Human Dignity and Bioethics

Two Arguments from Human Dignity | 441
I believe that the Simple Argument is often taken to be a good one.
Although the argument may not often be laid out explicitly, premises
(1) and (2) express claims that are frequently heard in discussions of
human rights. These claims are taken to support a conclusion like C.
Presumably they are thought to support that conclusion by way of a
premise like (3).
Yet on its face, the juxtaposition of (1) and (2) is bound to cause
some puzzlement. How can a human life be lacking in dignity, as (2)
alleges, if dignity is something every human being has, as (1) says?
The juxtaposition is especially puzzling if dignity is something human
beings have inherently. For if human beings have the dignity
asserted in (1) inherently, then it is not immediately clear how they
can lack it. That it can be absent from the lives they lead, as (2) says
it can be, requires some explanation.
Similar puzzlement can be engendered by juxtaposing various
claims from the reports of the President’s Council. The Council has
asserted in some places that all human beings have dignity 9 equally 10
and inherently 11 , and that “every human life” has dignity “from start
to finish.” 12 Yet the Council has also said that human dignity can be
“violated,” 13 “threatened,” 14 and “encroach[ed] upon.” 15 One of the
reports suggests that dignity can be traded off or sold in return for
athletic achievement. 16 But how can a quality which human beings
have inherently and at all stages of their lives regardless of their condition
also be one of which they could be deprived or one which they
can alienate in these ways?
The various claims that the President’s Council makes may all
have some ground in our moral experience. Perhaps our moral experience
of dignity raises all the puzzles raised by the juxtaposition of
these claims. Even so, the derivation of normative conclusions from
claims about dignity requires working through these puzzles to formulate
a notion of human dignity that is clear and consistent. My
own view is that the puzzles show the need to distinguish dignity as a
quality of persons from dignity as a quality of the way they live their
lives. That is, they show the need to distinguish “dignity” understood
adjectivally—as applied to persons—from “dignity” understood
prepositionally—as describing either a quality with which persons live
their lives or a condition in which the living is done.
Having drawn this distinction, I want to return to the Simple