Human Dignity and Bioethics

440 | Paul Weithman
II. The Fittingness Argument: Initial Statement and
Clarification
The entitlements supported by the arguments in which I am interested
are, as I said, so-called “second-generation rights,” though for
my purposes I do not believe anything essential turns on whether the
rights at issue are first- or second-generation. Consider what I shall
call the Simple Argument from Dignity for such rights:
(1) Human beings have dignity.
(2) A human being who lives in conditions of gross material
deprivation is living a life that, for that reason, is
lacking in human dignity.
But it seems obvious to some people that if human beings have
dignity, then they should not have to live lives which lack dignity.
Since they do have dignity by (1),
(3) Human beings should not have to live lives that are
lacking in human dignity.
From these claims, a claim about basic entitlement follows, since
(2) and (3) seem to support the conclusion that:
C: Human beings are entitled to access to material conditions
that are not conditions of gross material
deprivation.
If we assume that national governments are obliged to guarantee
that people live in a dignified way, then national governments are
obliged to guarantee that people do not live in conditions of gross
material deprivation.
If the assumption about national governments is sound and if
the Simple Argument is a good argument, we can see why fundamental
documents—laying out the claims people can make on their
governments—should move from claims about human dignity to
conclusions second-generation rights. But is the Simple Argument a
good one?