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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction. The concept of dignity is still philosophically controversial even as the concept of indignity remains intuitively powerful. A. Definition and brief history B. Contemporary debate: dignity in disarray How an indignity thesis could be more tenable alternative A. Religious approaches B. Consequentialist approaches C. Deontological approaches D. Excursus on Kant E. Virtue Ethics approaches F. Phenomenalist approaches G. Summarizing indignity as a tenable alternative Indignity and language A. Wittgenstein on our real need B. Austin on ordinary language & trouser words The indignity response: a tropism? Indignity response analogues A. Light/Dark B. Heat/Cold C. Health/Disease D. Sanity/Insanity A Preliminary Summary 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. 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? B. An intriguing hypothesis: needless pain as emblematic of indignity. 1. Defining terms: Emblematic and paradigmatic 2. Defining terms: Non-maleficence as a universal moral claim C. Hypothesis fits previous concepts of language, tropism & analogues 1. Hypothesis is less ontologically difficult 2. Hypothesis fits with ordinary language observations 3. Hypothesis appeals to a principle absolutist position 4. Hypothesis could stand behind philosophy of caring notions 5. Hypothesis works well with negation approach Testing the hypothesis A. What about indignity without pain? 1. Indignities without pain outside hypothesis purview 2. Indignities without pain do not have less validity 3. Needless pain without indignity also not considered vi 1 3 5 11 12 14 19 20 22 27 28 29 30 34 38 39 39 41 41 42

II.

III. IV. V.

VI. VII.

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44 45 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 54 56 56

VIII.

TABLE OF CONTENTS B. What about indignity and the second-person standpoint? C. What about indignity and autonomy? D. What about indignity and the pain of punishment? 1. lack of correlation 2. lack of proportion E. What about the hard cases? 1. ticking bomb scenario 2. torture in general: (a) ostensible historical justifications for torture (b) many justifications can indicate dubious claim (c) psychological considerations and torture 3. Rowes fawn: indignity of evil itself IX. Extending the hypothesis A. Can needless pain be autonomously chosen? 1. Sadomasochism / schadenfreude 2. Frankels inner freedom 3. Healing ends (a) self (b) others (c) supererogatory B. Notions of ideal observer and circumstance of indignity 1. Kinds of circumstances (a) chosen (b) coerced (c) coincidence 2. Kinds of clarifications (a) helps clarify absence of pain issues (b) helps clarify absence of autonomy/rationality issues (c) helps clarify absence of perviousness/vulnerability issues C. Needless pain and Virtue Ethics: vulnerability, invulnerability, resilience Conclusion: A. Summary thoughts on the hypothesis B. Highlights and possible propositions C. No trivial claim: 1. Presuppositions matter 2. Include non-cognitivists 3. A simple illustration D. Possibilities of moral convergence 57 61 65 67 69 70 71 72 72 75

77 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85 87 89 92 94 95 97 98 99 103 136 156 160

X.

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

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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, timehonored 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 language2 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

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 simplisticseeming distinction in reference to indignity and dignity has not received enough

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

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

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 Hume13 5

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 Horton14 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)

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 11th 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 20th 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]

[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 about25 the 8

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 being27 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 wideranging 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.

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 meaning36 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.

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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 11

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

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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 itself47 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

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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

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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.

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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

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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. 17

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 Ignatieff62 (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

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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

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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

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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 21

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

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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

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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 AristotelianThomist 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 Kant92 A. Wittgenstein on our real need. This numinous-feeling93 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

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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

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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 31

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 suchand-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 talk101 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

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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 socalled 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

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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 34

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

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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

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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 nonflourishing. 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 saints107 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

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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 38

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

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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.)

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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

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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

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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!

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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 suffering120 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 synecdoche121 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

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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 IQFPLQE 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

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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 senses125 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 claim129 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,

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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-19th 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

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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 selfevidence 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

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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 disputed134 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

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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

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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 death137 (which is roughly

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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 52

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

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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

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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

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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, crosscultural, irreducible minimum141 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

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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 respic re 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 2nd 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 57

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 59

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

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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 selfdetermination.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

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

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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

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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

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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 19th 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 universallyrecognized 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-toohuman 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 fawn169 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 coexistence 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 schadenfreude170) 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-thegreater-good path where some might try to allow some justification for coercive (antiautonomous) 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 Stoics183 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 stressrelated 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. 94

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 history196 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.206

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ENDNOTES 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). The expressions, infelicitous and felicitous under the general heading of speech acts belongs to the father of Speech Act theory, John L. Austin. 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. 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
4 3 2 1

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. 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 103
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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 1st 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

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 ; 104

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-9thdecember-2008/

Glenn Tinder, Against Fate: An Essay on Personal Dignity (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1981) 3. 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
11

10

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. 105

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William K. Wright, Value and Dignity of Human Life: book review, The Philosophical Review 21, no. 2 (March 1912): 241-242. 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. 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. Richard E Ashcroft, Making sense of dignity, Journal of Medical Ethics 31, no. 11 (Nov. 1, 2005): 679. 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. Michael S. Pritchard, Human Dignity and Justice, Ethics 82, no. 4 (Jul., 1972): 299-313. 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. Ronald Dworkin, Lifes Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia and Individual Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 198. Oscar Schachter, Human Dignity as a Normative Concept, The American Journal of International Law 77, no. 4 (Oct. 1983): 849. Jeremy Rabkin, What We Can Learn about Human Dignity from International Law Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 27, no. 1, (Fall 2003): 145. 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.
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

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23 24

Ibid, p. 62.

Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 198. MacIntyres word was animality. See Dependent, Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), xii. 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. 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. Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936). 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). James Rachels in The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th 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! 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., 107
31 30 29 28 27 26 25

(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. 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 SelfRespect, The Monist 57, no. 1 (Jan. 1973): 87-104. 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. 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. 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 108
35 34 33 32

recent times in the extremely popular, late Pope John Paul II, the 2nd 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 20th 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). 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, 2nd 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.
36

109

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.

37

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 39

This report is available online at http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/ 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 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. 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. Jonathan M. Mann, Medicine and Public Health, Ethics and Human Rights, The Hastings Center Report 27, no. 3, (May-Jun., 1997): 11. Lennart Nordenfelt and Andrew Edgar, The four notions of dignity, Quality in Ageing (Brighton) 6, no. 1, (Jun., 2005): 17-22.
44 45 46 43 42 41 40

Hayry, Another Look at Dignity, 7-14. Ibid, p. 11.

Darryl Pullman, Universalism, Particularism and the Ethics of Dignity, Christian Bioethics 7, no. 3, (Dec. 2001): 334. James Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, Vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 70.
47

110

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. 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. Ruth Macklin, Dignity is a Useless Concept, British Medical Journal 327 (Dec. 20, 2003): 1419-1420. 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. 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 54 52 51 50 49

48

Rachels, p. 5.

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 56

Hayry, Another Look at Dignity.

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, 111

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. 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, 1st published c. 1820. From Bioethics: An Anthology, Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, eds., (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing 2006), 566-567.
58 59 57

Singer, Unsanctifying Human Life, 2002.

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 61 62

Ruth Macklin, Moral Progress, Ethics 87, no. 4, (Jul. 1977): 372. Ibid, p. 379.

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. 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.
63

112

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 1989, p. 173. 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 67 65

64

Kant, Fundamental Principles, p. 41.

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. 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 70 68

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

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. 113

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. David Beyleveld and Roger Brownsword, Human Dignity in Bioethics and Biolaw, (New York: Oxford University Press 2001), 51.
74 75 73

72

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

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. 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 114
76

rights based upon this teleological conception of dignity rather than the more traditional recognition of personal duties based upon a deontological conception. 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. See for another example, Soulen and Woodhead, God and Human Dignity. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, trans. A. Robert Caponigri, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing 1956).
79 78 77

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. 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.
81

80

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. 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.
83

82

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Michael A. Smith, Human Dignity and the common good in the AristotelianThomistic 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. 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 2nd 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 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 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 89 90 87 86 85

84

Hayry, p. 29. Edward T. Hall, Beyond Culture, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press 1976), 107.

I should clarify that Im not specifically referencing the epistemological theory of Phenomenalism, [See Richard A. Fumerton, Phenomenalism, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd 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 116

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 92

Lebech, What is Human Dignity?

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), L.W. Beck, trans., (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1956), 148. 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/
93

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 96

94

Ibid.

John L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, [reconstructed from the manuscript notes by G. J. Warnock] (New York: Oxford University Press 1962) p. 62-77. 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 99 97

Austin, pp. 63-68

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

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100 101

Austin, p. 70.

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

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.

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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). 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. 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. 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.
109 108 107 106

105

indignity, n. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd ed., 1989, URL=

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uark,edu/

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, 2nd ed., 1989, URL=http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.uark,edu/ James Trefil, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science, (New York: Doubleday 1992), 159. Christopher Boorse, Health as a theoretical concept, Philosophy of Science 44, no. 4, (Dec., 1977): 542573; 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). 119
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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? 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 .
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Schachter, Human Dignity as a Normative Concept.

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. 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. 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. 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 decision120
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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 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. emblem, n. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd 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. emblematic, adj. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd 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 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. 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. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1962). 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. paradigm, n. Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2nd edition 1989. URL= http://dictionary.oed.com/exproxy.uark.edu/
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William Talbott, An Epistemically Modest Universal Moral Standpoint, chap. 4 in Which Rights Should Be Universal? (New York: Oxford University Press 2005), 48-56. 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. 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]
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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 noninferential. Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2005), 1. [Boldface mine]

132

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

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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? Compare here the concept of negative liberty from Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) and its contemporary proponents: Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Ronald Dworkin and Amartya Sen. W. V. O. Quine, On What There Is, Review of Metaphysics 2, no. 1, (Sep., 1948): 21-38. Alan Gewirth, Are there any absolute rights? The Philosophical Quarterly 31, no. 122, (Jan., 1981): 15. 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. Sarah Clark Miller, Dignified Agents and Dignifying Care: The Manner of Meeting Needs as Moral Requirement, conference paper presented at the Tennessee Philosophical Association 36th 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. 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. 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
141 140 139 138 137 136 135

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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. 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, 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
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Darwall, Second-Person Standpoint, 160.

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. Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923) new translation, prologue & notes by Walter Kaufmann, (New York: Simon & Schuster 1970). 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). 124
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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. Jerome Neu, Sticks and Stones: A Philosophy of Insults, (New York: Oxford University Press 2008), 78, 79. 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. 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. 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), 4649 in referencing Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove, (New York: Simon & Schuster 1985). I realize that this example does not refer to moral autonomy directly but instead to a more total lack of autonomy of any sort. 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 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 125
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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. 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. 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/ 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/la000089139nov08.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
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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, 2nd 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. 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. 126
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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, 2nd 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. 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.
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Bayertz, Moral Consensus as a Social and Philosophical Problem, p. 3.

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. 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 127
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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. 16th, 23rd, Mar. 2nd, 9th, 16th, 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. 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 selfdeception 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 128
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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. 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. 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, 1st 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. William L. Rowe, The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism, American Philosophical Quarterly XVI, no. 4, (Oct., 1979): 335-341. 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
170 169 168 167

and Elisabeth Rosenthal, When Bad People Are Punished, Men Smile (but Women 129

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 ITMOEMVIOEOME(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. Viktor Emil Frankl, Mans Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (1959), 4th ed., (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2000), 66.
172 173 171

Ibid, p. 50.

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. 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 selfinterest 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).
174

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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. 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. 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. 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. 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
179 178 177 176

175

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

180

Immanuel Kant, Of Duties to Animals and Spirits, 27:459 in Lectures

on Ethics. 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). 131
182

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

183

traumatotropism, see "Tropism." Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2008

http://www.search.eb.com/eb/article-9073505

George W. Harris, Dignity and Vulnerability: Strength and Quality of Character, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997). 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. 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.
188 187

186

132

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).
190 191

189

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 2-3. Jeremy Waldron, Theories of Rights, (New York: Oxford University Press

1984), 18. Alan Beeby and Anne-Maria Brennan, First Ecology: Ecological Principles and Environmental Issues, 3rd ed., (New York: Oxford University Press 2008), 45. See Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable, (New York: Norton 1996) and Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of SelfOrganization 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), 175176. 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. See Bagaric and Allan, The Vacuous Concept of Dignity, p. 257; also Ruth Macklin, Dignity is a useless concept. 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.
196 197 195 194 193 192

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

Max Scheler, On the Eternal in Man, Bernard Noble, trans., (New York: Harper & Brothers 1960). Deborah Achtenberg, Cognition of Value in Aristotles Ethics, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 2002), 161. 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.
199 198

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Vitalism can be traced to Aristotle's notion of human nature as an inner, goaloriented 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. 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 R dulescu-Motru, Jan Pato ka, 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/.
202 203 204 201

200

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

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 134

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 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. The phrase consilience of conscience was suggested to me by History professor colleague, Steve Gunter.
206 205

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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 156

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 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 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 painless6 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. 160