Abstract
The destiny of medicine, nay that of humanity itself, largely depends on our way of thinking about the human person and about human dignity. None of the seven goods medicine is called to serve can be separated from human dignity, which gives human life, human suffering, human integrity of form, etc., their peculiar moral relevance and distinguishes them profoundly from animal life and animal health, and from the integrity of animal form. Since all the ends of medicine are so closely bound up with human dignity, a philosophy and ethics of medicine has to give primary weight to the questions of the human person and of her value, and to bring to evidence and then to analyze carefully this fundamental value called ‘human dignity,’ its objectivity, its sources, and its dimensions. For if this value is only subjective and dependent on our opinions, it does not possess any true morally binding force nor can it be the source of human rights that are independent from political whims of tyrants and from popular vote and ought to be respected by medical professionals. Moreover, if just one of its many sources and dimensions were taken to be the only source and dimension of human dignity, and its other dimensions and sources neglected, then the physician might unjustly exclude hosts of human beings from the realm of those beings that possess human dignity, and act accordingly.
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References
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See for example, the following text: The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left no other nexus between people than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned out the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation. Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto; see Hal Draper, The Adventures of the Communist Manifesto (Centre for Socialist History, Berkeley 1994).
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Jürgen Habermas claims on the one hand, in keeping with his general discourse theory of truth and of ethics, that the “status of juridical persons as bearers of subjective rights can only constitute itself in the context of a community based on mutual recognition,” and on the other hand holds, likewise in keeping with his discourse-consensus theory of ethics, that the agreement on binding norms and fundamental human rights “(reciprocal human rights and duties) does not depend on the mutual appreciation of cultural achievements and styles of life but on the supposition (Unterstellung) that each person as person has the same value.” By de-ontologizing human dignity and calling it a supposition or even fiction (Unterstellung), Habermas makes the basis of human dignity a sort of agreement and consensus mediated by discourse instead of a value rooted in the objective existence and essence of persons and known with evidence.
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For example, Mackie uses this observation against the objectivity of moral values. See J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).
For a lucid criticism of this rejecting values and dignity because of their alleged oddness, cf. John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
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The Encyclical Centesimus Annus (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1991), ch. V, pp. 94-97, explains this point very deeply.
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Seifert, J. (2004). The Dignity of the Human Person as a ‘Universal of Medical Ethics’. In: The Philosophical Diseases of Medicine and their Cure. Philosophy and Medicine, vol 82. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2871-7_2
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