The Handbook of Communication Rights, Law, and Ethics. Группа авторов

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can rightly call themself worthy. This idea is also confirmed in Kant’s work, where the concept continues to preserve hints of aristocratic overtones: following the lines of his argumentation, full dignity belongs not to all men and women but only to those who are morally the best.

      Dignity is What Gets in the Way

      The historical itinerary we have just examined invites us to draw some provisional conclusions about the essence of dignity.

      So, dignity could be defined precisely as that which cannot be expropriated and makes the individual resistant to everything, general interest or common good included. Ever since Aristotle claimed in Politics that “the city-state is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually” (1253a), civic virtue has required the citizen to give way to the priority of the common good. But even virtue understood in these terms has its limits, the principal of which is dignity, that intimate quality of the individual, resembling a diamond in its beauty, brilliance, and strength, which resists any good cause that involves the collectivization of the individual.

      In the name of dignity, the citizen opposes the Machiavellianism of reasons of state, both old and new, and when it demands his collaboration saying that many others already collaborate, his reply will be what could be the motto of dignity; “Although others do, I won’t.”

      In the name of dignity, the citizen opposes the possible tyrannies of majorities, which are not all-powerful – not even if they are democratic – and he rejects the utilitarian law of the happiness of the greatest number.

      We should not expect the concept to provide a definitive solution, like the answer in a crossword, to the myriad of situations that raise so many subtle questions on applied ethics (bioethics, technology, business). Those who criticize the emptiness of the concept probably suffer from excessive expectations and feel disappointed because they find that there isn’t a recipe book to resolve dilemmas that are best resolved by applying prudence in each particular case. There is always a hiatus between the theory of the concept and the reality of experience, which nobody can expect to bridge once and for all with norms that are so universal that we will be relieved in the future, as if we were robots, of the bother of thinking and deciding. Dignity presents itself only as a humanist principle of antiutilitarian orientation, which frequently falls foul of the desire to legitimize moral actions by their advantageous consequences for many or for the majority (consequentialist ethics).

      So dignity might also be described as something that is a hindrance. It makes committing iniquities more difficult, of course; but, more interestingly, it also sometimes hinders just causes, such as material and technical progress, economic and social efficiency, or public utility. And this hindering, obstructive, and paralyzing effect, which often accompanies dignity and which makes us stop and consider, opens our eyes to the dignitas of precisely those who are a hindrance, because they are no longer useful, they are left over, always threatened by a history that would advance more quickly without them. So, if to begin with, dignity resembled a luminous aura surrounding only perfection, its meaning is now widened to include the dignity of imperfection in all its forms, which are often even more powerfully and visually noticeable.

      The transition from a state of nature to one of civilization is manifest in a social organization that gives preference to the residual, the surplus, dignity’s favorites; that preference might be exemplified, in our daily urban experience, by an expensive car that has been driving at speed but has to pull up and stop because of a distracted child or an awkward old person slowly walking over a crosswalk. In the world of nature, the struggle to survive is won by the strongest or the best adapted. Humankind enters that combat in better conditions because it has substituted ferocious teeth and sharpened claws for symbolic language and technology, which have worked the miracle of adapting nature to its needs and of dominating the other species. Having reached a certain level of social evolution, without any apparent evolutionary advantage, the human species, allowing themselves a luxury, which apparently only they can enjoy, raises up a humanitarian ideal that overturns the law of the survival of the fittest prevailing in the natural world and puts in its place a new and revolutionary law of the survival of the weakest.

      Dmanisi certifies the birth of group cooperation, which was antievolutionary, antinatural, and antiutilitarian – in other words, genuinely human. The old fellow served no useful purpose, and in spite of that, the group considered him worthy of care and protection. The first flashing glory of dignity occurred at Dmanisi.

      Egalitarian Dignity

      In premodern tradition, full dignity was still reserved for those who deserved it. In fact, the concept survived without any significant conflict in a highly hierarchal society in which there were different dignities and abundant discrimination. But, as I have already suggested, the concept bore within itself the seeds of its own improvement. Sure enough, the twentieth century brought about a mutation of its essence, which did not occur, as usually happens, through the influence of the teachings of a renowned philosopher or of a prestigious school of thought inspiring a program of political action; it occurred, in the absence of the learned, through ordinary people and the force of events.

      This mutation of essence implied, in the first place, the substitution of the old distinction of aristocracy and an extension to include all the members of the human race – something in the nature of an aristocracy of the masses. All people, for the sole reason that they belong to the human race, possess it equally and forever. Furthermore, this egalitarian dignity is now perceived as self-grounded, not depending on another authority that acts as its foundation (reason, freedom, morality); full from the outset and not needing any later improvement, nor subject to loss, wastage, or depletion through possible misuse by the bearer; absolute and not relative to others, men or animals; and finally centered, not on the duties that it imposes on the bearer, but on his right to demand it be universally respected by others – all of which prepare the ground for the doctrine of universal rights.

      Democratic dignity is received at birth and entitles the bearer to rights without any moral virtue on his part, rights that are valid even if the original dignity is belied by the odious indignity of a subject’s life.

      Dignity

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