Human Dignity and Bioethics

Commentary on Nussbaum, Shell, and Kass | 383
doctrine of autonomy.
In his essay, Leon Kass delivers a powerful critique of Kant’s approach
to dignity which he regards as too abstract and disembodied:
Precisely because it dualistically sets up the concept of “personhood”
in opposition to nature and the body, it fails to do
justice to the concrete reality of our embodied lives, lives of
begetting and belonging no less than of willing and thinking.
Precisely because it is universalistically rational, it denies
the importance of life’s concrete particularity, lived always
locally, corporeally, and in a unique trajectory from zygote in
the womb to body in the coffin. 1
Shell seeks to counter this impression of Kant as a “rigid dualist” by
explicating “Kant’s notion of ‘humanity’ as embodied rationality.”
Interestingly, all three of these authors (Nussbaum, Kass, and
Shell), in their quest for the sources of human dignity, insist on
the meaning to be found in our embodiment. For Nussbaum this
leads to a reconsideration of the worth of “those human capacities in
which animals also partake, such as sentience, everyday (non-moral)
practical reasoning, emotion, and the capacity for love and care”—a
reconsideration that ends by extending entitlements to other animals
(most of them at least, although Nussbaum isn’t so sure about nondynamic
“sponges”). Kass, although an admiring analyst of animal
beauty and nobility, does not turn to the body in order to invert hierarchies
or contest man’s place. Rather, he argues that only by understanding
human life as “a grown-togetherness of body and soul” can
we achieve and maintain our special dignity: “The defense of what is
humanly high requires an equal defense of what is seemingly ‘low.’”
For Kass, natural desires are only “seemingly” low since they are, in
effect, transmuted and elevated by being pursued in certain (humanly
dignified) ways. Feeding can become dining and procreation can
become family life. Shell’s presentation of Kant similarly aims for a
more full-blooded and integrated view of human life—although I
doubt that it will be enough for Nussbaum and Kass to retract the
reservations they both express against Kant.
Nonetheless, by drawing attention to Kant’s notion of embodiment,
Shell is able to show that Kant does not grant an unrestricted