Human Dignity and Bioethics

Two Arguments from Human Dignity | 439
undermines contractualist arguments. 7
According to other thinkers, including others in the Aristotelian
tradition, the contract theorist’s abstraction goes wrong in a different
way. Social contract theorists, it is said, typically ascribe human powers
within the normal range to all the contracting parties and to all
those to whom the terms of the social contract apply. This ascription
abstracts away from human variability. It therefore leads contracting
parties to choose norms that are insufficiently sensitive to morally relevant
differences in the use human beings can make of the resources
distributed under the terms of the contract. For these critics, human
dignity depends upon the fact that human beings can develop certain
distinctively human capacities. Beginning an argument for human
entitlements with an assertion of dignity so understood makes it possible,
they believe, to arrive at norms which are sufficiently sensitive
to morally significant human differences. 8
Thus those who offer either form of criticism treat arguments
from human dignity as desirable alternatives to contractualist arguments.
The first form of criticism is of considerable interest. As we
shall see, the second form now enjoys some currency in the philosophical
literature. Partisans of contract theory should eventually
confront both. Here I shall concentrate on the second.
I want to show that arguments from human dignity understood
in the second way—as grounded in our potential for distinctively
human capacities—are not really alternatives to social contract arguments
after all. Rather, they presuppose contract arguments of some
form in order to sustain their conclusions about entitlements. This is
because—to put it crudely—the grounds of human dignity include
capacities that are properly respected only by consulting those who
have those capacities about their own basic entitlements.
I shall defend these conclusions in section V, where I assess what
I call the Aristotelian Argument from Dignity. The Aristotelian Argument
depends upon considerations that are complex and sophisticated,
and it has considerable force. The strength of the argument
is best appreciated by looking in some detail at how the Aristotelian
Argument improves on other arguments from dignity that have some
initial appeal.