In Defense of Human Dignity: Essays for Our Times (review)

These fine essays written primarily by political scientists/theorists address the nature, significance, and implications of people's views of human nature. Each author examines—implicitly or explicitly—the ways in which human dignity is crucial for the future of liberal democracy. The book suggests that the inherent and irreducible value of the individual person should frame how we relate to others in all walks of life, not just the academy.

The notion of human dignity has been so politicized by both Right and Left, however, that now we lack the language we need to use the concept wisely in public discourse. As Glenn Tinder says in his concluding essay, "Faces of Personal Dignity," the "idea has been weakened less by counterargument than by being so invariably honored in speech that it is now cliché" (238).

Essays trace the concept of human dignity back to the Hebrew, Greek, and Christian traditions. Robert P. Kraynak goes so far as to suggest that reclaiming the idea from these traditions is nothing short of "the challenge of our times" (1). He avers that technology, bureaucracy, materialism, and capitalism need to be leavened with a deep respect for the "distinct and privileged place" of human beings (3).

The primary implication of adopting a strong view of human dignity, says Tinder, is the treatment of the other person as an "end and never a means" (11). We fail to live up to this standard, however, because: (1) the vast powers of organizations that govern us and the complex realities that make up our world lack human scale, (2) human beings and social institutions are enchanted by human progress yet infected with human pride, and (3) people are "fiercely intolerant of suffering" even though it is a fact of human existence and sometimes results favorably in a humility that can reduce the dangers of hubris (19).

Two Kantian essays—one by Susan M. Shell and one by John Rawls—suggest some of the major implications of human dignity for speech. Shell contends that Kant's notion of virtue should lead every person to the "never-ending effort to be truthful to oneself, lest one be reduced, in one's own eyes, to what Kant calls a 'speech machine'—a mere 'appearance' of a human being whose 'determination' is so far from 'purposive' as to be literally incapable of meaning anything" (72). Rawls contends that justice is based not on an abundance of information, but rather on humans overlooking those "various contingencies" about individuals that are matters of one's "social position, peculiar desires and interests, or of the various outcomes and configurations of natural and historical accident . . ." (205).

The religious roots of human dignity are explored in three essays: one Roman Catholic perspective (Kenneth L. Grasso's "Saving Modernity from Itself: John Paul II on Human Dignity, the 'Whole Truth about Man,' and the Modern Quest for Freedom"); one distinctly Protestant piece anchored in Martin Luther's writings (law professor John Witte Jr.'s "Between Sanctity and Depravity: Human Dignity in Protestant Perspective"); and one broadly Hebrew and Christian work (Kraynak's "'Made in the Image of God': The Christian View of Human Dignity and Political Order," an essay that also takes seriously the Torah). Space does not permit me to address even moderately well the remarkable scope, wonderful insights, and sheer common sense in these essays, which effectively challenge popular stereotypes about "religious" worldviews (such as assumptions about the religious Right and Left, and Roman Catholic exclusiveness).

Witte argues, for example, that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and most other reasonable articulations of "inalienable" human rights are based ultimately on the "juxtaposition of human depravity and sanctity" (123). Human dignity is "something of a divine fulcrum that keeps our depravity and sanctity in balance," he writes (123). It seems to me that a great deal of political and communication theory borrows...