Review of Suzy Killmister, Contours of Dignity

It seems that talk of dignity is everywhere. In my first formal study of dignity in 2009, I noted a marked uptick in interest in the subject during the latter half of the twentieth century. Since then, the enlargement of appeals to dignity is even more striking. The idea is now constantly referenced in everyday Western moral and political debate and news coverage. It is featured in all kinds of institutional policies, codes of conduct, and handbooks, especially in the areas of health care. And the number of scholarly articles and books published on the subject over the past decade is impressive, to say the least.

Whether all this increased talk has been productive is far less obvious. I argued in 2009 that scholarly inquiry into the subject of dignity was mired in ambiguity. The concept suffered from diverse and often confusing usage, with some meanings cutting in seemingly opposite directions. For example, consider the most obvious tension between the way we sometimes use the term to pick out a distinctively higher social status, such as what a member of a royal family might enjoy, versus the widespread couplet 'human dignity' to denote the kind of basic worth or status that supposedly grounds the moral equality of all persons.

I was by no means the first to make this complaint about ambiguity. But that is hardly a flattering clarification for the scholars I was discussing at the time. Moreover, and compounding the ambiguity problem, there was (then) a surprising lack of systematic study. I thus noted that not only was there little explanation of how different senses of dignity related; but also, when it comes specifically to human dignity, I complained that scholars were failing to distinguish the conceptual level they were working at. More exactly, they were often running together two levels. On the one hand, they were talking about the form of dignity: the distinguishing properties, characteristics, or explanatory demands that were supposed to apply to any contentful account of dignity – e.g., the idea that dignity is "incommensurable" with other values, or the idea that it is in some sense "unearned," etc. On the other hand, they were talking about the substance of dignity: they were giving accounts of what dignity consists in, such that it satisfies the formal criteria – e.g. rational autonomy, or a normatively privileged but politically conferred status on all human beings, etc. Finally, and partly due to this rampant ambiguity, I complained that the concept of dignity was ill equipped to fend off its skeptics. Specifically, [End Page E-4] I worried that going theories of dignity were not taking seriously skeptical challenges to the moralized connotation of "human dignity."

The intervening years have evidently not resolved either of these problems. Pick up any major work in the past decade and you will find similar laments about ambiguity, the tensions in its meaning, and the lack of systematic study. What may be worse, you will likely find many new meanings. For example, a quick glance at recent scholarly "handbooks" of dignity shows the concept being applied to virtually every academic field outside the hard sciences.¹

Moreover, dignity skeptics seem to be multiplying, or at least coming out of the closet. In a recent essay entitled, "Dignity: The Case Against," Michael Rosen remarks that "animus against dignity is widely shared among philosophers, in my experience, and goes back a long way." He buttresses his claim by recounting the encouragement of a colleague to give the concept "a good kicking," and by quoting his favorite historical challenges by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the former of whom called dignity, "the shibboleth of all the perplexed and empty-headed moralists."²

I don't mean to suggest that Rosen's worries about dignity rest on appeals to historical authority or personal testimony. Far from it. Rosen dives into the conceptual history of dignity in a related book. And his essay spells out a few serious, free-standing philosophical challenges for proponents of dignity. Also, it must be noted that Rosen doesn't side unequivocally with the skeptics.

There are, however, other skeptics in the wings. For example...