Human Dignity and Bioethics

Bioethics and the Question of Human Dignity | 13
duty of all state authority.” 7
As Doron Shultziner has emphasized, 8 while human dignity in
these documents plays the role of a supreme value on which all human
rights and duties are said to depend, the meaning, content, and
foundations of human dignity are never explicitly defined. Instead,
their affirmations of human dignity reflect a political consensus
among groups that may well have quite different beliefs about what
human dignity means, where it comes from, and what it entails. In
effect, “human dignity” serves here as a placeholder for “whatever
it is about human beings that entitles them to basic human rights
and freedoms.” This practice makes a good deal of sense. After all,
what mattered most after 1945 was not reaching agreement as to the
theoretical foundations of human dignity but ensuring, as a practical
matter, that the worst atrocities inflicted on large populations during
the war (i.e., concentration camps, mass murder, slave labor) would
not be repeated. In short, “the inviolability of human dignity” was
enshrined in at least some of these documents chiefly in order to
prevent a second Holocaust.
Yet because of its formal and indeterminate character, the notion
of human dignity espoused in these constitutions and international
declarations does not offer clear and unambiguous guidance
in bioethical controversies.* Certainly the fact that human dignity
is mentioned prominently in these documents is to be welcomed as
an invitation to explore the question, “What is the ground of human
dignity?” And the sensible idea of invoking universal human dignity
in order to establish a baseline of inviolable rights—in effect, a floor
of decency beneath which no treatment of human beings should ever
sink—may well prove to be of some value in holding the line against
the most egregious abuses of the new biotechnologies (e.g., the deliberate
creation of animal-human chimeras). Yet if we are content
* UNESCO’s recently adopted (though still provisional) Universal Declaration on
Bioethics and Human Rights refers to “human dignity” or “the dignity of the human
person” (in close conjunction with “human rights” and “fundamental freedoms”)
eleven times but does not spell out what that dignity is or why human beings have
it. Reflecting its status as a consensus statement among many nations, the draft
suggests that “due regard” should be paid to “cultural diversity and pluralism,” but
not so as to infringe upon or limit the scope of “human dignity, human rights and
fundamental freedoms.” The text of the Declaration may be found online at www.
unesco.org/ibc.