It might be said that this omission is strange because this concept escapes the boundaries of philosophy and is present in innumerable aspects of life, including many different legal contexts. Indeed, an in-depth discussion of it as a philosophical concept is particularly pertinent for a volume that focuses on the universalization of rights. For dignity, in addition to being the foundation of equality, is a sine qua non for the enjoyment of freedom. And the concept was incorporated in twentieth-century international law’s most important texts. It can be found, for example, in the Preamble of the Charter of the United Nations (1946), the Preamble and Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Preamble and Article 1 of the International Convention of Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the Preamble and Article 1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2002).
In this book, authors such as Corredoira, Bel, and Abad analyze the main international documents that, in the context of communication and the exercise of freedoms, have inspired its subtitle: Seeking Universality, Equality, Freedom and Dignity.
Dignity is the inspiration of countless ethical debates, such as those that arise in the field of bioethics (abortion, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, and cloning). Among many others, it is at the origin of social causes like trade unionism, feminism, or animalism. And, as recently as the present century, it triggered the social movement of the indignados (the indignant), though those involved felt no need to define, even in simple terms, what it was that provoked their wrath and brought them onto the streets in protest.
Schopenhauer summarily dismissed the Kantian concept of dignity and, in doing so, set in motion a tendency that has dominated the world of philosophy from his day to ours and either ignores or disdains the notion. A good example of the former (ignoring the subject) is the Diccionario de filosofía by Ferrater Mora (2009), which makes no mention of the term throughout its four volumes. Neither does the more recent and much more extensive (2800 articles) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Craig 2000), which is even more surprising. As far as disdain is concerned, examples abound in both the juridical and the bioethical fields, the most eloquent of which could be the strident title of an article which Steven Pinker published in 2008: “The Stupidity of Dignity.”
Years, decades, even centuries go by and dignity continues to be ignored or seen as hollow and lacking any theoretical prestige. Though there has been a certain revival of interest in the concept of dignity over the past decade, particularly in a historical or applied context, it still remains to be defined and is still untouched by philosophical thought.
Perhaps this persistent omission is due to some characteristic that is inherent in the concept and which, if it is not allowed for, makes it unpalatable for philosophers. Petrarch, a fourteenth-century Latinist and humanist, refers to this elusive nature of dignity when he reports that, even in his times, writings on the misery of the world proliferated but on the subject of dignity there was only one. To explain this imbalance, he argued that knowledge of the misery in the world did not require special study; it was so widespread and abundant that it was simply enough to open your eyes. Dignity, on the other hand, was much less obvious and required arduous speculative study, carried out in the face of resistance to the natural tendency and lacking a tradition on which it could be founded:
I do not deny that the misery of the human condition is great and of many classes and has been wept over in many a book; but if you look in the other direction, you will see many things that make it joyful and blissful; yet, if I am not mistaken, no one has written about this and there are some who began but desisted because it seemed to them that they had chosen a difficult subject, which was dry and contrary to what others had written, and in any event more arduous than they had expected; because human misery is so great that it is clearly manifest to all, but human happiness is so small and concealed that it is necessary to dig deep in order to show it to those who do not believe. (Petrarch 1978, pp. 460–461)
The History of Dignity
The history of dignity is usually recounted by using, one after the other, select texts taken from the Western literary canon, which employ the word with special intention and frequency. Such a history cannot preclude a certain number of essential names – Cicero, Mirandola, Kant – but the arid juxtaposition of quotations, in itself lacking eloquence, becomes more intelligible when inserted into a wider context, namely the debate between misery and dignity that permeated European cultural tradition up to the Renaissance.
In this debate, there are three principal viewpoints. First, there are those who believe that, in this world, the reign of misery is absolute and that there is no kind of dignity. Second, there are those who admit that there is misery but also acknowledge that there is dignity. Finally, there are those who only see the excellence and gravitas of humankind and take no interest in the rest.
The first group created a new literary genre to express their pessimism: the consolations. A consolation is a treatise, cultivated first by philosophers and later by rhetoricians, which is directed at someone who has suffered a calamity, a typical case being a man or woman who has lost a child. Authors in this genre strive to accumulate arguments that bring solace and relief to the sufferer. The consolations by Seneca and Plutarch that have survived coincide in the strategy of their argument – which is anything but comforting – by attempting to convince the sufferer that no death is an evil because the only evil worthy of pity is to be alive. The best thing, they say, is not to be born, and, if we have been born, the next best thing is to die soon.
Cicero is the initiator of the second group. The Consolatio, which he wrote after the death of his daughter, has not survived, but we do have his thoughts on the misery of death in a number of his writings, notably the Tusculanae. The subject of Book I of this treatise is his own death, a source of unhappiness for those who, he says, are not wise; and the subject of Book III is sadness (in Latin, aegritudo) upon the death of a loved one. In this sense, the work can be classed in the genre of the consolation, though the vitality of his own personality shines through its pages.
According to Cicero, philosophical meditation teaches us that death is only an apparent evil, whether we believe that the soul is immortal, as Plato did, or that it disappears along with the body. And this supposition does not lead, as it does with Seneca and Plutarch, to a disdain toward life but, on the contrary, makes room for dignity. The source of dignity is two-fold. If we strive to live well instead of simply to live for a long time, life will never have been brief. Our conscience is consoled, before death, by the memory of a worthy life: “But death truly is then met with the greatest tranquillity when the dying man can comfort himself with his own praise. No one dies too soon who has finished the course of perfect virtue” (Tusculanae Disputationes, 1.45). The second source, which is added to this satisfaction, is the solicitude that the virtuous have for posterity and that encourages them to carry out exemplary acts that will bring them posthumous glory and lasting memory, and thus endow human dignity with an influence that outlives the short-lived period of an individual life.
In Cicero, the recognition of a person’s dignity in this world is supplemented by a daring extension of its subjective basis. We must remember that dignitas in ancient Rome implied status, rank, and a higher position in comparison with others in the same hierarchy. It is not an inborn quality but inherent in an office, which can be won or lost, and there is not one single dignity but a multiplicity of them. At the end of the Roman Empire, the lists of official positions continued to receive the name Notitia dignitatum.
Cicero introduces an important novelty into this state of affairs. In Book I of On Duties, he states that the general virtue of a person (honorability) is made up of four special virtues – prudence, justice, magnanimity, and decorum – which entail different types of duties. He defines decorum as “that which corresponds to the excellence of the person, where his nature differs from other living beings,” and the duty that is peculiar
