In the latest issue of Dappled Things, Robert T. Miller argues that Catholic moral theology should abandon the concept of human dignity as the basis for morality in favor of a virtue-theoretic one based on the final end for man.
I may be missing some subtle theological nuances, but it appears to me that Miller is offering a false dilemma. I don’t see why morality could not be both rooted in human dignity and be eschatologically oriented. While the final end of an acorn may be to grow into a oak tree, the intrinsic worth of the flora is dependent on its value to the Gardener.
I’ve also never heard a Christian claim that the dignity of the human person as a foundational concept in morality was derived from the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. I had always thought we got the concept from Genesis 1:27. Because we are created in God’s image we have inherent value independent of our utility or function. But it also implies that we were created for a final end—to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.
Of course, I’m a Calvinist and and Miller is writing about Catholic moral theology so I’ll leave it to others to judge the merits of his claims (perhaps David Mills or R.R. Reno can be enticed to weigh in on the issue). For now I’ll leave you with this provocative paragraph from Miller’s brief, thought-provoking article:
These two concepts—the dignity of the human person and the final end for man—ground two different moral systems, a deontological one based on dignity and a virtue-theoretic one based on the final end for man. While the two systems often agree on what ought be done or not done in particular cases, they differ sharply on the meaning of moral terms and thus on the nature of morality itself. Any attempt to integrate the two is hopeless from a philosophical point of view: Kant expressly formulated his concept of human dignity as part of an express rejection of the concept of beatitude or a final end for man as a foundational concept in morals. Attempting to reconcile the two systems would be like attempting to reconcile Stalinism with liberal democracy: the two are fundamentally opposed, and a person has to decide which he thinks is right.
January 11th, 2011 | 10:29 am
Joe,
You said you are a Calvinist. Why? I ask because I talk with a former Catholic who is now a Calvinist. In our town we have a Calvinist church with a large youth group.
Thanks.
January 11th, 2011 | 10:33 am
I think there are several problems with Miller’s interesting and provocative article. Most importantly, he makes two related mistakes regarding Kant and Kantian ethics. The first is to suggest Kant invented the idea of human dignity; the second is to suggest that the source of human dignity as Kant understood is incompatible with the teleological approach Miller favors.
Kant grounds human dignity in autonomy, our capacity to act on the basis of freely chosen maxims. He was hardly the first person to think this capacity is both uniquely human (in the natural world) and the source of our special moral worth. What he did do is given powerful articulation to an idea lurking in this conception of what it is to be human, which is that only those acts freely chosen have genuine moral worth, an idea that allowed for the repudiation of historically typical attempts to coerce beliefs and values.
As for the second point, if Kant is right that autonomy is an intrinsic feature of humanity, it is easy enough to see how it can be incorporated into an ends-of-man ethic. It does challenge a feature of such an ethic, namely the idea that it can be a good thing to force someone to be good–an idea thinkers like Aristotle and Plato had an easier time accepting than we do. But rejection of paternalism is arguably an advance.
Two quick further points. One is that it is the political and legal *respect* for autonomy that leads to the Supreme Court’s thinking; they do not deliver definitive *moral* judgments however, nor do they endorse any given conclusion on those matters left to individual conscience. Liberalism inspired by Kant allows people to live according to false beliefs. Also, Miller’s objections to the formulation of the Categorical Imperative appealing to treating humanity as an End are off target. Kant gives us explicit help in giving it content, and a key idea is that we act against our own dignity when we choose to do immoral things. A prostitute, for Kant, is using herself as a mere means, and so there’s no right way to engage her services. Prostitution for Kant is inherently exploitive.
January 11th, 2011 | 10:40 am
Dan You said you are a Calvinist. Why?
Because I was predestined to be a Calvinist. ; )
(Sorry, corny Calvinist humor.)
The short answer is because the doctrines that I considered most Biblical (i.e., could be systematically derived from Scripture) seemed to align with what is considered Calvinism. Of course, some people who would reject the label “Calvinist” also consider their doctrines Biblical (and they may be right). So rather than continuing to use a more vague term like “Bible-believing evangelical” I figured there wasn’t too much harm in applying that label to my views.
In other words, it’s more that I discovered that the systematic theology I already believed had a a name than that I learned about Calvinism and was persuaded by it.
January 11th, 2011 | 10:49 am
‘Dignitas’ is used a couple hundred times in the Summae.
When used by Aquinas, it indicates the special worth of creatures who possess the excellence of rational mastery over their own acts.
January 11th, 2011 | 10:59 am
Both the human-dignity approach and the virtue-theoretic approach, it seems to me, could be profitably combined in natural law theory. The final end of human happiness is related to human flourishing; human flourishing is related to achieving our telos, our purposes as what we are as humans in our natural type. And what we are as humans is related to our creation Imago Dei–our dignity as children of God and rational creatures.
January 11th, 2011 | 11:03 am
In other words, I think Mr. Carter is right when he writes, “I may be missing some subtle theological nuances, but it appears to me that Miller is offering a false dilemma. I don’t see why morality could not be both rooted in human dignity and be eschatologically oriented.”
January 11th, 2011 | 11:22 am
Well, ‘dignity’ as a concept has some problems to work out before it’s suitable for use as an ethical principle: http://www.tnr.com/article/the-stupidity-dignity
January 11th, 2011 | 12:58 pm
If we think along the line of Divinization/ Theosis and the impact it may have on morality (more to explore on this), we may very well find the dignity of the human person and the final end of man, as not opposing, but essentially as a continuum.
The theology of Divinization certainly is overreaching from the Creation of man in the image and likeness of God, the fall of man, the salvific and restorative role of the Incarnation (Athanasius: God became man so that man might become God), the “elevation” of Christ as the viaticum on Cross, and humanity with Him, and certainly at the eschaton, one can certainly work out the morality of man based on not only man’s intrinsic dignity but also the final end of man through, with and in Christ.
In essence becoming “partakers of the Holy Spirit,” is exigent of us to live morally.
(Need some work to explore and elaborate, but at least it is the line of thought I am directed to)
January 11th, 2011 | 1:14 pm
Tristian: Thanks for the thoughtful comments on Kant. I have to admit, though, that I’m having trouble figuring out why you think that “if Kant is right that autonomy is an intrinsic feature of humanity, it is easy enough to see how it can be incorporated into an ends-of-man ethic”. If human nature consisted of nothing but “pure practical reason” (to use Kant’s terminology), then I think you’d be right. But it obviously doesn’t. So unless the remainder of human nature is such that a strict adherence to the categorical imperative would promote human happiness, there would appear to be an inherent conflict between Kant’s moral theory and any (realistic) teleological alternative. Doesn’t Kant himself say as much?
January 11th, 2011 | 1:15 pm
At http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/2010/06/01/kant-cant-explain-human-dignity/ , I specifically argue that Kant does NOT give a coherent LOGICAL (as opposed to belief-based) justification of his concept of dignity and autonomy.
Here then I critique it theologically: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/spengler/2010/07/10/the-shape-of-servitude/
January 11th, 2011 | 3:14 pm
Ray:
You may be interested in my response to Pinker’s piece, which I published in 2010 in the journal Ethics and Medicine. Entitled, “Dignity Never Been Photographed: Scientific Materialism, Enlightenment Liberalism, and Steven Pinker,” you can find it here:
http://homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/EM2.pdf
January 11th, 2011 | 3:49 pm
JB, there is a lot in Kant that isn’t compatible with a teleological virtue ethics. My point was that if autonomy is an essential human capacity, then developing it is, plausibly, a necessary condition of human flourishing. On that point there’s no incompatibility. Focusing on our duties to other that arise from their autonomy takes in one direction, while focusing on the kind of character that enables to be autonomous leads in another, but there’s only a difference in emphasis here. Kant was actually a lot more friendly to the virtues than is often realized.
January 11th, 2011 | 8:03 pm
@Beckwith: Great article even if, on balance, the world would have been a better place if Pinker had devoted himself to Cheetos and Springer instead of infanticide apologetics.
January 11th, 2011 | 8:29 pm
Thanks Barry!
Frank
January 11th, 2011 | 8:42 pm
I, too, think that we are dealing with a false distinction here, this business of a posited incompatibility between human dignity and the teleological aspect. It is a mistake to think of either apart from Christology in any case, so it seems to me that there is a certain merit in Joseph C.’s point respecting divinisation. All is a participation in the Son, nothing is excepted. Jesus Christ is both morality and the end of man. In my view, Henri du Lubac on the question of the ‘natural desire” can be instructive here, especially when considered in light of the theology of von Balthasar.
January 11th, 2011 | 9:24 pm
Francis Beckwith – I’d actually seen that before. I think you come to some incorrect conclusions about the implications of materialism, which affects several of your points. Rather lengthy to tackle in the comments here, though…
January 11th, 2011 | 9:46 pm
I think some commentators here have misunderstood Robert Miller
to be saying that there is no such thing as human dignity, or that human dignity is unrelated to the question of how people should be treated or how they should behave. It is clear from his article that he is saying none of those things. I believe him to be saying merely that the bare concept of human dignity cannot serve as the “foundational principle” of an adequate moral system. Suppose instead that someone said that the concept of “duty” cannot
serve as the foundational principle of an adequate moral system. That would be recognized as simply a rejection of “deontological” ethics, and as such hardly a surprising or radical position for a Christian philosopher to take — on the contrary, it would be absolutely traditional. No one would imagine that such a person was denying that human beings have duties. No one would think it a sufficient rejoinder to say that the word duty appeared in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas.
It is clear that the concept of “duty” by itself is not enough. Pro-choicers think we have a duty to allow women to abort their children. Pro-lifers think we have a duty to protect the unborn from being aborted. Pacifists think we have a duty never to fight, just war theorists think we sometimes have a duty to fight. They
cannot all be right. So there must be some way to decide where duty lies. But the mere concept of duty does not give us a way to decide.
Therefore, such a decision has to invoke other principles. In that case, it is those principles that imply the existence of the duty — which is to say that those other principles are more fundamental.
The same seems to be true of the concept of human dignity. If in explaining why something is contrary to human dignity one is driven
ultimately to employ the more traditional analysis, it would seem that the more traditional principles are the truly fundamental ones.
To put it another way, suppose someone said that certain deeds were wrong because they are “NASty”. (Cf. first definition at http://onlineslangdictionary.com/definition+of/nasty) I might well be inclined to agree, but I doubt whether a satisfactory system of ethics can be derived from the no-nastiness principle.
January 11th, 2011 | 11:31 pm
To Francis Beckwith: if you are going to take issue with Steven Pinker’s arguments against dignity, it seems only fair play that you offer a fully developed notion of dignity that explicitly answers his critiques. Otherwise, dignity becomes a moving target that is immune to any criticism thrown at it because its defenders are only willing to say what dignity is not, not what it is.
Without a definition of dignity, a passage like this one becomes an exercise in question-begging: “So, according that understanding, a violation of human dignity would occur if a physician were to discourage her patient to undergo a routine pelvic or rectal examination because of the “indignities” described by Pinker. This is because the good of the patient is compromised when he or she willingly abandons her own good in order to avoid a mild indignity that is by its nature not intrinsically immoral.”
January 11th, 2011 | 11:44 pm
I’m coming late to the party, but I think Dr. Barr is on target with what he says there. Miller suggest as much in the following sentence:
“In particular, the concept of human dignity lacks definite content: It implies that we must treat others with respect, but it does not tell us which kinds of treatment are respectful and which not.”
which he then follows with this footnote, which I think directly addresses at least some of the criticisms raised here:
“Some Catholic theologians explain human dignity in terms of man’s being made in the image and likeness of God. E.g, May, op. cit. at 23. If the thought here is that God has, say, infinite intrinsic value, and man, being made in his image, thus has some finite intrinsic value, then this move only compounds the conceptual confusion: infinite intrinsic value is a concept with even less definite content than intrinsic value and so cannot be used to explain it. On the other hand, if by invoking the image and likeness of God, such theologians are appealing to the fact that man has a rational human nature and thus a particular final end that fulfills this nature, then invoking the image and likeness of God amounts to jettisoning the concept of human dignity and adopting that of the final end for man.”
This is not the only important footnote, by the way. You should go back and read some of the others if you have not, which clarify a few questions.
January 12th, 2011 | 2:25 am
I too agree with those who believe it is a false problem and false dichotomy.
Jesus Christ is the norm of Catholic ethics. Through the Incarnation, the Son of God has in a mysterious way, identified Himself with each human being giving each human being a dignity surpassing anything imaginable. At the same time, ‘life with Christ’ remains our calling and goal
January 12th, 2011 | 10:32 am
[...] thank Joe Carter for noticing an essay of mine on Two Bases of Morality in Catholic Theology originally published in Dappled [...]
January 12th, 2011 | 11:23 am
[...] with his argument that human dignity should not be the ground of Christian ethics (see also here and here). I found the discussion particularly interesting for Miller’s argument that main [...]
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