Human Dignity and Bioethics

Commentary on Meilaender and Lawler| 285
that ought to be resisted), there were moments in which he seemed
more of a Hellenizer than he admits. Perhaps the distance between
Meilaender and Kass is not as great as either believes.
Let me cite a couple of instances. Early in the paper, Meilaender
presents us with a character from a Galsworthy novel. He offers old
Betty Purdy as an individual who confounds our aristocratic presumptions
about greatness and dignity. The passage he cites does indeed
show the falsity of status and wealth as markers of human dignity,
but it does not at all argue for equal human dignity. The greatness
of this little old lady came from the moral virtues she displayed in
the midst of the ordinariness of her life. Her greatness depended on
her comparative excellence, not her equal human dignity. We are told
of the meagerness of her material existence and her limited range of
action, “but her back had been straight, her ways straight, her eyes
quiet and her manners gentle.” I take it we are to admire her fortitude
and her probity and her kindness. Those are not qualities equally possessed.
If the woman had instead lived in Buckingham Palace with
the world as her stage, real greatness would still have depended on
her moral virtues. That is one of the points made by the wonderful
movie The Queen, starring Helen Mirren 1 . Of the queen also it could
be said that “her back had been straight, her ways straight, her eyes
quiet and her manners gentle.”
I suppose one might argue that the disposition to see moral excellence
in humble places owes something to Christianity. However, one
can find even in Homer admiration not only for the fierce-hearted,
but also the patient-hearted.
It is particularly over the status of the patient that Professors
Meilaender and Kass conflict. Meilaender quotes Kass as saying “being
a patient rather than an agent is, humanly speaking, undignified.”
Meilaender dissents and counters that “human dignity lies in
acknowledging the way in which aging and dying very often involve
becoming more and more a patient (and needing to learn patience)
and less and less an agent.” However, what Meilaender describes—
namely, “acknowledging” aging and “learning” patience—are the actions
of an agent in the face of suffering. Patience is a virtue, and
a difficult one for most of us. A human being displaying patience
suffers in a way very different from an animal, despite the fact that
an animal might seem just as stoic and uncomplaining. A patient