subjugating it to reason (Kapust 2011). The ability of reason to impose obedience on impulse gives humans – all humans without exception – a distinctive dignity. For the first time, Cicero universalizes dignity in all men and women, placing them at the same level because they are endowed with reason, in contrast to the lower animals, which, being devoid of reason, are, as a result, devoid of dignity.
The dignity that, in Cicero, redeems the misery of this world is also worldly, since it is rooted in human nature, whereas in Innocence III, who in about 1195 issued his treatise De miseria humanae conditio, that dignity, which he does not reject, is supernatural: it is the hope of being saved by Christ and, after death, of attaining citizenship of Heaven. Centuries later, the humanist Bartolomeo Fazio, with the express intention of completing the diptych that Innocence III had left unfinished, wrote De excellentia et praestantia hominis in 1447. In this work, he signaled, as Petrarch did also, the puzzling lack of books on the subject. For Fazio, a human being’s excellence stems exclusively from his immortal soul, which cannot be enhanced by anything originating in this corrupt world.
Petrarch also belongs to this second group, and in the work I referred to before, “On Sadness and Misery,” he shares the conviction expressed by Innocence III that the greatest excellence of a human person resides in his supernatural destiny. At the same time, he adds a new tone: as a Christian humanist, he is able to perceive and enjoy the beauty of nature, the perfection of the human body, and the wonders of the arts and sciences that dignify our human condition and the contemplation of which banishes the general sadness (aegritudo) that oppresses us and which is all the more dangerous, he maintains, if it has no specific cause.
Finally, the third group includes those writers who praise the dignity of humankind and pay no attention whatsoever to his misery, as if it did not exist. An important author in this group is Giannozzo Manetti, who in 1452 wrote De dignitate et excellentia hominis. The first three volumes are a hymn of praise of the perfection of the human body and soul and postulate an ideal of happiness and plenitude immanent in this world, not as a substitute of the next, and incompatible with the defense of that misery, which had been tirelessly repeated in innumerable previous writings. For this reason, Book IV does not complete the unfinished treatise of Innocence III but, on the contrary, explicitly refutes it.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola opens his well-known Oratio, written in 1485 (with a second version in 1488), and later called “On the Dignity of Mankind,” by stating that he is dissatisfied with the reasons usually proposed to justify the great dignity of humankind and that he believes he has finally understood why, among all living beings, the human being is most worthy of admiration. God created the world by conforming to eternal archetypes and then realized that none of them could be used to form humankind; so He created humankind “without a precise image.” Then He spoke to Adam and explained to him the eccentric nature of his dignity, saying that it derived not from possessing a specific place or gift within Creation but from having the freedom, similar to divine freedom, to create himself as he wished and to choose, according to his own will, the determination of his nature. So, if in Cicero, it was reason that distinguished humankind from beasts, here it was an absolute and limitless freedom.
This history would be incomplete if we were not to mention the Diálogo de la dignidad del hombre (Dialogue on the Dignity of Man), which was published posthumously by the Spanish writer Fernán Pérez de Oliva (1494–1531), and which is a dialogue between Aurelio, who takes the side of human misery, and Antonio, who defends human dignity. The most interesting feature of this Renaissance essay, in comparison with previous writings, is that it sets out the two opposing versions, one after the other, without deciding between them, and leaving that decision to the good sense of the reader. Furthermore, this dialogue acts as a gateway to later Spanish literature, since, for the first time, it is not written in Latin, which, until then, had enjoyed a monopoly on writings on such an elevated subject. Written in the vernacular, it is also innovative in that it is not written in the discursive style of the treatise or sermon, which had been prevalent in classical tradition.
Dignity in Kant
Kant dignifies the concept of dignity by integrating it into his sublime moral philosophy. But he does not define it either and, if we discount the Metaphysical Foundations (1785), where he uses the term 16 times, it only occurs very occasionally in his work. Rather than being an essential component of his system, it tends to be a synonym for words that are essential: autonomous subject, self-legislating I, end in itself, compendium of the humanity of humans. The second formulation of the categorical imperative states: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only” (Kant 2008, p. 46). Kant could have reformulated that imperative, with identical meaning, by simply saying: “Act in accordance with the dignity of which you are the bearer.”
Two distinctions in the works of Kant serve to introduce his idea of dignity. In the Critique of Practical Reason, he differentiates between happiness and dignity: “Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we should make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of happiness” (Kant 1898, p. 227). In our pursuit of happiness, which Kant identifies with pleasure or desire, we resemble brute animals, who instinctively seek the same satisfaction. Therefore happiness, pleasure, sentimental wellbeing – aims of the morality of English empiricism (Hume, Smith) – do not do justice to the loftiness of the human condition. In contrast to that sentiment-based ethic, Kant posits the ideal of an autonomous subject, who only obeys the universal-impersonal laws that his reason acknowledges, not only independently of experience and feeling, but even perhaps in spite of them, so that the struggle with his own instinctive inclinations will shed an even more favorable light on the grandeur of human morality. We might add that persistent adverse fortune may well stifle our desire for happiness because, however much we practice all the virtues, we will only be increasing the probabilities of achieving happiness, without, however, any guarantee of success. But nothing in this world – no circumstance whatsoever – can deprive us of the privilege of living our lives with dignity and of always acting in accordance with that dignity that belongs exclusively to us. Therefore, what is uniquely universal and distinctively human is not to be happy but to be worthy of being happy, and that dignity, which is worthy of happiness, but which this world does not provide, justifies Kant’s postulation of a God and a future life where dignity and happiness finally coincide.
A foretaste on Earth of this future heaven would be the “kingdom of ends” that Kant imagines in the Metaphysical Foundations. In respect of this kingdom, the philosopher articulates the second of his interesting distinctions. “In the kingdom of ends,” he writes, “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” (Kant 2008, p. 52). There are, therefore, replaceable things that are not valued by their intrinsic worth but by their instrumental utility in obtaining other goods, whereas there are beings, like those belonging to the human race, that are not replaceable because, of themselves, they are endowed with intrinsic value. The immoral act par excellence would therefore be objectification, by virtue of which, man is treated as an object and is dehumanized because he is given the treatment reserved for things that only have a price.
In conclusion, up to the time of Kant, dignity is understood to be a distinctive feature of man and is associated with some positive quality, which is exclusive to him – in Cicero, reason, in Mirandola, freedom, in Kant, morality – and which imposes on the bearer certain duties of validation. It is not by chance that the history of dignity begins with Cicero’s On Duties and culminates with Kant’s famous exclamation: “Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name” (Kant 1898, p. 180). The being, which distinguishes itself from brute animals because it possesses reason, freedom, or morality – qualities that give that being a particular dignity – is expected to act in accordance with that dignity. The duty to confirm or perfect the original, intrinsic dignity ends up by producing a selective effect because, in fact, only
