of Globalization and Human Rights:
Does Humiliation Become the Most Disruptive Force? Journal of Human Dignity and
Humiliation Studies, March 2007, URL= http://www.humiliationstudies.upeace.org/article.cfm;
Jonathan Mann, Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights, hoped for a
human rights framework to emerge wherein [i]ssues of respect for autonomy,
beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice can then be articulated from within the set of
goals and responsibilities called for by seeking to improve public health through the
combination of traditional approaches and those that strive concretely to promote
realization of human rights,

143
Again this global cataloging of all that humans count as humiliation appears to
be part of the mission of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies project. At last
check, their website offered quite an extensive list of links to related groups worldwide.
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/links/links.php

144
Darwall, Second-Person Standpoint, 160.

145
De Dialectica, for example. See De Dialectica by Augustine, Synthese
Historical Library, B. Darrell Jackson, trans., Jan Pinborg ed., (New York: Springer
Publishing 1975); also James K.A. Smith, Confessions of an Existentialist: Reading
Augustine After Heidegger, New Blackfriars 82, no. 964, (Jun., 2001): 273-282.

146
Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923) new translation, prologue & notes by Walter
Kaufmann, (New York: Simon & Schuster 1970).

147
Sigmund Schlomo Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923) The Standard Edition,
translated and edited by James Strachey, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1960).


125


148
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology, Hazel E. Barnes, trans., English language translation originally published 1956
by Philosophical Library, Inc., (New York: Washington Square Press 1993), 369-370.

149
Jerome Neu, Sticks and Stones: A Philosophy of Insults, (New York: Oxford
University Press 2008), 78, 79.

150
Holmes Rolston III has been long well-known for his defense of a kind of
cosmic or ecological dignity. See Is There an Ecological Ethic? Ethics 85, no. 2, (Jan,,
1975): 107; also Rolston defends in the full ecosystem context a corresponding
dignity in the world partner in Philosophy Gone Wild: Environmental Ethics, (Buffalo,
NY: Prometheus Books 1986), 26; he further argues for our environment (species,
ecosystems and natural processes) having intrinsic value and being able to value itself in
Value in Nature and the Nature of Value in Environmental Ethics: An Anthology,
Andrew Light and Holmes Rolston III, eds., (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2003),
145. The mirror idea here for my purpose is simply this: if there can be a cosmic dignity
of the planet, as Rolston asserts, then the cosmos can be inflicted with a corresponding
cosmic indignity.

151
Bernard D. den Ouden, Are Freedom and Dignity Possible? (Dexter, MI:
Thomson-Shore Publishing 2004). While not directly addressing the topic of indignity,
Ouden does examine this interplay of human dignity with the notion of autonomy. Not
being forced or coerced to be dependent, that is, being independent, seems inextricably
attached to the notion of dignity. So too, its corollaryremoving independence seems to
remove dignity, or leads to, or contributes to human indignity. See also the review by
Larry A. Hickman, Book Review: Are Freedom and Dignity Possible? The Journal of
Speculative Philosophy 20, no. 3 (2006): 243-244.

152
James P. Owen and David R. Stoecklein, Cowboy Ethics: What Wall Street
Can Learn from the Code of the West, (Ketchum, Idaho: Stoecklein Publishing 2005), 46-
49 in referencing Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove, (New York: Simon & Schuster
1985).

153
I realize that this example does not refer to moral autonomy directly but
instead to a more total lack of autonomy of any sort.

154
Horst Faas and Marianne Fulton, Kim Phuc and Nick Ut Meet Again, The
Digital Journalist 8, (Sep. 14, 2005): see stable URLs =
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0008/ng5.htm and http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0008/ng_intro.htm

155
Leo Zaibert, The Fitting, the Deserving and the Beautiful, Journal of Moral
Philosophy 3, no. 3 (Nov. 2006): 331-350. In this matter of correlation and so-called
needful pain see also Kyron Huigens, Dignity and Desert in Punishment Theory,
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 27, no. 1 (Fall 2003): 33-50 and Jacob Adler,
The Urgings of Conscience (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press 1992). Adlers

126


rectification theory using Rawlss social contract as a framework, turns from the
question, Why may we punish the guilty? instead to ask, To what extent does a guilty
person have a duty to submit to punishment? Justifying a system of punishment by the
state requires us to explain why persons guilty of an offense are morally bound to submit
to punitive treatment, or to take it up on their own.

156
It is important to note in this context, the Luftsicherheitsgesetz (German for
Aviation Security Act) a German law generated in response to the New York terrorist
attacks on September 11, 2001. The law finally went into force in 2005 after the Federal
Constitutional Court of Germany declared it unconstitutional for the government to allow
the Bundeswehr (German Federal Defense Force) to shoot down airliners if they are used
as weapons by terrorists. The court reasoned that destroying the lives of a few innocent
people (even if they have only minutes to live) in order to save others would objectify
them and rob them of their human dignity as guarded by the German constitution. The
full German text of the law is available online at http://bundesrecht.juris.de/luftsig/index.html ;
also in this context see Ccile Fabre, Mandatory Rescue Killings, Journal of Political
Philosophy 15, no. 4 (Dec., 2007): 363-384.

157
Wanted, Universal Pictures film directed by Timur Bekmambetov; screenplay
written by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas; starring Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie and
James McAvoy; release date: June 27, 2008; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493464/

158
Alan M. Dershowitz has proposed the concept of torture warrants or a
utilitarian notion of one-off torture. See Is There a Torturous Road to Justice? The Los
Angeles Times, Nov. 8, 2001 http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-
000089139nov08.story?coll=la%2...nes%2Doped%2Dmanual; Why Terrorism Works:
Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge, (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press 2002), 110, also Chapter 4, Should the Ticking Bomb Terrorist Be
Tortured? A Case Study in How a Democracy Should Make Tragic Choices, 131-164;
Warming Up to Torture? The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 17, 2006, URL=
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-dershowitz17oct17,0,7881821.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

159
Letter from Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan (Mar. 14, 1785), The
Works of Benjamin Franklin Containing Several Political and Historical Tracts Not
Included in Any Former Edition, and Many Letters Official and Private Not Hitherto
Published; with Notes and a Life of the Author Benjamin Franklin (Vol. 9 of 10), Jared
Sparks, ed., (Boston, MA & Louisville, KY: Charles Tappan & Alston Mygatt, reprint ed.
1970), 293. Franklin cites Martin Madan, even the sanguinary author of the Thoughts
agrees to it, Martin Madan, Thoughts on Executive Justice, 2
nd
ed., 1785. For a
thorough history of this legal penchant see Alexander Volokh, n Guilty Men,
University of Pennsylvania Law Review 146, no. 1, (Nov. 1997): 173-216.

160
I offer these five torture justifications since other summaries do not appear
to me to offer a complete picture. Millers summary of two moral justifications for
torture, one-off emergencies and legalized or institutionalized torture is not that helpful as
a distinction. Seumas Miller, Torture, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N.

127


Zalta, ed., (2006): URL=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/torture/ For a fuller discussion see William
F. Schulz, The Phenomenon of Torture: Readings and Commentary, Pennsylvania
Studies in Human Rights, (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 2007);
also Sanford Levinson, Part III: Contemporary Attempts to Abolish Torture through
Law, in Sanford Levinson, Torture: A Collection, 2
nd
ed., (New York: Oxford
University Press 2006), 145-256.
161
See Sadakat Kadri, The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O. J. Simpson, (New
York: Random House Publishing 2005), 3-38. John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law
of Proof, in Schulz, Phenomenon of Torture (2007), 19-26.

162
Perhaps the most vivid example in Western imagination is the experience of
Ottoman Empire sultan, Mehmed the Conqueror, (a ferocious psychological warrior
himself, he freely used torture to achieve his military goals) who met his match in a much
weaker opponent, Romanian rebel prince, Vlad Tepes, the Impaler. In defending his
homeland, Vlad would dispatch a courier with bags full of thousands of the severed noses
of his much stronger enemy. When Mehmed came upon the impaled corpses of some
20,000 Bulgarians and Turks who had died a slow, horribly agonizing death, Even
Mehmedtwo Byzantine chroniclers tell us, could not repress a shudder. He turned
back across the Danube and returned to his palace in Istanbul leaving it to subordinates to
carry on. Prince Vlad (the inspiration for the legendary Dracula character) is widely
praised in Romania despite his ruthless tactics, for saving his homeland from more
complete Turkish domination. See Franz Babinger, Mehmed The Conqueror and His
Time, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1978), 207.

163
Bayertz, Moral Consensus as a Social and Philosophical Problem, p. 3.

164
Bayertz defines moral consensus as a psychologically relevant or politically
beneficial longing for harmony. But, something which is psychologically relevant or
politically beneficial is not necessarily a widely-practiced moral behavior. Bayertz then
suggests that a moral consensus needs to offer 1. explicative featuresa more precise
definition [of] a. who agrees; b. what is agreed upon; and c. how agreement [is to be]
reached; and 2. evaluative featuresor the moral status of the consensus itself; that is,
the moral authority behind consensus needs to be examined. Bayertz, Moral Consensus
as a Social and Philosophical Problem, p. 3-7.

165
Famous 1971 experiment, conducted by a team of psychologists and graduate
students led by Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo. One of the many frightening discoveries that
came out of this 6-day prison simulation experiment (cut short from the original 2-week
plan) is that ordinary people who would not have consented to either torture or be
tortured will, under duress, both perpetrate and accept torture with little or no moral
justification. See http://www.prisonexp.org/ The fascinating aftermath of the study is
how it has directed the entire career of Dr. Zimbardo in analyzing this aspect of moral
psychology. Despite the fact that his prison experiment was approved by several
institutional review boards (the Stanford Human Subjects Review Committee, the
Stanford Psychology Department, and the Group Effectiveness Branch of the Office

128


of Naval Research; also the Stanford Student Health Dept. was alerted to the study and
prior arrangements were made for any medical care the participants might need) and the
fact that in1973 upon Zimbardos request, the American Psychological Association
conducted its own ethics evaluation of the experiment and concluded that all existing
ethical guidelines had been followed, Zimbardo still felt the need after 35 years to
apologize for the suffering that occurred. I was guilty of the sin of omissionthe evil of
inactionof not providing adequate oversight and surveillance when it was required....
the findings came at the expense of human suffering. I am sorry for that and to this day I
apologize for contributing to this inhumanity. Philip G. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect:
Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, (New York: Random House: 2008), 181, 235.
Along similar lines see John Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People: The
Dynamics of Torture, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 2001). Conroy, a
journalist, sets out to investigate the ordinary, everyday aspects reflected in the published
accounts of torture--in Chicago, Ireland and Israel. He analyzes the John Burge case in
Chicago where police officers beat and systematically electrocuted (on the head, chest
and genitals) a suspect who was later convicted in the killing of a police officer; then
1971 case in Ireland where the torture techniques of sleep deprivation, hooding, noise
bombardment, food deprivation, and forced standing against a wall were inflicted on
twelve prisoners; finally a case from the West Bank in Israel in 1988 where several
Palestinian suspects were captured, bound, gagged and beaten. Conroys interest in these
cases had to do both with the commonplace people involved and the lack of punishment
of the perpetrators even though the torture was well documented.
Of course, sadly theres nothing new here. Hannah Arendt's famous description
of, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, parts 1-5 in The New
Yorker, Feb. 16
th
, 23
rd
, Mar. 2
nd
, 9
th
, 16
th
, 1963, published in book form the same year
(New York: The Viking Press 1963) is probably the most famous contemporary account
and has been republished a number of times. Here was Adolf Eichmann, Hitlers officer
charged with finding a solution to the Jewish question, the man history has portrayed
as an evil monster. But what Arendt saw and heard was not a monster but a weak,
insecure, small man who claimed to be abiding by Kants great categorical imperative
claiming that he hated cruelty and could never kill anyone. That the person and his
circumstances seemed quite ordinary, even banal, made the evil all the more shocking to
contemplate because it revealed how easily any ordinary, human being can morally
justify torturing another human being. Though Arendts account has been criticized of
late (See David Cesarani, Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking the Life, Crimes and Trial of
a "Desk Murderer", (New York: Da Capo Press 2006) her essential thesis, that ordinary
people are capable of the most unspeakably immoral acts, still holds.

166
Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why
We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, (New York: Harcourt Books
2007). See also D.J. Grothes Point of Inquiry audio interview with author Carol Tavris
[stable URL at http://www.pointofinquiry.org/carol_tavris_mistakes_were_made ] in which she
talks about the book and explains cognitive dissonance, and how it can lead to self-
deception and self-justification. She talks about the ways that reducing dissonance leads
to real-world negative effects in the areas of politics, law, criminal justice, and in

129


interpersonal relationships. She also explores what dissonance theory says about
confronting those who hold discredited beliefs, what dissonance theory may say about
religious and paranormal belief, and the role of the scientific temper in avoiding the
pitfalls of cognitive dissonance.

167
Note Judaisms Sheva mitzvot B'nei Noach, The Path of the Righteous
Gentile or that is, the famed seven Noahide commandments. The Jewish view is that,
even before Moses and the Ten Commandments, Hashem (God) gave Noah seven basic
laws to govern human behavior, and that by following those seven laws, a Gentile is
made Righteous. The seven laws are: 1. Do not engage in idolatry; 2. Do not curse
God; 3. Honor the institution of marriage between husband and wife; 4. Do not murder;
5. Do not steal; 6. Do not inflict needless pain, even on an animal. (This 6th command,
as it is stated here, is a liberal interpretation of Genesis 9:4 from Conservative Judaism
(see the following web link from the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism,
http://www.uscj.org/mid-continent/eauclaire/jl-judaism.htm ) that has traditionally been focused on
the Prohibition of Cruelty to Animals: Do not eat flesh taken from an animal while it is
still alive. Other lists offer this as the 7th Noahide command.) The 7th command
according to Conservative Judaism is to Establish a system of justice to enforce these
laws. Either interpretation supports the conclusion that the ancients believed that it was
wrong to inflict needless pain on animals and certainly then, by extension, an even
greater wrong to inflict needless pain upon human beings.

168
No wonder such behavior is portrayed as belonging to the dark side. See
Karen Farrington, History of Punishment & Torture: A Journey Through the Dark Side of
Justice, (London: Hamlyn Publishers 2000); Brian Innes, History & Methods of Torture:
Crime and Detection, (Broomall, PA: Mason Crest Publishers 2002); Jean Kellaway, The
History of Torture and Execution: From Early Civilization through Medieval Times to
the Present, 1
st
ed., (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press 2002); Edward Peters, Torture: New
Perspectives on the Past, expanded ed., (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press 1996). Peters is considered to be one of the leading historical authorities in the field.

169
William L. Rowe, The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,
American Philosophical Quarterly XVI, no. 4, (Oct., 1979): 335-341.

170
Schadenfreude is defined as malicious enjoyment of the misfortunes of
others, Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd edition 1989, URL=
http://dictionary.oed.com/exproxy.uark.edu/ University of Virginia philosopher John
Portmann has explored this moral phenomenon that has resurfaced in modern culture
(both schadenfreude and sadomasochism) in two recent books, When Bad Things Happen
to Other People, (New York: Routledge 2000) and Bad for Us: The Lure of Self-Harm,
(Boston: Beacon Press 2004). For reports on recent scientific studies of this cultural
phenomenon see Warren St. John, Sorrow So Sweet: A Guilty Pleasure in Another's
Woe, New York Times, (Aug. 24, 2002) URL=
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3D6153CF937A1575BC0A9649C8B63
and Elisabeth Rosenthal, When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women

130


Don't), New York Times, (Jan. 19, 2006) URL=
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/science/19revenge.html.
The Stoics were explicit in their instructions against this passion or disorder (a
passion being an agitation of the soul contrary to reason and to nature). The four principal
passions were lust, fear, delight, and distress. Schadenfreude would be a variety of Stoic
Delight called malice which was defined as delight derived from another's evil, which
brings no advantage to oneself; in Greek: epikairekakia or in Latin: malevolentia (See
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, iv 11, J. E. King, trans., Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 18,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1927); Diogenes Lartius, The Lives and
Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers, vii 10, C.D. Yonge, trans., (Whitefish, MT:
Kessinger Publishing 2006).
Even earlier in Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics, the Greek term
ctikoipckokio (epikairekakia) is seen as an excess in a triad of terms, opposite of the
deficiency, phthonos, where nemesis occurs as the mean. The Greek term nemesis is a
painful response to anothers undeserved good fortune, while phthonos is a painful
response to any good fortune, deserved or not. Aristotle saw a character excess flaw of
epikairekakia when one takes pleasure in anothers misfortune. (See Nicomachean Ethics,
2.7.1108b1-10). Again, the point is needless pain as human indignity seeming to turn on
the issue of whether it is autonomously chosen. The modern societal trend of taking
delight in instances of human indignity, especially needless pain is troubling but does not
appear to affect my hypothesis.

171
Viktor Emil Frankl, Mans Search for Meaning: An Introduction to
Logotherapy (1959), 4
th
ed., (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000), 66.

172
Ibid, p. 50.

173
Chin Liew Ten, Mills Defence of Liberty, in J.S. Mill: On Liberty in Focus,
John Gray and G.W. Smith, eds., (New York: Routledge 1991), 212. No good reason
exists, Ten convincingly concludes, for not weighing all preferences in the utilitarian
calculusa procedure which must tend to undermine the principle of liberty.

174
From a philosophy of science and evolutionary biology perspective, Elliott
Sober sees even insects and other mindless organisms as capable of altruism. Then,
turning to humans he argues that whatever egoistic inclinations we may have there are
parallel altruistic motivations as well. He suspects that the solely egoistic picture of the
self has been shaped by the contemporary culture of individualism and competition. Edith
Wyschogrod, a moral philosopher arguing from a phenomenology perspective, defines
altruism as an action favoring other individuals at the expense of the altruist. She goes
so far as to dispute the notion that an ethical life is possible from the standpoint of self-
interest regardless of how far-reaching ones perspective. See Elliott Sober, The ABCs
of Altruism, 17-28 and Edith Wyschogrod, Pythagorean Bodies and the Body of
Altruism, 29-39 in Stephen Garrard Post, ed., Altruism & Altruistic Love: Science,
Philosophy & Religion in Dialogue, (New York: Oxford University Press 2002).


131


175
Jollimore, Troy, "Impartiality", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Edward
N. Zalta, ed., URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/impartiality/ In modern moral philosophy
the ideal observer is credited to Roderick Firth and Richard B. Brandt, Ethical
Absolutism and the Ideal Observer, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12, no.
3 (Mar. 1952): 317; and Richard B. Brandt, The Definition of an Ideal Observer
Theory in Ethics, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 15, no. 3 (Mar., 1955):
407, 414, 422. Also often cited are Hares archangel and Rawlss veil of impartiality.
In contrast to Hare, my ideal observer could also represent both his archangels and
proles because the indignity case says that an ideal observers critical thinking as well
as her intuitive response to needless pain is indignity. See Richard Mervyn Hare, The
Structure of Ethics and Morals, Essays in Ethical Theory, (New York: Oxford
University Press 1989), 175-190. Also, The principles of justice are chosen behind a
veil of ignorance. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1971): 12.

176
Job 7:1-21; 13:3,18; 23:3-7. See Sacred Writings, Judaism: The Tanakh, The
New JPS Translation, Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., (New York: Jewish Publication Society
1985), 1347-1348, 1356, 1372.

177
A lengthy, scholarly study by Bryan Jennett is inconclusive at best about
whether and to what extent such patients can experience pain. He summarizes the
hesitancy of medical professionals to base any treatment decisions on this uncertainty
quoting an American neurologist who has reviewed the possibility of pain from a
physiological viewpoint, and argues that an observer cannot know for certain that a
vegetative patient cannot perceive pain. Bryan Jennett, The Vegetative State: Medical
Facts, Ethical and Legal Dilemmas, (New York, Cambridge University Press 2002), 252;
pace a similar earlier conclusion by A.J. Haig, et al, The Persistent Vegetative State,
New England Journal of Medicine 331, no. 20, (Nov. 17, 1994): 1380-1381.

178
See the Appendix for two examples where it the aim is to a) prevent indignity
by palliating suffering; or b) prevent indignity by preserving autonomy.

179
Paul A. Schons, Bambi, the Austrian Deer, The Germanic-American
Institute, September 2000, http://www.gai-mn.org/ ; stable URL=
http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/paschons/language_http/essays/salten.html

180
A 2006 online poll of 3000 Daily Mail readers in Great Britain ranked the
Disney classic, Bambi as the top tear jerker of all time.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1076842/Disney-classic-Bambi-named-tear-jerker-film-time.html

181
Immanuel Kant, Of Duties to Animals and Spirits, 27:459 in Lectures
on Ethics.

182
For the most famous popular account of the life of Sir Thomas More that has
been turned into both stage and screen productions see Robert Bolt, A Man For All
Seasons, (New York: Random House 1962).

132



183
See Tad Brennan, Stoic Moral Psychology, in Brad Inwood (ed.), The
Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, New York: Cambridge University Press 2003, pp.
257-294. Also from the same volume, Dorothea Frede, Stoic Determinism,They
[Stoics] took great pains to explain the psychological mechanisms that enable rational
beings to withhold assent and not simply to give in to impressions from outside. p. 195.
184
Our ideal observer (to the rescue again) might note that there will perhaps
always be the mad martyr religious fanatics who try to seek out dignity by offering
themselves up to the indignities of a torturous death to the glory of their god. Though
some have tried, it is difficult to build a permanent society around a core value that sees
martyrdom as the primary means to dignity. On the other hand, the opposite extreme
seems just as unstable. These are the insistent unending desires to which Glendon
refers. (See Endnote #101) That is, if the core value is avoiding at all cost, even the
slightest of indignities, inflicted or received, to the point that mere politeness supersedes
all virtues, then such a society makes itself vulnerable to enslavement.

185
traumatotropism, see "Tropism." Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2008
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9073505

186
George W. Harris, Dignity and Vulnerability: Strength and Quality of
Character, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997).

187
Harris defines his benign integral breakdown not as a dysfunction due to a
vice [or] the lack of an exceptional virtue. Rather by benign, he intends a
dysfunction that is due to what is good about the agent and that cannot be remedied either
by eliminating a vice or by adding an exceptional virtue. Harris, Dignity and
Vulnerability, p. 12. But the issue remains that a complete breakdown (thus a
vulnerability) has occurred and this capacity for vulnerability is what Harris holds to be a
virtue in the human character which amounts to dignity. The only thing benign that I can
see is that there is no vice involved and the person does not die as a result. He does not
address the persons subsequent psychological integrity post-breakdown.

188
There is research to suggest that Stoic-like suppression or concealing outward
signs of emotion, is linked with degraded memory, communication, and problem
solving. See Jane M. Richards, The Cognitive Consequences of Concealing Feelings,
Current Directions in Psychological Science 13, no. 4, (July 2004): 132.
In the case of the martyr this invulnerable-resilient distinction would be mostly
irrelevant. Even if the martyrdom was somehow used as an instructive example of how
to die properly while suffering terrible, scandalous indignity whether with clinched teeth
and without a whimper or screaming out in agony and pain, there is no post-death virtue
for the martyr, only the martyrs story for as long as the story-tellers pass along the tale.
Still, as the story-teller knows and relates certain aspects of the character and virtue of the
martyr, so goes the story-lines admiration of resilience. Our point remainsthat
resilience may be the more desirable yet neglected virtue.


133


189
Harris has defended an Aristotelian view of ethics over against a Kantian
approach. George W. Harris, Agent-Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to
Kantian Internalism, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1999).

190
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 2-3.

191
Jeremy Waldron, Theories of Rights, (New York: Oxford University Press
1984), 18.

192
Alan Beeby and Anne-Maria Brennan, First Ecology: Ecological Principles
and Environmental Issues, 3
rd
ed., (New York: Oxford University Press 2008), 45.

193
See Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable, (New York: Norton 1996)
and Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-
Organization and Complexity, (New York: Oxford University Press 1995). I am aware
that while [t]he metaphors of fitness and adaptive landscapes have played a central role
in evolutionary biology and practice ever since they were introduced by Sewall Wright in
the 1930s and recent theoretical work may point toward various ways to improve the
metaphors, it may in the end be extremely difficult to articulate it in a way that is both
coherent and conceptually fruitful. See Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan,
Slippery Landscapes: The Promises and Limits of the Adaptive Landscape Metaphor in
Evolutionary Biology, chap. 8 in Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual
Foundations of Evolutionary Biology, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2006), 175-
176. Nonetheless, the metaphor is still widely-accepted as a conceptual framework for
understanding how species evolve, thus the idea is useful as applied to how moral
thought might evolve first from avoiding indignity.

194
See Bagaric and Allan, The Vacuous Concept of Dignity, p. 257; also Ruth
Macklin, Dignity is a useless concept.

195
Bear in mind that an ideal observers rationality serves as proxy in instances
where the indignity response is precluded in comatose, infant, and infantile cases.

196
Recall Endnote #1 and the ancient notion of primum non nocere.

197
Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, Bernard Noble, trans., (New York:
Harper & Brothers 1960).

198
Deborah Achtenberg, Cognition of Value in Aristotles Ethics, (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press 2002), 161.

199
John L. Barger, The meaningful character of value-language: A critique of the
linguistic foundations of emotivism, The Journal of Value Inquiry 14, no. 2, (Jun.,
1980): 89.


134


200
Vitalism can be traced to Aristotle's notion of human nature as an inner, goal-
oriented dynamism. Bruce Weber, Life, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward
N. Zalta, ed. (2008), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/life/ Stoic philosopher,
Posidonius proposed a vital force emanating from the sun to all living things. See I.G.
Kidd, Posidinius: Testimonia and Fragments 1-49, Ludwig Edelstein, trans., (New York:
Cambridge University Press 1988), 30-32. The term elan vital (originally translated by
Mitchell as vital impulse) was coined in 1907 by French philosopher, Henry Bergson,
Creative Evolution, Arthur Mitchell, trans., (New York: Henry Holt and Company 1913),
126; an idea typically associated with this concept is Schopenhauers will-to-live
notion. See Arthur Schopenhauer, The Will to Live: Selected Writings of Arthur
Schopenhauer, Richard Taylor, ed., (New York: Continuum Publishing 1990). More
recent treatments have come fromGilles Deleuze. See John Marks, Giles Deleuze:
Vitalism and Multiplicity, Modern European Thinkers, (London: Pluto Press 1998); and
Georges Canguilhem, A Vital Rationalist: Selected Writings from Georges Canguilhem,
Arthur Goldhammer, trans., Franois Delaporte, ed., (Cambridge, MA: Zone Books
2000); Monica Greco, On the Vitality of Vitalism, Theory, Culture & Society 22, no. 1,
(2005): 15-27.

201
See the works of French philosophers Emmanuel Mounier or Jacques Maritain,
a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and in America,
Boston University philosopher and theologian, Borden Parker Bowne. It is significant to
note that this formerly influential philosophical view springs from the Kantian elevated
view of the person. Still popular among some Thomist philosophers, this position views
the person as properly basic and was influenced by the philosophies of Leibniz and
George Berkeley in claiming that reality is ultimately personal in nature. According to
this view, personality is a basic category of existence that cannot be reduced to or
explained by any more fundamental concepts, such as mechanistic ones. Other noted
philosophers claimed by the Personalists: Nikolai Berdyaev, Peter Anthony Bertocci,
Gabriel Marcel, Thomas Buford, Ralph Tyler Flewelling, Constantin Rdulescu-Motru,
Jan Patoka, Charles Bernard Renouvier (considered the French successor to
Malebranche and a profound influence on William James. Liberty, said Renouvier, in
a much wider sense than Kant, is man's fundamental characteristic. Human freedom acts
in the phenomenal, not in an imaginary noumenal sphere.) Max Scheler, F.C.S. Schiller,
and Edith Stein. See Rufus Burrow Jr., Personalism: A Critical Introduction, (Atlanta, GA:
Chalice Press 1999); "Personalism," Encyclopdia Britannica Online 2008
http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9059351 ; there are extensive bibliographies from
University of Central Floridas Philosophy department website, URL =
http://www.philosophy.ucf.edu/pi/p.html and from Southern Illinois University philosophy
professor, Douglas R. Anderson at http://www.personalism.com/.

202
Kurt Bayertz, Moral Consensus as a Social and Philosophical Problem, 3.

203
Ibid.

204
William P. Cheshire, Jr., Toward a Common Language of Human Dignity,
Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics 18, no. 2 (Jul. 2002): 7-10. It is

135


interesting to note that Cheshire, a professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic, persists in
calling for moral consensus under a religious banner (that humans are made in Gods
image and as such have intrinsic dignity) while conceding the problem with this approach
from the beginning. However, in the process of laying out his argument, he references an
organization whose very name could give rise to a possible ground for common language
consensus he seeks. The noble aspiration to preserve human dignity has broad appeal.
And yet this language of consensus is also a language of nuanced plurality. For example,
what the coalition [Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics, see
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/] means by the essential dignity of every human being,
is altogether different from what is implied in the Oregonian political slogan, "death with
dignity. The latter places dignity within an extreme interpretation of individual
autonomy, while the former imputes dignity to all people, including those too vulnerable
to exercise autonomy. Whether to promote death or protect life, both march beneath the
banner of dignity, tugging it at times in opposite directions. p. 7

205
Cass R. Sunstein, Political Conflict and Legal Agreement, from lecture
series delivered at Harvard University, Nov. 29 Dec. 1, 1994, The Tanner Lectures on
Human Values, Vol. 17, Grethe B. Peterson, ed., (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah
Press, 1996), 137-249. These lectures are also available online at
http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Sunstein96.pdf The acclaimed Czech poet
and statesman, Vaclav Havel has made a similar minimal moral convergence appeal:
Perhaps the way out of our current bleak situation could be found by searching for what
unites the various religionsa purposeful search for common principles. Then we could
cultivate human coexistence while, at the same time, cultivating the planet on which we
live, suffusing it with the spirit of this religious and ethical common groundwhat I
would call the common spiritual and moral minimum. Could this be a way to stop the
blind perpetual motion dragging us toward hell? Can the persuasive words of the wise be
enough to achieve what must be done? Or will it take an unprecedented disaster to
provoke this kind of existential revolutiona universal recovery of the human spirit and
renewed responsibility for the world? p. x. See Vaclav Havel, Introductory Essay in
Sharif M Abdullah, Creating a World that Works for All, (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler
Publishers 1999), vii-x.

206
The phrase consilience of conscience was suggested to me by History
professor colleague, Steve Gunter.











136


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APPENDIX

The function of this additional collection of material is twofold: (1) To offer some
thoughts on what indignity might look like in the standard case as it is applied in real-life
circumstances. That is, how might this inverted approach using an indignity paradigm
work itself out in practical cases and policy formulation? (2) To include an extra thought
experiment from ancient Oriental tradition, which might shed some additional light upon
the topic. There is this reminder also. On my account contained in this paper, I have
concentrated on a narrower aspect of indignity that seems to have acquired extensive
acceptancethat indignity is often the cited violation when needless pain is observed.
Also, it has been granted from the outset that the perception of indignity can be acutely
subjective and culturally-bound.
I have sat in a school headmasters office in Southeast Asia where a teenager
forgot to ensure that he carried his head lower than my head and the administrators head
as we were sitting at tea. The student was angrily and severely reprimanded for such an
indignity especially with a guest present. I have heard of an American businessman in an
Arab nation losing a rather lucrative contract due to the unintended yet highly offensive
indignity of crossing his leg, propping his foot on his knee thus exposing the bottom of
his shoe to his host. In recent years, merely the overheard stories of indignities such as
holy books being desecrated by unbelievers or cartoons lampooning religious leaders,
have triggered riots and killing sprees. Descriptions and cultural explanations of these
kinds of indignities could fill volumes.
The distinction made in this paper has not been to deny or even quibble with
whether these kinds of acts should be defined as indignity. This clubbiness inclination
seems bound up in our social nature and with it the tendency to invent offenses that serve
to stratify and separate in anti-egalitarian ways and to validate an acute sense of indignity.
Instead, my concern has been that, in part due to this very issue, the high-minded ethical
claims, resolutions and proclamations made in the name of human dignity get further
diluted. Not only are we vague in our understanding of dignity, we often plague ourselves
with hypersensitive indignities. Perhaps theres a causal correlation here, I dont know.
What can be known is what Ive tried to concentrate onthe indignity that gains near
universal consent wherever it is typically observed.
I. Three Applications. While there could be quite a hefty catalog of ethical cases
that might be contemplated, I will sketch out three scenarios that address how my
indignity thesis would apply in three broad areas where moral controversies are very
large and ongoing.
A. Terrorist prisoners, torture and indignity. Clearly, if a person is in a
coerced position where torture is even contemplated, this loss of autonomy is admittedly
an indignity in itself. Without going into details of the typical stipulations for a clean
thought experiment as it applies to what constitutes torture and under what circumstances
the torture of a terrorist might be permissible, let us strictly consider what would NOT
apply with our hypothesis.
Even though we might even grant that the following could be absolutely
perceived as appalling indignities by a prisoner of war, and politically unwise by the
perpetrator, they would not rise to the level of the indignity thesis put forward in this

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paper: hearing offensive words or lying propaganda written or uttered; hearing offensive
music including loud music intended not to do physical harm or inflict pain but perhaps
as a sleep deprivation tactic; viewing offensive acts or images of acts: these might include
forcing a prisoner to viewa holy book desecrated that the prisoner counts as religiously
sacred, sexually explicit acts or the disrobed body of the opposite sex (either live or on
film) when it is known that a prisoner counts even the viewing of such to be a religious
wrongdoing. We could go on longer along this line but the typical umbrella term is
psychological torture (as opposed to outright interrogational brutality), specifically acts
of humiliation particular to a culture.
1

What would apply is any action at all that causes needless pain to the other person.
While it might be argued, as I referenced earlier from Jonathan Mann, that subjecting a
person to the indignities of psychological torture could have an empirically verifiable,
deleterious physical effect over time (needless pain), this has not been my primary
concern here. We look for the more immediate effect of clearly needless pain that triggers
the tropistic reaction or instinctive indignant response. This is indignity in the standard
case and is clearly proscribed. It would not be enough then for a superior to command
those in his charge not to harm the prisoners. A simple, straightforward order could be
stated clearly and obeyed without a lot of confusion: no pain whatsoever is to be
needlessly inflicted upon any prisoner at any time. Likely the way an order like this gets
applied in a military context is simply, when in doubt, do not touch which is a kind of
correlative of first do no harm.
While the Western world was shocked and embarrassed at the reprehensible,
college hazing-like activity that went on in the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, many of
the proven incidents that took place did not rise to the level emblematic of indignity in
the standard case contemplated in this paper.
2
My hypothesis allows for fair consideration
of proportion. That is, while human rights advocates and religiously devout Muslims
were equally outraged and disgusted, the treatment at Abu Ghraib hardly matched the
needless pain that extremists of various political and religious factions force their
prisoners to undergo.
3
The complication in larger, social organization cases, particular
military, is the myrmidon factor. A look-the-other-way atmosphere is created by
superiors either by intentional design or intentional disregard. Neither organizational
stance is humanely ameliorating. However, though the actions at Abu Ghraib may have

_____________________
1
Other than civilians being held without charge, this is the essential accusation found in the original
scathing article by Seymour Hersch, Torture at Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker, May 10, 2004, available
online at http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/040510fa_fact ; see also David Smith, What really
happened at Abu Ghraib? Current Affairs, May 2, 2004 available online at
http://www.preoccupations.org/2004/05/what_really_hap.html
2
MG Antonio M. Taguba, Deputy Commanding General Support, CFLCC under the direction of
Commander, Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC), LTG David D. McKiernan,
Hearing [under] Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade, Assessment of DoD
Counter-Terrorism, Interrogation and Detention Operations in Iraq, full report available online at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2004/800-mp-bde.htm
3
It is not difficult to find on the Internet confirmed video footage of terrorists torturing their innocent
civilian victims (rarely enemy combatants) culminating in severed heads paraded in front of cheering
onlookers in a manner rivaling the most horrendous medieval tortures.

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clearly violated both the U.S. military code of ethics and the Geneva Convention rules for
the treatment of prisoners, the hypothesis proposed in this paper would not directly apply
unless there was intentional needless pain inflicted.
4
Where the hypothesis does apply most directly however would be in the more
clandestine cases that we do not hear as much about. This is where physical torture
(waterboarding for example) is said to occur routinely and by design and for ostensibly
utilitarian goods on behalf of the free world. Regardless of ones definition of torture,
here clearly is needless pain. (For the needless/needful distinction see my earlier
discussion of the so-called ticking bomb cases.) Here is a clear standard illustration of
human indignity in its starkest form. On the grounds that human indignity is generally
offensive to humanity, a clear and specific policy, for example, that bans all prisoner
treatment involving indignity in the standard case (or that is needless pain in any form)
would seem to offer more clarity and substance than one that more vaguely bans all
torture in the name of human dignity. Were still debating both ends of that equation
what is torture and what is dignity? Indignity-based orders could get us past the impasse.
B. Abortion and indignity. Here we have arrived on well-trod ground when it
comes to claims for the competing dignity of the fetus (or unborn child depending on
ones rhetorical preference) versus the dignity of the mother. Neither is relevant on my
account since we make no real claims concerning human dignity. However, there do
seem to be competing indignity claims as these pertain to needless pain in mother and
child. Lets grant that every single discomforting pain of an entire unwanted pregnancy is
considered needless. The obvious answer in the view of many seems simple and the pain
removable. Abort the fetus, stop the pain. But, in stopping the mothers pain we have
inflicted ultimate pain that leads to death in another sentient being. That is, here is
another being capable of suffering. In the name of avoiding an ultimate kind of
irreparable indignity, the death of a sentient human being, let us compromise the case. In
the coming nine months let us offer as much palliative care as required to the mother of
this unwanted child so that she suffers as little as possible of what she considers needless
pain for the sake of avoiding the ultimate in needless pain that ends in the death of a child.
And what of the contentious issue of fetal pain, one might ask. The first and most
obvious response on my account is to rely not on scientific research about fetal pain but
instead on an ideal observer and a circumstance of indignity. Recall the example of the
mother lapsed into a diabetic coma. A clear circumstance of indignity still appears to be
there from the standpoint of an ideal observer. Never mind whether one believes there in
a personal soul, or that the soul does not enter a human until some later stage or further
whether theres even a person there at all. From our indignity hypothesis the issue is that
a sentient being is there. And what constitutes sentience may not be purely a matter of
neurological scientific conclusion. Indeed a leading medical researcher in this field, Dr.
Sunny Anand at the University of Arkansas, has recently suggested as much:


____________________________
4
The Taguba investigation did find plenty of needless pain being inflicted: intentional abuse of detainees
by military police and proceeded to document the following acts: Punching, slapping, and kicking
detainees; jumping on their naked feet; using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate
and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee.

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The capacity to feel pain has often been put forth as proof of a common
humanity. Think of Shylocks monologue in The Merchant of Venice:
Are not Jews hurt with the same weapons as Christians, he demands. If
you prick us, do we not bleed? Likewise, a presumed insensitivity to pain
has been used to exclude some from humanitys privileges and protections.
Many 19th-century doctors believed blacks were indifferent to pain and
performed surgery on them without even that eras rudimentary anesthesia.
Over time, the charmed circle of those considered alive to pain, and
therefore fully human, has widened to include members of other religions
and races, the poor, the criminal, the mentally ill and, thanks to the
work of Sunny Anand and others, the very young. Should the circle
enlarge once more, to admit those not yet born? Should fetuses be added
to what Martin Pernick, a historian of the use of anesthesia, has called the
great chain of feeling? Anand maintains that they should.
5

Whatever might be eventually concluded scientifically about fetal pain, a defender of the
indignity hypothesis will push in the earlier rather than later developmental direction, not
for empirical scientific reasons but on account of an ancient propensity in the direction of
first to do no harmfirst avoid any possibility of human indignity. If the mother in an
unwanted pregnancy can be spared a great deal of pain which she deems needless, then it
seems reasonable to contend for non-maleficence for the developing living thing that the
mother carries.
C. Euthanasia and indignity. I began the indignity hypothesis section with a
language puzzle in the field of euthanasia and suggested that the real intent might not be
so much death with dignity as death (or end of life) without indignity. As Courtney
Campbell has insightfully noted (see Endnote #120), the conclusion from the political
lobbyists for physician-assisted suicide for their hard cases paradigm of suffering
typically claims that a denial of access to lethal medication is cruel, callous and
unconstitutional. The assertion is that needless pain and deteriorating autonomy
constitutes a loss of dignity. Of course, this is precisely the indignity thesis with the
needless pain-inflictor being the disease itself.
But if indignity is indeed allowed to be the decisive issue, the progress of medical
science, specifically palliative care, appears to be undercutting the euthanasia argument.
A happy death is achieved by means of palliating care thereby without indignity and
without suicide. If advocates for physician-assisted suicide persist by subsequently
leaning upon autonomy too heavily, apart from other ethical constraints, then the tactic of
trying to avoid indignity by merely aiming to avoid loss of autonomy appears to sanction
too much. As long as the suicide is painless
6
and there is autonomous choice then
suicide would not be considered a violation of dignity (indignity) and is in fact the
____________________
5
Annie Murphy Paul, The First Ache, The New York Times, February 10, 2008; available online at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/magazine/10Fetal-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
6
Title of a song which became a kind of later American anthem for existentialism, first released in
1970 written by Johnny Mandel (music) and Mike Altman (lyrics), and the theme song for both
the movie and TV series M*A*S*H.


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ultimate existential (and quite final) assertion of autonomy. Here the argument has
shifted away from our indignity hypothesis which maintains that a standard
illustration of indignity is irrevocably taken away if needless pain is taken away.
The physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia debate goes to the core of the
indignity thesis, since needless pain plus loss of autonomy seem to be the key issues and
since human dignity is the championed term tossed about on both sides. How our
hypothesis might practically apply is again more in its directional pressure. Since the aim
is avoiding indignity in the standard case which is avoiding circumstances of needless
pain, this will create a push for finding circumstances providing the greatest likelihood
for needless pain to be successfully circumvented. Of course, physician-assisted painless
suicide is one option. Its drawback is painfully obvious in that not only does it eradicate
the agony of needless pain, it permanently ends the agon itself. That is, the struggle to
palliate pain and do battle with the standard illustration of human indignity is precluded
and many would say, prematurely. Our indignity hypothesis wants to continue the battle
for as long as there can be indignity to battle against. Euthanasia appears to, somewhat
dismissively and some would say prematurely, short circuit this process.
II. The Imposter Stone: A Thought Experiment. Here is another more esoteric
way of thinking about the issue. Let us suppose along with the millions who believe it,
that humans possess such a thing as dignity. Let us further suppose however, that none
have a clue what it is. Whether metaphysical property or essence or value status, they just
cant tell you. How might they go about uncovering the relevant clues? (By the way,
philosophers and legal experts have been working this angle for centuries trying to
discover some core essence or otherwise prove convincingly that theres nothing really
there. But, as weve noted, the progress toward some positive, clear consensus of
meaning seems illusive and disappointing.) All the while, there is this imagined state of
affairs in which we suspect something obtains in all humans but we find ourselves at a
loss to put a collective, consensual finger on what it is. Heres an idea: negative
consensus! Take a positive step by a noting a negative difference. But, how?
With these preliminaries, let me offer a suggestive little story on how, at least, to
re-frame our reference points. I recall a Chinese folk tale of a young novice in the jade
trade who is apprenticed to an old master. Every day the young tyro would come to the
old sage of jade for his training. And every day for weeks on end this learned Oriental
jeweler would simply place a genuine, fragment of cut jade into his young learners hand
and tell him to hold it tight while the old teacher talked of philosophy, the weather,
women, the sun, and almost everything under it. After an hour he would take back the
precious stone and send the boy home. The frustration was almost unbearable for the
young man. When would he be instructed about jade? But the apprentice is too polite to
interrupt his venerable instructor. Then one day the wise old teacher puts a different
gemstone into the hand of his young student. That's not jade! the young man cries out.
In response to which the old jewel wizard slowly nods and smiles as he retrieves the
pinchbeck, fraudulent stone. Lesson one is ended, he declares quietly to his apprentice.
If dignity is our precious stone, our jade, we may perhaps grant that we may know
very little about its composition. But, we seem to instinctively know when it is removed
or, that is, when there is indignity present. Indignity is the imposter stone and can be a
wonderful tool in the hands of wise teachers.