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Since the Greek philosophers, the concept of human dignity has evolved in the entwined development of two traditions in the West: secular and religious. From the beginning human dignity was implicitly associated with freedom and reason. In the Platonic anatomy of the soul, reason is the best and the highest part; it is the divine substance, the partaking of which elevates the soul and makes it immortal. For Aristotle, men are dignified in virtue of reason because it brings order to their individual and social lives.[27] When it came to the Christian scale of value, however, human reason was relegated to a minor place. For Augustine, human beings are knowing animals, yet reason is not the end in itself, but only the means to a higher end.[28] Fundamentally faith is the precondition to right reasoning, and the faith in God, the perfect and highest good, is to be chosen freely by human will.[29] Free will, then, seems to be the ultimate locus of human dignity.[30] In the same vein, Descartes elaborates further that mankind can be said to partake a part of its Creator, not in its limited capacity for reason, but in the unlimited free will.[31] In a sense man has dignity because he is created in the image of God, and carries within him a portion of divine substance.[32] Under the influence of the humanist movement since the Renaissance, the Christian view of human nature took further positive development. Indeed, one of the earliest clear expression for the “dignity of man” came from a young Medieval priest.[33] Yet the Christian notion of human dignity seems to be necessarily limited in certain aspects. After all, it is precisely the free will that makes men consciously abandon their belief in God and deviate from his commands, thus falling into sin and evil.[34] Consistent with the Christian theological belief, it seems, human dignity could not possibly originate within human being, but must come from some external source.[35]
With the Enlightenment, “the dignity of man” became a general ideal independent of particular religious doctrines and acquired its modern meaning. Most prominently, Kant combines freedom and reason in one to derive a unique notion of human dignity. For Kant, one’s dignity (wurde) comes exclusively from the inner, unconditional worth of moral law and the capacity for autonomous law-making.[36] Everyone is in essence a free and rational being, capable of making for him/herself the moral laws that applies universally.[37] In virtue of the self-legislating capacity, men is able to live in the kingdom of ends, where he treats others as the beings of intrinsic, irreplaceable worth (as opposed to goods replaceable at certain prices), and can expect in turn that he is treated by others in the same manner.[38] The universal, categorical imperative would commands everyone to treat others as well as him/herself as ends in themselves and never merely as means to some other ends.[39] Yet, as several authors have contended, the Kantian notion of dignity is difficult to conceive because it is associated with moral freedom, which exists not in the observable phenomenal world (which Kant, under the influence of the Newtonian and Laplacian view of the cosmos prevailing at his time, believed to be mechanically determined), but only in the non-observable and incomprehensible noumenal world (“the thing in itself”).[40]
Despite its problem, the Kantian conception of man as a morally autonomous and self-legislating creature, who must be treated as the end in itself and not merely as means, remains unsurpassed as the basis for the western concept of human dignity. Indeed it became all the more appealing in light of the traumatic human experience in the twentieth century, especially during and after the two World Wars, in which the dignity and basic rights of millions of men and women were systematically trampled by totalitarian dictatorships. To permanently prevent the resurrection of monstrosities committed by the Nazi regime, the Federal Republic of Germany absorbed the elements of Kantian moral philosophy in its postwar constitutional practice. Most notably, the German Basic Law declares in its unalterable opening article that “The dignity of man shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority”.[41] The clause of human dignity has led to an admirably body of jurisprudence developed by the German Constitutional Court and is treated as the controlling norm by which all individual rights are interpreted.[42] The philosophical cornerstone of the German constitutional jurisprudence remains the Kantian tradition, infused with the Christian natural law and social democratic thoughts.[43]
On the other hand, moral idealism in Kant’s philosophy took a radical subjective turn in the existentialist development during the war period.[44] In searching for a secure place for human freedom and dignity in a hostile human environment, the existentialists turned to the inner world of human consciousness, and identified the dignity of man with the freedom of choosing and making oneself. Radical and unfettered freedom now becomes the sole foundation of all values. In a representative work,[45] for example, Sartre underscores the famous existentialist theme: “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself”; “Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality”.[46] Through free choice a man becomes responsible for his actions. Indeed, Sartre goes beyond Kant’s universality of moral laws when he declares that man not only legislates for himself, but is also “a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind”, and thus become “responsible for myself and for all men”.[47] But, although Sartre seems to agree with Kant that certain form of morality is universal, he rejects any notion of a priori moral laws, and insists that “One can choose anything”,[48] as long as the choice is made freely. He further rejects the Kantian version of humanism, which takes man as the end in itself and as the ultimate value. To the contrary, the existentialists would “never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined”.[49] Of course, at the same time, the existentialists reject the Christian theology as the proper account of human morality. There is neither a God who created mankind with fixed human nature nor the Ten Amendments which inexorably order human beings to refrain from doing certain things; every man is completely free and responsible for every action he takes, even though it is taken without any rational justification. As existentialism treats individual choices as fundamentally groundless, irrational, and absurd, it has often been attacked for advancing moral nihilism. For our purpose, the radically subjective orientation of existentialism seems to have undermined its chance of success in searching for human dignity.[50] After all, it is difficult to make sense of human responsibility without any guiding principle, or to see the dignity in human beings as moral agents whose value choices are entirely without rational ground. A solid basis for human dignity and freedom is yet to be established.
In seeking to provide the philosophical foundation for the respect and protection of individual rights, several attempts have been made recently to reinvestigate the meaning of human dignity. While authors in the Judeo-Christian tradition continue to maintain that human dignity is to be ultimately based upon the theological premise that God created man in his own image,[51] there are encouraging development within the secular tradition. The concept is explicitly discussed in a recent volume edited by Meyer and Parent,[52] which explores the essential relationship between human dignity, constitutional rights, and American liberal values. Perhaps the most systematic and consistent treatment is provided by Alan Gewirth,[53] who seeks to use his “dialectically necessary method” to derive the existence of human dignity. For Gewirth, the concept of human dignity contains both empirical and inherent aspects.[54] While the contingent features of acquired desirable characters (such as gravity, composure, confidence, and self-respect) belong only to certain human beings and to different degrees, the intrinsic worth is shared by all human beings to an equal degree. Questions still exist, however, as to the relationship between the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of dignity and its moral implications. In what sense is inherent dignity shared by all men, making a criminal on the par with a saint?[55] Should individual differences in extrinsic dignity make any difference to one’s political and social rights? Should the notion of inherent dignity impose any duty on the person to acquire extrinsic dignity, besides giving him the right to demand respect from others--an aspect on which almost all relevant discourses so far have focused?[56] Since these questions have not been satisfactorily answered in the existing literature primarily interested in finding justifications for individual rights, I now turn to classical teachings of Confucianism for additional insight.
3. The Confucian Concept of Human Dignity
Although human dignity is explicitly a western concept, it has a close Chinese correlate. Its literal translation today is Zun Yan, a word often used in conjunction with a familiar Confucian term, Ren Ge, which is sometimes translated as “moral personality”. The latter word had a rather tortuous history. It was first used in Japanese to express “persona”, a psychology term. When it was introduced to China, however, it became associated with the ideal Confucian personality and acquired moral and ethical connotations.[57] In expressing the idea of human dignity, it is perhaps better that the two Chinese words be used jointly,[58] so that Ren Ge expresses, in Professor Hare’s terms,[59] the descriptive element, and Zun Yan the prescriptive element, of the normative concept. Although neither word appear systematically in the classical Confucian texts, as I argue below, this concept (denoted as human dignity from now on) best captures the moral teachings of Confucius and Mencius.
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