Human dignity as non-humiliation
At this point we are in a position to draw some preliminary conclusions about what it means to have human dignity, as the concept has emerged so far. It means, first, being the subject of a story, no matter how humdrum or commonplace that story is.
And honoring human dignity means assuming that someone has a story that can be told in good faith, hence listening to it and insisting that it be told. Second, we have learned that to have a story means more than to be an autonomous chooser. It means being the subject of experience, and it means existing in a web of commitments, however detestable or pathetic those commitments may be. And honoring human dignity means refraining from overriding those commitments for paternalistic reasons. Third, our discussion of confidentiality and the right against selfincrimination shows that having human dignity means being an individual self who is not entirely subsumed into larger communities. Not only are we subjects of a story, it is our story, and human dignity requires that we not be forced to tell it as an instrument of our own condemnation.Underlying all these themes, I think, lies a single root idea. Whatever the metaphysical basis of human dignity - indeed, whether or not human dignity even has a metaphysical basis - at the very least honoring human dignity requires not humiliating people.[157] Indeed, I would propose this as a condition or criterion that any theory of human dignity must satisfy: it must entail nonhumiliation as a theorem.
What is the intuitive connection between human dignity and nonhumiliation? Begin with the notion of dignity. Oscar Schachter, reflecting on the phrase “dignity and worth of the human person” used in human rights documents, suggests that dignity and worth are synonyms.[158] I disagree. Schachter has focused on one lexical meaning of “dignity,” namely intrinsic worth.
But another, more prominent, meaning treats “dignity” as a status-concept. Dignity goes with rank; an indignity occurs when someone is treated below their rank. And the effect of indignity is humiliation, which is connected semantically as well as etymologically with the word ‘humbling’ and its cognates. The difference between the two is this: I am humbled when I am rightly taken down a peg - when my own inadequacies, made visible to all, reveal me as a lesser sort than I have represented myself as (to others or to myself). I am humiliated when I am wrongly taken down a peg - when others treat me as a lesser sort than I really am.[159] Humiliation is an affront to my dignity.Dignity, as a concept connected with social rank or prestige, will vary in its concrete meaning from society to society. What about human dignity? Evidently, it must refer to the prestige conferred simply by being human. To violate someone’s human dignity means to treat them as if they were a being of lower rank - as an animal, as a handy but disposable tool, as property, as an object, as a subhuman, as an overgrown child, as nothing at all.[160] The phrase “death with dignity,” as used in discussions of the right to die, incorporates this way of reading the concept. To die with dignity means to go out with my boots on, not to be maintained as a “ghost in the machine,” a frail, drugged simulacrum of myself hooked up to respirators and catheters and intravenous tubes. The gross diminution of my stature amounts to a loss of dignity, a humiliation.
In our discussion of lawyers as defenders of human dignity, the specific indignity at issue was treating people as though their own subjective stories and commitments are insignificant. Everyone is a subject, everyone’s story is as meaningful to her or to him as everyone else’s, and everyone’s deep commitments are central to their personality. To treat someone’s subjectivity as insignificant treats her as a being of lower status; and that turns out to be the specific form humiliation takes when we analyze the right to counsel, the right against self-incrimination, and the lawyer’s duty of confidentiality. I do not assert that disregarding another person’s subjectivity or commitments is the only form that human indignity can take - but I do assert that the wrong of disregarding another’s subjectivity and commitments lies in the humiliation it inflicts by treating the other beneath their human status.