Human dignity and the moral status of animals

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

There is no empirical evidence that "dignity" exists as an objectively real entity/property in the human being. Various attempts have been made to address this problem—to "ground" dignity in properties with uncontroversial reality (e.g., rationality or freedom). This strategy fails for various reasons: many humans lack the candidate properties; the candidate properties do not satisfy the properties of dignity; the candidate properties themselves are dubious, and so forth. Arguments purporting to show the superiority of humans to animals also fail for straightforward scientific and logical reasons. The notion of human supremacy is validated primarily by religion, not science. Our status as the "highest animal" is a narcissistic delusion offering the emotional security of being the center/goal of the universe. As predicted by Durkheim (circa 1898), humans have established a de facto religion in which they themselves are the sacred object. Since human rights are explicitly based on dignity in many legal instruments and charters, dignity's non-existence raises foundational problems. Can we justify respect for human beings without dignity? Various justifications are examined, and while they work well enough under ordinary circumstances, they all have serious flaws. None are capable of recreating the structure of dignity: absolute respect for human beings, and a two-tier hierarchy with humans on top and non-humans on the bottom.

The principal philosophical dimensions introduced here are metaphysical and moral or ethical, while the legal dimensions are found in municipal or State constitutions as well as in international law and human rights. After Kant, because human animals alone have dignity they can make necessary and compelling or objective claims on each other (hence reciprocal notions of 'obligation' or 'duty' and 'right'), and thus our actions are capable of embodying or expressing the "motive" proper to morality, one that also accounts for the (rational) recognition of the objective worth of others as "ends in themselves." Dignity is an intrinsic value that signifies absolute worth, "a value that

2015

A frequented instance of the recent discourse on the animal rights is the topic of bull fi ghts. Th e aim of my contribution is to off er an analysis of a similar debate on bull fi ghts one hundred years ago, in Budapest. In the beginning of the 20th century several “road shows of Spanish toreros” had been organized in Central Europe, off ering an opportunity to meet the new needs of mass entertainment and the idea of animal rights. By my analysis, the argumentation for animal rights in these debates was based on an analogy between the “dignity of the animal beings” and he “dignity of the human beings”, rooted in a naturalised anthropology of the late Continental positivism. At the end of my paper, I will mention a parallelism between this old philosophical background and the new concept of embodied mind.

Focus: Tierversuche / experimenTaTion animale / animal experimenTaTion suggested the extension of the original plebiscite's proposal for protecting human dignity; usually commissions draw narrower limits than plebiscites suggest. But in this case, they were convinced that human dignity could only be protected in the fields of biomedical technologies by taking into account basic research on animals, plants and microorganisms, too. The fact that biological unity of living entities enables the transfer of scientific methods and data between plants, animals and human beings challenged the legislator to take a biocentric perspective. With this background, in May 1992, the term «Würde der Kreatur» found its way into Art. 24novies Paragraph 3 SFC (today Art. 120 SFC adopted in 1999) in the following section: «Art. 120 Non-human gene technology 1 Human beings and their environment shall be protected against the misuse of gene technology. 2 The Confederation shall legislate on the use of reproductive and genetic material from animals, plants and other organisms. In doing so, it shall take account of the dignity of living beings [«Würde der Kreatur»] as well as the safety of human beings, animals and the environment, and shall protect the genetic diversity of animal and plant species.» 2 This citation from the English translation of Art. 24novies Paragraph 3 // Art. 120 SFC from the governmental homepage leads into the focus of this paper. A lthough it says that «English is not an official language of the Swiss Confederation. This translation is provided for information purposes only and has no l egal force» 3 , it remarkably interprets «Würde der Kreatur» as «dignity of living beings». Obviously, the governmental translator wanted to avoid the religious term «creature». We will have to come back to this point. In the meantime, I prefer to use the original German term «Würde der Kreatur» in order to prevent premature judgments before having developed the problems-not only with regard to the word «creature», 4

Dignity is understood, in the legal-philosophical context, as a determined condition of the human being that distinguishes our species from any other animal. For instance, humans share certain indisputable rights that have to be considered, in the Kant manner, as an end in themselves and not as a mean to other ends. This is the starting point left to us by Kant in his Metaphysics of Customs (Kant, 1785), when he sustains that the human being has no value without dignity, which is an intrinsic value in itself.

Ratio Juris, 2008

We argue that all human beings have a special type of dignity which is the basis for (1) the obligation all of us have not to kill them, (2) the obligation to take their well-being into account when we act, and (3) even the obligation to treat them as we would have them treat us, and indeed, that all human beings are equal in fundamental dignity. We give reasons to oppose the position that only some human beings, because of their possession of certain characteristics in addition to their humanity (for example, an immediately exercisable capacity for self-consciousness, or for rational deliberation), have full moral worth. What distinguishes human beings from other animals, what makes human beings persons rather than things, is their rational nature, and human beings are rational creatures by virtue of possessing natural capacities for conceptual thought, deliberation, and free choice, that is, the natural capacity to shape their own lives.

Human Affairs

This paper argues that the concept of dignity should be understood as a concept that we use to describe an aggregate of values and qualities of a person or thing that deserves esteem and respect. The primary value that creates the right to have dignity is life. The degree of dignity a life form has depends on its place in the evolutionary scale. Human beings are the highest form of life so they possess the highest degree of dignity.

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2014

For some decades, the concept of human dignity has been widely discussed in bioethical literature. Some authors think that this concept is central to questions of respect for human beings, whereas others are very critical of it. It should be noted that, in these debates, dignity is one component of a long-lasting and widespread conceptual construct used to support a stance on the ethical question of the moral status of an action or being. This construct has been used from Modernity onward to condemn slavery and torture as violations of human dignity. In spelling it out, we can come to a better understanding of what "dignity" means and become aware that there exists a quite useful place for this notion in our ethical thought, albeit a modest one.

Studia Ecologiae et Bioethicae, 2016

This paper deals with a discussion concerning the value of life. Specifically, it addresses the idea of speciesism, a term coined by Peter Singer, whereby human life is endowed with special significance because of its membership in the species Homo sapiens. For Singer, it is an example of erroneous thin- king. On such an account, the idea of human dignity seems to be highly problematic. In this article, the author directs a number of critical voices, both methodological and ontological, toward scepticism concerning a spe- cies belonging. He argues that natural species play quite important roles in the existing reality. The author further tries to prove that the realm of life should be associated with a so-called intrinsic value. In the light of that, any living entity possesses its axiological importance and should be considered and treated accordingly. Human dignity is a corollary of the special place accorded in such reasoning by the value of human life. The article concludes with a thesis that the stance arguing for human dignity is still unthreatened and ready for further development.