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First published in German as Eine Art zu leben. Über die Vielfalt menschlicher Würde © Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 2013

This English edition © Polity Press, 2017

The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association).

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-8901-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bieri, Peter, 1944- author.

Title: Human dignity : a way of living / Peter Bieri.

Other titles: Art zu leben. English

Description: English edition. | Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016023506| ISBN 9780745689012 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780745689043 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Respect for persons. | Conduct of life. | Dignity. | Philosophical anthropology. | Autonomy (Philosophy)

Classification: LCC BJ1533.R42 B5413 2016 | DDC 170/.44–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016023506

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Dignity as a Way of Living

Philosophy, as I understand it, is the attempt to bring conceptual clarity to important experiences of human life. In order to think and talk about these experiences, we have invented terms that are self-explanatory when used within their usual contexts. Sometimes, however, we wish to know more about what they actually mean, because something important is at stake – both in terms of understanding and of action. When we then take a step back from our linguistic habits and focus on the ideas themselves, we become confused because we realize that we did not at all understand what we were talking about the whole time. All of a sudden, the terms seem strange and mysterious.

This may happen to us with the concept of dignity. We know that human dignity is something important, that must not be violated. But what is it actually? What is it exactly? To gain clarity on this question, we can follow two different conceptual paths. The first regards dignity as a human property, as something that humans possess by virtue of being human. Then it is important to make sense of the nature of this property. We would not want to understand it as a natural, sensory property but as a special kind of property that is rather like a right: the right to be respected and treated in a certain way. We would regard it as a right that is immanent to every human being, that she carries within herself and that she cannot be robbed of, no matter how many horrible things are inflicted upon her. Some readings trace back this right and make sense of it in terms of our relationship with God as the creator.

In this book, I follow another path and take up a different perspective. Human dignity, as I understand and discuss it here, is a certain way of leading one's life. It is a pattern of thought, of experience and of action. Understanding this idea of dignity means envisioning this conceptual pattern and tracing it in our minds. For this, we do not need a metaphysical conception of the world. Instead, what we need is a keen and sharp look at the wide-ranging experiences that we seek to capture with the concept of dignity. What we have to do is to understand all these experiences in detail and ask ourselves how they are interconnected. We have to fathom the intuitive content of the experience of dignity.

There are three different dimensions to dignity as a way of living. The first is the way that I am treated by other people. They can treat me in such a way that my dignity remains intact, or they can destroy my dignity. Here dignity is something that is determined by others. To bring to mind this dimension, I can ask myself the following question: What can someone take away from another person when he wants to destroy his dignity? Or: What must one not take away from the other when he wants to protect his dignity? That way, I can gain an overview of the different facets of dignity in so far as it is dependent on others and clarify for myself how these facets are interconnected.

The second dimension also concerns other people in my life. But this time, it is not about how they treat me, but about how I treat them, and, more broadly, how I view them: what kind of attitude I have to them. It concerns what role, from my perspective, they play in my life. In this case, dignity is not something that is determined by others, but by me. The guiding question is: Which patterns of experience and conduct towards others allow me to preserve my dignity? And which actions and experiences cause me to forfeit it? In the first dimension, the responsibility for my dignity lies with others: it is their actions that either preserve or destroy it. In the second dimension, this responsibility lies exclusively with me: it is up to me whether or not I succeed in leading a dignified life.

In the third dimension, it is also me who decides about my dignity. It concerns the view that I have of myself. The question one needs to ask here is: Which ways of seeing, judging and treating myself let me experience dignity? And when do I feel as if I am forfeiting my dignity because of the way I behave towards myself?

How do other people treat me? How do I treat them? How do I relate to myself? Three questions, three dimensions of experience and three dimensions of analysis that all coalesce in the concept of dignity – this accounts for the density of this concept and its particular weight. Conceptually, it is possible to distinguish clearly between these three dimensions. However, they become intertwined in our experiences of the preservation, damage or loss of our dignity. Experiences in which our dignity is at stake often have this special complexity: the way that we relate to ourselves shapes our attitude to others, and this connection impinges on how and to what extent others can influence our dignity. Dignity is thus a multi-layered experience. Sometimes the layers overlap in such a way that they become indistinguishable as individual layers. The task of a conceptual representation such as this is to show them as separate experiences.

We experience the loss of our dignity as a horrible defect. It is not just any defect, that we can adjust to and from which we can keep an inner distance. It represents a stigma that can challenge our will to live, comparable only to great, irredeemable guilt. Through the loss of our dignity we are deprived of something without which life no longer seems worth living. This loss casts such a dark shadow over our life that we no longer actually live but only endure it. We feel that we cannot continue living with this defect. I wanted to find out: What does this great good of dignity consist in, and what makes the stigma of its loss so threatening?

This cannot mean that we should search for a definition of the concept of dignity: for necessary and sufficient conditions for someone's retention or loss of dignity. This is not what we want to find out. This is not the kind of precision and clarity we are in search of. What we want to comprehend are both the details and the entirety of the complex of experiences that we associate with the concept of dignity. I have found the following question helpful, which became the more pressing the longer I spent collecting these experiences: Why have we invented a dignified way of living? What is it an answer to? The idea that slowly emerged was that our lives as thinking, experiencing and acting beings are fragile and constantly under threat – from without and from within. A dignified way of living is the attempt to contain this threat. In our constantly endangered lives, it is important to stand our ground with confidence. What matters is that we do not let ourselves merely be swept along passively by bad experiences, but face them with a certain fortitude, saying: I accept the challenge. A dignified way of living is therefore not just any way of living, but the existential response to the existential experience of being under threat.

This book has therefore become a reflection on human life as such – an answer to the question: What kind of life do we humans actually live? What are its challenges? How can we best face up to them? I sometimes found the metaphor of equilibrium helpful. Some attempts to defy existential threats feel like the effort to retain our equilibrium in a testing force field. Losing and winning back dignity somewhat resembles losing and regaining equilibrium. Dignity that has been irredeemably lost is like an equilibrium that can never be restored. The concept of dignity stands for this special kind of equilibrium. This idea is essential. Without it, it we could not intellectually locate and articulate an important facet of our experience. It would be like having a conceptual blind spot in our mental field of vision.

The dignified way of living is not all of a piece. It has fissures and cracks, ambiguities and inconsistencies. Making sense of human dignity does not mean gilding and glossing over these imperfections. It means recognizing them and explaining them in their confusing logic. Individual experiences of dignity are not always unambiguous and seamless either. Different experiences can be in conflict with one another, giving rise to dilemmas of dignity. Our individual experiences are not crystalline – experiences with crystal clear, sharp contours. Our intuitions about preserved or lost dignity are often unclear and run at the edges – like watercolours before they dry.

I have no desire to present a theory of dignity. I am not sure that we need such a theory at all. I do not want to prescribe to anyone how she should think about this important dimension of her life. In general, my intention is not to be in the right about anything. The book is written in a tone of intellectual trial and error. My goal is not to prove anything, but to make certain things visible and comprehensible. This is about bringing to mind familiar experiences – and expressing them in the richest and most precise ways possible. My aim has been to talk about concrete people in concrete situations, in order then, in a final step, to arrive at a more abstract account. It is easy to get lost in this process, to become entangled in outlandish thoughts. I have tried to keep readers aware of this. And there is also an additional type of critical distancing at some points in the book: are we really certain, I ask myself there, if something is a real experience and not just a play on words, a verbal mirage? Something that we just tell ourselves? This doubt, like a will o' the wisp, is impossible ever to dismiss for certain.

Is it possible to conceive of conceptual stories about dignity that are different from my own? Perhaps in the framework of another culture? I would be surprised if there were an account that was totally different, that would contain nothing of what is discussed here, but a series of completely different experiences. Yet there might be variations: other emphases, other evaluations, other thematic connections that I did not recognize, as well as doubts about the links that I considered obvious.

Writing this book was like going on a conceptual journey that remained incomplete and that could be continued. With luck, this openness will transfer to the readers' experience, who might recall their own experiences and measure what they read against them. My aim in composing this text has been to involve readers in my train of thought, making them accomplices in this passionate search for clarity. I therefore hope that readers will not only be swept along and captivated by the ideas themselves, but also by the melody of these reflections.

‘Nothing of what I've read was really new to me. It has brought many things back to me. But I'm glad that someone has found words for it and presented it coherently. And I'm also glad that he does not deny how much remains unclear and uncertain on the fringes of those thoughts.’

If this is the verdict of my readers, I shall consider the work a success.