I examine the standard view of dignity in Western literature and Metz’s African community view of dignity as a capacity for communal harmonious living. I argue that moral dignity is not just having a capacity for harmonious communal living, but the moral use of such capacity for the promotion of love, friendship, positive identity and active solidarity, which involves normatively prescriptive and evaluative elements. Thus, a plausible African communal conception of moral dignity, which is founded on a moral conception of (...) personhood and community, involves a combination of capacity and agency that is conceptually tied to communal responsibility and respect for self and others. This indicates that human capacities do not have an inherent moral worth. Capacities are instrumentally good and their worth depends on how they are used to promote the moral good of communal well-being, on which individual well-being or dignity depends. This view captures the various use-senses of dignity, addresses many of the problems with many of the analyses of dignity in the literature, and also indicates its relevance. (shrink)

Folter gilt weithin als paradigmatisches Beispiel einer Verletzung der Menschenwürde. Doch was macht Folter zu einem so eindeutigen Fall einer Menschenwürdeverletzung? Das ist die Leitfrage dieses Beitrags. Dazu werden zwei Menschenwürdetheorien herangezogen und auf ihr Potential hin untersucht, die Folter als paradigmatische Menschenwürdeverletzung verständlich zu machen: zum einen Ralf Stoeckers Theorie, die die individuelle Identität und die darauf aufbauende kontingente Würde in den Mittelpunkt stellt; zum anderen meine Theorie, die die menschliche Orientierung an einem sinnvollen Leben ins Zentrum rückt.

Is life meaningless? Does life have enough meaning to make it feel worthwhile? If we think our lives lack meaning, what can we do about it? Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World answers these and other difficult questions, while confronting head-on famous, recurrent theories that insist on life's meaninglessness. Landau shows us how to single out what is meaningful, explains why we sometimes fail to recognize meaning, and suggests ways in which we can resensitize ourselves to it.

Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love--and it is these (...) actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life. Written in a lively and engaging style, and full of provocative examples, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is a profound and original reflection on a subject of permanent human concern. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag bringt Gründe für die These vor, dass aktive Sterbehilfe – die Tötung eines einwilligungsfähigen Patienten auf sein ausdrückliches, ernsthaftes und stabiles Verlangen hin – unter bestimmten Umständen moralisch erlaubt ist und rechtlich erlaubt sein sollte. Autonome Personen haben ein zentrales, von ihrem Anspruch auf Wahrung ihrer Menschenwürde geschütztes Interesse daran, „ihren” Tod sterben zu können. Aus diesem geschützten Interesse resultieren Dispositionsbefugnisse über das eigene Sterben, die auch das Recht beinhalten, sich hierzu der freiwillig geleisteten Hilfe Dritter zu bedienen. (...) Soweit das Argument eines möglichen Missbrauchs erlaubter aktiver Sterbehilfe ernst zu nehmen ist, stehen wir jedoch einer unausweichlich dilemmatischen Entscheidung gegenüber, die das bisherige Verständnis des Menschenwürdeprinzips des Grundgesetzes in Frage stellt. Dieser Konflikt kann, wenn überhaupt, nur durch rechtlich institutionalisierte Verfahren zur Prüfung jedes Einzelfalles gelöst werden. (shrink)

We describe a number of conscientious objection cases in a liberal Western democracy. These cases strongly suggest that the typical conscientious objector does not object to unreasonable, controversial professional services—involving torture, for instance—but to the provision of professional services that are both uncontroversially legal and that patients are entitled to receive. We analyse the conflict between these patients' access rights and the conscientious objection accommodation demanded by monopoly providers of such healthcare services. It is implausible that professionals who voluntarily join (...) a profession should be endowed with a legal claim not to provide services that are within the scope of the profession's practice and that society expects them to provide. We discuss common counterarguments to this view and reject all of them. (shrink)

I reconsider the concept of dignity in several ways in this article. My primary aim is to move dignity in a more relational direction, drawing on care ethics to do so. After analyzing the power and perils of dignity and tracing its rhetorical, academic, and historical influence, I discuss three interventions that care ethics can make into the dignity discourse. The first intervention involves an understanding of the ways in which care can be dignifying. The second intervention examines whether the (...) capacity to care should be considered a distinguishing moral power – as rationality often is – in light of which humans have dignity. In the third intervention, I cast dignity as a fundamentally relational concept and argue that relationality is constitutive not only of dignity but also of the wider enterprise of normativity. I understand relationality as the condition of connection in which all human beings stand with some other human beings. A thought experiment involving the last person on earth helps to reframe the normative significance of human relatedness. Dignity emerges as fundamentally grounded in relationality. (shrink)

In the debates concerning the ethics of human enhancement through biological or technological modifications, there have been several appeals to the concept of human dignity, both by those favouring such enhancement and by those opposing it. The result is the phenomenon of ‘dignity talk', where opposing sides both appeal to the concept of human dignity to ground their arguments resulting in a moral impasse. This article examines the use of the concept of human dignity in the enhancement debates and reveals (...) that the problem of dignity talk arises because proponents of various positions tend to ground human dignity in different features of the human individual. These features include species-membership, possession of a particular capacity, a sense of self-worth, and moral behaviour. The article proposes a solution to this problem by appealing to another feature of human beings, namely their being-in-relationship-over-time. Doing so enables us to understand dignity as a concept that affirms the worth of human individuals as complex, multidimensional wholes, rather than as isolated features. Consequently, the concept of human dignity can serve both a descriptive and a normative function in the enhancement debates. At a descriptive level, asking what advocates of a position mean when they refer to human dignity will reveal what aspects of being human they deem to be most valuable. The debate can then focus on these values. The normative function, although it cannot proscribe or prescribe all enhancement, approves only those enhancements that contribute to the flourishing of human individuals as multidimensional wholes. (shrink)

The central role of human dignity in ethics and law stands in striking contrast to the disagreement regarding the meaning and normative content of this concept. Each competing theory of human dignity also has serious problems. Against the background of this situation, the meaning-oriented theory of human dignity suggests a new understanding that can integrate a number of conceptions of human dignity and resolve their theoretical problems. According to this new theory, respect for human dignity consists in respect for human (...) beings as beings that confer meaning and need meaning. The integrative and problem-solving power of this new approach is demonstrated here by examining two lines of theory: on the one hand, the Kantian tradition of an autonomy-oriented understanding of human dignity, and on the other hand, a theory that focuses on individual identity and protection against humiliation. (shrink)

Definition of the problem. Voluntary active euthanasia is, in certain circumstances, morally permissible and should be permitted by law. Autonomous persons may have a fundamental interest in experiencing ”death in dignity” in accordance with their own preferences. This interest is protected by the concept of human dignity assumed by German law. Some prerequisites being met, the moral and legal autonomy right to determine the time and manner of one’s own death includes a right to secure active euthanasia from a willing (...) physician, and a physician’s acceding to the patient’s request be may morally the right thing to do. Arguments and conclusion: Most arguments against the justifiability of voluntary active euthanasia unveil their weakness when scrutinized. However, insofar as legalized voluntary active euthanasia would be subject to intolerable abuse, our policy options are dilemmatic, and the concept of human dignity as it has been taken for granted in German legal discourse, is questioned. There is no option other than seeking safety in legal procedures for every single case. (shrink)

Conscientious objection in health care is a form of compromise whereby health care practitioners can refuse to take part in safe, legal, and beneficial medical procedures to which they have a moral opposition (for instance abortion). Arguments in defense of conscientious objection in medicine are usually based on the value of respect for the moral integrity of practitioners. I will show that philosophical arguments in defense of conscientious objection based on respect for such moral integrity are extremely weak and, if (...) taken seriously, lead to consequences that we would not (and should not) accept. I then propose that the best philosophical argument that defenders of conscientious objection in medicine can consistently deploy is one that appeals to (some form of) either moral relativism or subjectivism. I suggest that, unless either moral relativism or subjectivism is a valid theory—which is exactly what many defenders of conscientious objection (as well as many others) do not think—the role of moral integrity and conscientious objection in health care should be significantly downplayed and left out of the range of ethically relevant considerations. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 9-12.

With numerous examples to supplement her rich theoretical discussion, Nel Noddings builds a compelling philosophical argument for an ethics based on natural caring, as in the care of a mother for her child. In _Caring_—now updated with a new preface and afterword reflecting on the ongoing relevance of the subject matter—the author provides a wide-ranging consideration of whether organizations, which operate at a remove from the caring relationship, can truly be called ethical. She discusses the extent to which we may (...) truly care for plants, animals, or ideas. Finally, she proposes a realignment of education to encourage and reward not just rationality and trained intelligence, but also enhanced sensitivity in moral matters. (shrink)

What makes a person's life meaningful? Thaddeus Metz offers a new answer to an ancient question which has recently returned to the philosophical agenda. He proceeds by examining what, if anything, all the conditions that make a life meaningful have in common. The outcome of this process is a philosophical theory of meaning in life. He starts by evaluating existing theories in terms of the classic triad of the good, the true, and the beautiful. He considers whether meaning in life (...) might be about such principles as fulfilling God's purpose, obtaining reward in an afterlife for having been virtuous, being attracted to what merits attraction, leaving the world a better place, connecting to organic unity, or transcending oneself by connecting to what is extensive. He argues that no extant principle satisfactorily accounts for the three-fold significance of morality, enquiry, and creativity, and that the most promising theory is a fresh one according to which meaning in life is a matter of intelligence contoured toward fundamental conditions of human existence. (shrink)

Therapists and related theorists and practitioners of mental health tend to hold one of two broad views about how to help patients. On the one hand, some maintain that, or at least act as though, the basic point of therapy is to help patients become clear about what they want deep down and to enable them to achieve it by overcoming mental blockages. On the other hand, there are those who contend that the aim of therapy should instead be to (...) psychologically enable patients to live objectively desirable lives, say, ones that involve developing their inherent talents or exhibiting an authentic/strong/integrated self. In this chapter, I argue that neither of these prominent approaches is complete. Contra the former, sometimes what patients want deep down is not something to promote, and, against the latter, it can sometimes be reasonable for patients to want to sacrifice their own objective interests and for therapists to assist them in this regard. I argue that the category of meaningfulness does well at accounting for these counterexamples to the two dominant approaches, while capturing the kernels of truth in them. The proper aim of therapy, I suggest, is to enable patients to live meaningfully. (shrink)

Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love--and it is these (...) actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life. Written in a lively and engaging style, and full of provocative examples, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is a profound and original reflection on a subject of permanent human concern. (shrink)