This long essay, “A Theory of Human Dignity,” presents and defends a general theory of human dignity, with special attention paid to spelling out its background metaphysics, formulating and justifying a basic set of dignitarian moral principles, and critically addressing hard cases for the theory.
“A Theory of Human Dignity” is being made available here in serial format, but you can also download, read, and/or share a .pdf of the complete text of this essay HERE.
This twenty-fourth installment contains section VI.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
II. Refuting the Dignity-Skeptic and Debunking a Dignity-Debunking Argument
III. The Metaphysics of Human Dignity
III.2 Real Persons and Minded Animals
III.3 A Metaphysical Definition of Real Personhood
IV. Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory
IV.0 How Nonideal Can a World Be?
IV.2 How to Solve the Universalizability and Rigorism Problems
IV.3 How to Solve the Problem of Moral Dilemmas
IV.4 Policy of Truth: The Murderer-at-the-Door Revisited
IV.5 One Last Thing, By Way of Concluding This Section
V. Some Hard Cases For Broadly Kantian Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory
V.0 How Hard Can Hard Cases Be?
V.1 Abortion and Infanticide: Introduction
V.1.1 The Neo-Person Thesis, Neo-Persons, and Non-Persons
V.1.2 A Five-Step Argument for the Neo-Person Thesis
V.3 Non-Human Animals and Their Associate Membership in The Realm of Ends
V.3.1 Real Persons and Different Species
V.3.4 Kindness to Animals Revisited: Harming without Torture or Cruelty
V.3.5 Kindness to All Living Beings: Associate Membership in The Realm of Ends
V.4 Treating People Merely as a Means
V.5 Permissible Uses of Force and Civil Disobedience
VI. Enacting Human Dignity and The Mind-Body Politic
VII. Conclusion
VI. Enacting Human Dignity and The Mind-Body Politic
According to the broadly Kantian theory of human dignity, our knowledge of the essential moral implications of human dignity can be applied in real-world sociopolitical contexts only by enacting human dignity: that is, only by means of designing, creating, and sustaining all and only the inherently broadly Kantian dignitarian social institutions that Michelle Maiese and I have called constructive, enabling social institutions.[i] This dignitarian sociopolitical doctrine, which we call the mind-body politic, is an extension of our essential embodiment theory of the mind-body relation and also a significant variation on what’s sometimes called the “4E” view in contemporary philosophy of cognition, which says that mind is embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended.[ii] Let’s call that externalism in a broad sense. Are Maiese and I all-out externalists? Yes and no. We’re certainly committed to a radical view about the mind-body relation: essential embodiment, which posits the necessary complementarity of the mental and the physical, and also rejects dualism, materialism, and the classical framing of the “mind-body problem” altogether.[iii] We’re also committed to robust but not extreme or reductive versions of the embeddedness and enaction theses—we hold that they involve partial but not complete determination. Nevertheless, we also reject mind extension: for us, the mind ends where the minded animal’s living body does. Moreover, and most importantly for the broadly Kantian theory of human dignity, we’re also committed to the mind-shaping thesis, which says that
[e]ssentially embodied minds are neither merely brains nor over-extended “extended minds,” yet all social institutions saliently constrain, frame, and partially determine the social-dynamic patterns of our essentially embodied consciousness, self-consciousness, affect (including feelings, desires, and emotions), cognition, and agency—that is, they literally shape our essentially embodied minds, and thereby fundamentally affect our lives, for worse or better, mostly without our self-conscious awareness,[iv]
and the enactive-tranformative principle, which says that
[e]nacting salient or even radical changes in the structure and complex dynamics of a social institution produces corresponding salient or even radical changes in the structure and complex dynamics of the essentially embodied minds of the people belonging to, participating in, or falling under the jurisdiction of, that institution, thereby fundamentally affecting their lives, for worse or better.[v]
Now when that thesis and that principle are placed against the backdrop of the dignitarian social and political framework I call radically enlightened, realistically optimist, dignitarian humanism,[vi] this conjunction yields a highly robust view in the philosophy of of mind that’s also radically enlightened in its sociopolitical character.
What do I mean by that? Radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanism flows from the historico-philosophical and sociopolitical tradition that runs from Kant’s 1793 Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and William Godwin’s 1793 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, to Peter Kropotkin’s 1892 Conquest of Bread and 1902 Mutual Aid, via Oscar Wilde’s 1891 “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” and Emma Goldman’s writings of the 1910s and 20s, through Bertrand Russell’s practical and political writings from the end of the First World War and into the 1960s, Paulo Freire’s 1968/1970 Pedgogy of the Oppressed, Murray Bookchin’s writings from the 1960s to the 1990s, and more recent works like Rebecca Solnit’s 2009 A Paradise Built in Hell, James C. Scott’s 1998 Seeing Like a State, his 2012 Two Cheers for Anarchism, and his 2017 Against the Grain, and Rutger Bregman’s 2014 Utopia for Realists and his 2020 Humankind.
Radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanism fully rejects human oppression of all kinds, on the basis of sufficient respect for human dignity, and it fully affirms individual and collective creativity and freedom, as well as social cooperation and solidarity, and above all it affirms satisfying the true human needs of human real persons everywhere,[vii] while also fully realistically recognizing that we are always and everywhere only “human, all-too-human,” and in Kant’s famous phrase, “crooked timbers”: “from the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight can ever be made” (IUH 8: 23).
True human needs are of two different but closely-connected kinds. First, some true human needs are such that their satisfaction is a necessary condition of all human dignity. I’ll call those the basic human needs. For example, among the basic human needs are human real person’s needs for (i) adequate nourishment, adequate clothing, and adequate accommodation, (ii) adequate physical and mental health, as sustained by adequate healthcare, (iii) adequate access to a healthy natural environment, both local and global, (iv) adequate scope for human movement and travel across the earth, (v) adequate protection from coercion by others, (vi) adequate access to human companionship and human communication, and (vii) adequate primary and secondary education. Since satisfying these basic human needs is a necessary condition for human dignity, then sufficient respect for human dignity demands that everyone, everywhere should always have enough of whatever it takes to satisfy their basic human needs. Second, over and above the basic human needs, all other true human needs are those whose satisfaction most fully conform to the absolute, nondenumerably infinite, intrinsic, objective value of human dignity. The satisfaction of such needs allows people to exercise their various capacities and realize their potentiality for being individually autonomous, relationally autonomous, individually flourishing, and collectively flourishing, in ways that also are fully compatible with and fully supportive of the agential autonomy, relational autonomy, individual flourishing, and collective flourishing of everyone else. I’ll call those the humanity-realizing needs. For example, among the humanity-realizing needs are everyone’s needs for (i) aesthetic enjoyment of all kinds, (ii) intimate personal relationships of all kinds, for example, families, life-partners, lovers, close friends, etc., (iii) social and political solidarity of all kinds, (iv) free thought and free speech of all kinds, (v) creative self-expression of all kinds, (vi) meaningful work of all kinds, (vii) higher education of all kinds, and (vii) spirituality of all kinds, where by spirituality I mean the acknowledgment and experiential recognition of the highest good, as expressed in personal religious practices, whether inside or outside organized religion. Since it’s arguable from a broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian moral and sociopolitical point of view that the ultimate goal, purpose, or meaning of human real personal life is no more and no less than to pursue the satisfaction of humanity-realizing needs, then sufficient respect for human dignity demands that everyone, everywhere, should always have enough of whatever it takes for them to be able to pursue their humanity-realizing needs.
More precisely now, radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanism says four things. First, human real persons are essentially capable of good actions and virtuous character, cooperation, and altruism, but also (sadly, tragically) equally essentially capable of bad actions and vicious character, antagonism, and egoism. So we’re neither fundamentally-bad nor fundamentally-good, but instead, complementarily and inherently partially-good-and-partially-bad. We are, indeed, in Kant’s famous phrase, “crooked timbers”: never perfectly straight, but also necessarily such that there’s some genuinely good wood in us too. Second, it’s only oppressive social institutions that inevitably corrupt us, and are inherently deforming and destructive for us. Third, directly contrary to and mutually exclusive of those inherently deforming and destructive oppressive social institutions, there are at least some social institutions (and in fact, surprisingly more of them than you might initially think) that are not oppressive, hence they are neither inherently destructive nor inherently deforming, but on the contrary they can effectively prime and shape our capacities for good, cooperation, and altruism, in ways that are inherently constructive and enabling for us. Above all, these contra-oppressive constructive, enabling social institutions satisy true human needs. Following Kant’s lead in Religion, let’s call these constructive, enabling social institutions ethical communities. A contemporary real-world example is Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières,[viii] hence we can demonstrate real possibility by means of simply pointing at actuality. Fourth and finally, therefore, we ought to design, create, and sustain all and only constructive, enabling social institutions, hence we ought to design, create, and sustain all and only ethical communities.
So by virtue of its commiment to radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanism, the broadly Kantian theory of human dignity is committed to what I’ll call the 4E&RE (i.e., essentially embodied, embedded, enactive, and radically enlightened) dignitarian sociopolitical program. In order to carry out the 4E&RE dignitarian sociopolitical program, one must employ what Maiese and I call “reverse social engineering.”[ix] The notion of reverse engineering, aka “back engineering,” in general, means that (i) the analyst starts with an artificial object of some sort (whether abstract or physically real) that’s presupposed to perform a certain function successfully (let’s call that object 1), then (ii) the analyst theoretically or physically decomposes or deconstructs object 1 into its basic elements, then, (iii) using those basic elements, the analyst creates a new artificial object that’s intended to perform either the very same or else a significantly enhanced/super-charged version of the original function successfully performed by object 1 (let’s call that object 2). What I’m proposing to do, then, is to start with radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanist sociopolitics as object 1, which is rationally justified in terms of the broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian moral theory I developed in section IV, then apply reverse social engineering to it, thereby deriving a unified set of specific design-principles for constructive, enabling social institutions, as object 2. Correspondingly, I’ll now present the basic outlines of a radically enlightened, realistically optimist, dignitarian humanist theory of the contextually-embedded synchronic and diachronic social-institutional dynamics of essentially embodied human real persons in processes of mind-shaping, and then briefly apply it to one real-world example.
In part 2 of Bertrand Russell’s little-known 1918 book, Proposed Roads to Freedom,[x] discusses many concrete social and political issues, and proposes a number of concrete solutions, in line with his favored doctrine, “Guild Socialism,” which is a federalist development of Kropotkin-style social anarchism. And in the last chapter, “The World As It Could Be Made,” Russell quite lyrically describes a normative vision of a categorically politically better world: as it were, John Lennon’s “Imagine” for 1918. In fact, it turns out that Lennon’s political views were actually strongly influenced by Russell’s views, via Paul McCartney.[11] One thing that’s very striking about Russell’s arguments in this 1918 political book is his consistent avoidance of a priori reasoning, abstraction, and even minimal formalization. It is as if, in this book, he found great intellectual relief from the relentless abstractions and formal-logical reasoning patterns of Principles of Mathematics (1903), Principia Mathematica (1910), Problems of Philosophy (1912), the aborted Theory of Knowledge project (1913), Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), and even An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1918), written in Brixton Prison, about which he later wrote in his Autobiography:
I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”… and began the work for “Analysis of Mind.”[xii]
As a consequence, however, Russell’s political solutions in Proposed Roads to Freedom are in fact too concrete–too much embedded in a certain historical-social context: Europe and England, circa 1918, at the end of The Great War. This fact makes Russell’s excellent ideas less generalizable, less directly applicable, and less relevant to the USA and the rest of the world, one hundred years+ later, circa 202[2], not to mention the future world, than they should be. But here I can help Russell out by proposing a procedural principle of social-institutional design, in six steps, as follows.
First, by a social-institutional structure, I mean any ordered set of normative principles shared in common by a group of people, with a collective aim, guiding their mutual interactions. Or, in other words, a social-institutional structure is a social network of normative principles designed to further some collective aim.
Second, by oppression, I mean this:
A person or a group of people are oppressed if and only if their actual condition falls below what would be even minimally sufficient to meet the moral demands of sufficient respect for their human dignity.
Third, by oppression with respect to X, I mean this:
A person or group of people are oppressed with respect to X if and only if their actual condition falls below what would be even minimally sufficient to meet the moral demands of sufficient respect for their human dignity with respect to X.
Oppression includes capitalist alienation and commodification in the Marxist sense, authoritarian coercion, poverty, structural racism, and so-on. So, for example, as the Black Lives Matter movement clearly demonstrates, young Black men (and others) in the USA have been and still are being oppressed with respect to treatment by the police: the police historically and systematically have been and still are treating young Black men (and others) violently in ways that fall substantially below what would be even minimally sufficient to meet the moral demands of their human dignity with respect to police treatment.[xiii]
Fourth, Federalism says:
Nation-states should introduce a series of mediating social-institutional structures between governments and individuals, each of which and all of which have specifically moral aims and adequate rational justifications.
Fifth, Quasi-Federalism says:
Humankind, as such (i.e., all human real persons everywhere), should introduce a series of mediating social-institutional structures between governments and individuals, each of which and all of which have specifically radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanist aims and adequate rational justifications.
Sixth, Quasi-Federalism operates according to a recursive[xiv] procedural principle that I call the principle of Devolutionary and Dynamic Anti-Oppression, aka DDAO:
Suppose that an oppressive social-institutional structure S exists. Then S should be replaced by a series of new social-institutional structures, each one of which simultaneously represents a definite step in the direction of the devolutionary deconstruction of S and also a definite step in the direction of the dynamic construction of a contra-oppressive condition, for all the people affected by S.
According to DDAO, in a normative sense, each new social-institutional structure simultaneously represents a definite “left to right” decrease in capitalist alienation and commodification, authoritarian coercion, poverty, structural racism, and so-on, and also a definite “right to left” increase in individual and collective creativity and freedom, social cooperation and solidarity, and the satisfaction of true human needs. So each new structure is dual and enantiomorphic (mirror-reflected) in a categorically normative sense. More generally, we should always be looking to design, create, and sustain all and only new social-institutional structures that have this normatively dual, enantiomorphic character, namely, such that they satisfy DDAO.
Here’s a brief application of DDAO to a real-world example, also partially inspired by Alex Vitale’s breakthrough book, The End of Policing.[xv] For each armed police force in the USA, we create a new devolutionary/dynamic Police Force Regime 1 in which no police officers normally carry guns or ever use other violent solutions to policing problems (left to right devolution of policing) and all police officers consistently practice non-violent solutions to policing problems, although in crisis situations they might still carry guns, and they still carry nightsticks, and they also have some training in the martial arts (right to left construction of a contra-oppressive condition for young black men, and others, in a post-policing social-institutional world). Then, as soon as it can be implemented, for each armed police force in the USA, starting with Police Force Regime 1, we create should be a new devolutionary/dynamic Police Force Regime 2 in which no police officers ever carry guns, or normally carry nightsticks, or ever use other violent solutions to policing problems (left to right further devolution of policing) and consistently practice non-violent solutions to policing problems, although they still have some training in the martial arts (right to left construction of a contra-oppressive condition for young black men, and others, in a post-policing world). And so-on, set-by-step, until Police Regime Null is reached, in which there is, in effect, the end of policing in the USA, racist and other forms of authoritarian coercion by the police have been ended, and the possession and use of guns for police purposes has been abolished, because the new social-institutional structure that’s now in place fully meets the demands of sufficient respect for human dignity.
And here are two crucial further points about 4E&RE-style real-world applications of DDAO in service of radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanist aims.
First, in applying DDAO, we are always drawing directly on fully embedded social know-how about the actual operations of the relevant social-institutional structures,[xvi] to guide us in knowing how each new social-institutional structure simultaneously represents a definite decrease in oppression and also a definite increase in individual and collective contra-oppression. And second, obviously, no change in social-institutional structures occurs independently of simultaneous changes in other social-institutional structures, since there are multiple dependency relations not only within social-institutional structures but also between and among social-institutional structures. So, for example, in the police oppression example, obviously, in order to make each recursive change in the social-institutional structures constituting police forces, until, in effect, we reach the end of policing in the USA, we would also simultaneously have to make corresponding, relevant changes in other social-institutional structures, for example, in the local government administration regimes that control police forces, not to mention revoking the pernicious 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution.
A few paragraphs above, I defined “social institutions” in terms of shared ordered sets of moral principles and collective aims. What’s a collective aim? By that, I mean an essentially embodied, action-oriented, desire-based emotive[xvii] shared set of basic ideals and values, or what the Brazilians call concordar: a shared heart. It’s also what the early 20th century process philosopher Samuel Alexander aptly calls “sociality” and what the contemporary political philosopher of mind, Jan Slaby, calls “relational affect.”[xviii] The basic idea is that once we realize that, from the standpoint of the philosophy of mind, emotions are neither merely “in the head” nor inherently passive, but on the contrary are essentially embodied, first-person experiences of caring, that is, desire-based emotion, directly expressed as dispositions spontaneously and creatively to move one’s body intentionally in various ways, then we can also clearly see that all emotions are immediately manifest in the world and fully shareable with others. Concordar is vividly obvious in the deeply important yet still everyday human phenomena of sexuality and love, religious rituals, revivalist meetings, team sports, rock music concerts, and all kinds of dancing, for example, dionysian dancing. In all of these group activities, concordar exists not only among and between active participants or performers, but also among and between audiences or viewers, and also among and between active participants or performers and audiences or viewers. These phenomena clearly show that concordar can be the source of tremendous personal and social liberation, intense bodily and spiritual enjoyment, and morally authentic happiness—as well, of course, as considerable amounts of shallow or morally inauthentic happiness, “just having fun.” Concordar is equally vividly obvious, however, in the bonding rituals of business corporations, cults, and terrorist oganizations, in angry political demonstrations and protests, in jingoistic political spectacles, in military rituals and spectacles, in mob hysteria, and in mob violence. The latter phenomena all clearly show that concordar can also be the source of tremendous psychological and sociopolitical oppression, and evil. This is why concordar must be nurtured and sustained only in accordance with DDAO, for the sake of radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanist aims.
Generalizing now, and finally, the broadly Kantian theory of human dignity holds that a real-world-relevant unified set of specific design-principles for creating and sustaining constructive, enabling social institutions, thereby satisfying true human needs, reverse engineered from radically enlightened, realistically optimist dignitarian humanist politics, would basically follow these section-headings in part 3 of my 2018 book Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism, aspirationally entitled “Utopia Now,” and the specific proposals they make:
3.3 Poverty, Economic Oppression, and Universal Basic Income–>a universal system for truly generous, poverty-ending basic income
3.4 The Job Dilemma, A 15-Hour Workweek, and Universal Basic Jobs–>a universal system for 15-hours-per-week, robustly ecologically-sensitive jobs
3.5 Higher Education without Commodification–>a universal system for free higher education outside the current neoliberalized professional academy
3.6 Healthcare Hell and Universal Free Healthcare–>a universal system for free and fully medically adequate healthcare
3.7 Cultural Conflict, Identity Politics, Borders, and Empathy Politics–>a universal system of open borders for freedom of movement, work, and residency
3.8 The Second “Peculiar Institution,” Gun Violence, and Universal No-Guns–>a universal system for gun abolitionism, including the abolition of not only private gun possession and use, but also the abolition of police/security forces/military possession and use
Our collectively designing, creating, and sustaining real-world dignitarian social institutions that implemented these specific design-principles would necessarily lead us all towards the better and the best. Or so I wholeheartedly believe.
NOTES
[i] See M. Maiese and R. Hanna, The Mind-Body Politic (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), esp. chs. 1-3, and 6-7.
[ii] See, e.g., A. Newen, L. De Bruin, and S. Gallagher (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 2018).
[iii] See, e.g., R. Hanna and M. Maiese, Embodied Minds in Action (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009); and R. Hanna, “Minding the Body,” Philosophical Topics 39 (2011): 15-40
[iv] Maiese and Hanna, The Mind-Body Politic, p. 8.
[v] Maiese and Hanna, The Mind-Body Politic, pp. 9-10.
[vi] See, e.g., R. Hanna, “Radical Enlightenment: Existential Kantian Cosmopolitan Anarchism, With a Concluding Quasi-Federalist Postscript,” in D. Heidemann and K. Stoppenbrink (eds.), Join, Or Die: Philosophical Foundations of Federalism (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 63-90; R. Hanna, Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism: A Theological-Political Treatise (THE RATIONAL HUMAN CONDITION, Vol. 4) (New York: Nova Science, 2018); and R. Hanna and O. Paans, “On the Permissible Use of Force in a Kantian Dignitarian Moral and Political Setting, Or, Seven Kantian Samurai,” Journal of Philosophical Investigations 13 (2019): 75-93, available online at URL = <https://philosophy.tabrizu.ac.ir/article_9431.html>.
[vii] See also Maiese and Hanna, The Mind-Body Politic, pp. 97-106.
[viii] See Médecins Sans Frontières, available online at URL = <https://www.msf.org/>.
[ix] Maiese and Hanna, The Mind-Body Politic, p. 246.
[x] B. Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism (Cornwall, NY: Cornwall Press, 1918), available online at URL = <http://www.zpub.com/notes/rfree10.html>.
[xi] See S. Michaels, “Sir Paul McCartney: I Politicised The Beatles,” The Guardian (15 December 2008), available online at URL = <https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/dec/15/paulmccartney-thebeatles>, and also this interview with McCartney, available online at URL= <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3m2r0Ln0rU>.
[xii] B. Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1978), p. 256.
[xiii] Sadly and tragically, as is well-known, this is only the tip of the iceberg of structural racist oppression of Black people in the USA. See, e.g., C. Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (New York/London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
[xiv] A recursive principle is a principle that, starting with a “ground level” or “zero” case as input, is successively applied to the result of each prior application until a certain desired output is constructed. So, e.g., the arithmetic principle that determines counting to ten in the natural number series is a recursive principle.
[xv] A. Vitale, The End of Policing (London: Verso, 2017).
[xvi] This is also what J.C. Scott, borrowing the Greek term for Odysseus’s non-discursive social and political insight in the Odyssey and the Iliad, calls “metis” in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes ti Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 309-341.
[xvii] See Hanna and Maiese, Embodied Minds in Action, ch. 5; and M. Maiese, Embodiment, Emotion, and Cognition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
[xviii] See S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (2 vols., London: Macmillan, 1920), vol. 2, pp. 31-37, available online at URL = <https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Alexander/Alexander_toc.html>; and J. Slaby, “Relational Affect,” (Working paper for the project “Affective Societies,” 2016), available online at URL = <https://www.academia.edu/25728787/Relational_Affect>.
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