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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
Dignity is humanity s most prized possession. We experience the loss of dignity as a terrible humiliation: when we lose our dignity we feel deprived of something without which life no longer seems worth living. But what exactly is this trait that we value so highly? In this important new book, distinguished philosopher Peter Bieri looks afresh at the notion of human dignity. In contrast to most traditional views, he argues that dignity is not an innate quality of human beings or a right that we possess by virtue of being human. Rather, dignity is a certain way to lead one s life. It is a pattern of thought, experience and action in other words, a way of living. In Bieri s account, there are three key dimensions to dignity as a way of living. The first is the way I am treated by others: they can treat me in a way that leaves my dignity intact or they can destroy my dignity. The second dimension concerns the way that I treat other people: do I treat them in a way that allows me to live a dignified life? The third dimension concerns the view that I have of myself: which ways of seeing and treating myself allow me to maintain a sense of dignity? In the actual flow of day-to-day life these three dimensions of dignity are often interwoven, and this accounts in part for the complexity of the situations and experiences in which our dignity is at stake. So, why did we invent dignity and what role does it play in our lives? As thinking and acting beings, our lives are fragile and constantly under threat. A dignified way of living, argues Bieri, is humanity s way of coping with this threat. In our constantly endangered lives, it is important to stand our ground with confidence. Thus a dignified way of living is not any way of living: it is a particular way of responding to the existential experience of being under threat. It is also a particular way of answering the question: What kind of life do we wish to live? This beautifully written reflection on our most cherished human value will be of interest to a wide readership.
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Table of Contents
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dignity as a Way of Living
1: Dignity as Autonomy
Being a Subject
Being an End in Itself
Slaughterhouses
What If It is Voluntary?
Humiliation as Demonstrated Powerlessness
Escaping to an Inner Fortress
Having Rights
Being Patronized
Caring Paternalism
Respect for Alterity and Conviction
Dependence: Asking and Begging
Begging for Feelings
Inner Autonomy: Thought
Inner Autonomy: Wanting and Deciding
Inner Autonomy: Emotions
Inner Autonomy: Self-Image and Censorship
Humiliation Through Serfdom
Autonomy Through Self-Knowledge
Needing Therapy
Dignity Through Work
Money
2: Dignity as Encounter
When Subjects Encounter Each Other
Commitment and Distancing
Recognition
Equal Rights
Putting Someone on Display
Sex Objects
Human Commodity
Neglect
Talk To Me!
Laughing at Someone
Denying Explanation
Manipulation
Deception
Seduction
Overpowering
Working With a Therapist
No Pity, Thank You!
Encounters Between Autonomous Individuals
Leaving an Open Future to the Other
Dignified Partings
3: Dignity as Respect for Intimacy
The Dual Need for Intimacy
Feeling the Other's Gaze
What is a Defect?
The Logic of Shame
Shame as Humiliation
Dignity as Conquered Shame
The Intimate Space
The Innermost Zone
Dignified Disclosures
Undignified Disclosures
Shared Intimacy
Betrayed Intimacy as Lost Dignity
A Challenge: Intimacy as a Lack of Courage
4: Dignity as Truthfulness
Lying to Others
Lying to Oneself
Honesty and Its Limits
Calling Things by Their Proper Name
Saving One's Face
Bullshit
5: Dignity as Self-Respect
Dignity Through Limits
Fluid Self-Images
Destroying Self-Respect
Sacrificing Self-Respect
Breaking Self-Respect
Responsibility for Oneself
6: Dignity as Moral Integrity
Moral Autonomy
Moral Dignity
Dignity in Guilt and Forgiveness
Punishment: Development Instead of Destruction
Absolute Moral Boundaries?
7: Dignity as a Sense of What Matters
Meaning of Life
One's Own Voice
Equanimity as a Sense of Proportion
The View from the End
8: Dignity as the Acceptance of Finitude
When Others Lose Themselves
Escape
Losing Oneself: Resistance
Losing Oneself: Accepting the Journey into Darkness
Dying
Letting Someone Die
Ending One's Life
Responsibility Towards the Dead
References and Further Reading
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Credits
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Start Reading
CHAPTER 1
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Series page
A dignidade não é uma coisa, mas muitas. O que importa é compreender como, na vida de um ser humano, estas muitas coisas se relacionam entre si. Se uma pessoa tenta dizer o que dela julga perceber, torna-se, involuntariamente, alguém que traça um extenso mapa da existência humana. A falta de modéstia que isto implica é inevitável, e portanto, assim espero, pode ser perdoada.
Pedro Vasco de Almeida Prado
Sobre o que é importante
Lisboa, 1901
Dignity is not one thing, but many. What matters is understanding how these different things are interconnected in a person's life. When someone tries to express what he believes he understands of this matter, he will involuntarily end up drawing a sweeping map of human existence. The immodesty that lies in this is inevitable and hence, I hope, will be pardonable.
Pedro Vasco de Almeida Prado
On what is important
Lisbon, 1901
Copyright page
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.
1Dignity as Autonomy
We want to determine our lives ourselves. We want to be able to decide for ourselves what we do and what we do not do. We do not want to be dependent on the power and will of others. We do not want to have to rely on others. We want to be independent and autonomous. All these words describe a fundamental need – one that we cannot imagine our lives without. There might be times when this need is thwarted, and those times can be long. Yet the need remains. It is the inner compass of our lives. Many human experiences of dignity arise from this need. Situations in which there is a lack of autonomy, in which there is dependence and powerlessness are situations in which we feel as if our dignity is being lost. Then we do all we can to overcome this dependence and powerlessness and to regain our lost autonomy. For we are certain: this is what dignity is founded on.
Yet no matter how simple and clear the words are that we use to explain and conjure up this autonomy, the experience in question is anything but simple and clear. It too is no unified, monolithic experience. To be autonomous – that can mean many and very different things. If we want to get to the bottom of the idea of human dignity by tracing the way of living that it is about, we have to bring to mind the diversity of experiences that lie behind the simple, suggestive words. We are not alone and cannot do everything alone. We depend on others in diverse ways and they depend on us. We have to rely on them. What part of this creates natural human relations that we do not want to be without? And what part do we experience as dependence that threatens our dignity?
Being a Subject
To do justice to this question we need a conceptual story that reminds us of what kind of beings we are, what type of autonomy we seek and why it matters so much to us. It must be a story about what it means to be a subject. Which faculties lead us to experience ourselves as subjects – as opposed to objects, items, things or mere bodies?
Each of us is a centre of experience. It feels a certain way to be a human. Humans are corporeal beings with an internal perspective, an inner world. It has several dimensions. The most basic is that of physical sensation. It includes a grasp of the body's position and its movements, but also typical bodily sensations like desire, pleasure and pain, heat and cold, dizziness and disgust, lightness and heaviness. In addition, there are our sensory experiences: what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch. A further layer of experience is formed by feelings, such as joy and fear, or envy and jealousy, sorrow and melancholy. The pattern of our desires is closely bound up with this. What we desire expresses how we feel. And our desires can be read from what we imagine, from our fantasies and our daydreams. This whole set of experiences has a temporal dimension. It is embedded in memories and in a conception of future life with its hopes and expectations. All of this generates the mental picture we make of the world: what we think and believe about it, what we consider true and false, justified and unjustified, reasonable and unreasonable.
This is thus one of the meanings of being a subject: in that sense, to be a centre of experience or, as one could also say, a being with consciousness. Our behaviour develops out of this experience. There is involuntary behaviour which is pure movement: a twitch, a cramp, a blink. It can have an experienced internal side and thus be sensed behaviour, but it does not originate in this experience and is not its expression. Only when behaviour is the expression of an experience is it action. Those experiences that stand behind the action and express themselves through it are the motives of the action. I do something because I feel and desire something, because I remember or imagine something, because I have thought about and believe in something. When this is the case, I am the author of my action, I am a doer who develops his doing out of his experience. And the motives that guide me give my action its meaning.
We can verbalize the motives of our action. We can find words for our experiences and say out of which thoughts, desires and feelings we act. This way we can explain our action, both to others and to ourselves. We can tell stories about our motives that concern individual acts or longer phases of our action. We are beings that can narrate their lives in that sense. A subject, one could say, is a centre of narrative gravity. We are the ones who our motive stories are about. These stories are recollections, stories about present experience and stories about what we imagine our future to be; stories about where we come from, how we became what we are and what we intend. Through such stories a self-image develops, an image of how we see ourselves.
It belongs to our experience as subjects to discover that in a life there are many more thoughts, feelings, fantasies and desires than the exterior biography shows. And also more than the inner, conscious biography shows. Over time, we learn that there is a dimension of motives for our actions that lies in the dark, and that a subject's life can be concerned with becoming aware of these motives. Not that individuals need to be ceaselessly preoccupied with this. There might also be good reasons to leave some things in the dark, even forever. But it is the mark of subjects that they know about the existence of unconscious, hidden motives and about the possibility of inwardly expanding the radius of self-understanding.
The self-image that we have as subjects is not only an image of how we are, but also an idea of what we would like and ought to be. To our faculties as subjects belongs the capacity to deal critically with ourselves and to ask ourselves whether we are content with our actions and experiences, whether we approve or reject them. It belongs to the nature of subjects that they can experience a conflict between what they are and what they want to be, and that they can see themselves as failures. Subjects are therefore beings that are capable of internal censorship, capable of forbidding themselves actions, but also mere thoughts, desires, feelings and fantasies. By virtue of this ability, they are beings who can blame themselves. Subjects can live in a state of inner conflict, and they can ask themselves whether they can respect themselves for what they do and experience, or whether they must despise themselves for it.
It is the mark of a subject that she can question herself in this way, instead of merely drifting through life. And it does not end with the question. Subjects can not only look after themselves in a critical manner, but also tactically take charge of themselves and change themselves in their actions and experiences in a desired direction. As we are not just the victims of blindly flowing experience, but can evaluate ourselves from a reflective distance, it is possible for us to envisage a new way of thinking, wishing and feeling and to take steps towards such a transformation. Then we are doing something with ourselves and for ourselves. As one could say, we are working on our mental identity.
We now have a first, still sketchy, picture of what it means to be a subject. In the course of this book this image will become increasingly more detailed, richer and denser. The experiences we have with our dignity are intimately linked with the experiences we have as subjects. When our dignity is in danger, it is often because our lives as subjects are in danger. If we trace the individual threats to and defences of our dignity, we will automatically penetrate deeper and deeper into the experiences that belong to us as subjects.
Being an End in Itself
As subjects we do not want only to be used. We do not want to be mere means to an end, which others set and which is their end and not ours. We want, one could say, to be regarded and treated as ends in themselves. When we are not so treated, this is not just unpleasant. It is much more. We feel violated or even destroyed as subjects. When this happens, we experience it as an attempt to take away our dignity. To the extent to which our dignity is dependent on how others treat us, it is founded on the expectation, the claim and the right to be not only treated as a means to an end, but as ends in ourselves.
While travelling, I passed by a fun fair and saw something that I would not have believed to be possible: a dwarf-tossing competition. A strong man grabbed one of the small people and tossed him as far as possible on a soft, bouncy mat. The man who was being tossed wore padded protective clothing with handles and a helmet. The gawping crowd clapped and hooted at every throw. The furthest throw was almost four metres. I learned that the man who was being tossed had been at the world championship in dwarf-tossing. For this had really taken place: a world championship in throwing humans. After my return I discovered that this issue had preoccupied the highest courts. In France the Conseil d'Etat had banned the practice of dwarf-tossing, and the UN Human Rights Committee had dismissed an appeal against this decision. In both cases, the justification had been that human dignity has to be protected.
This was also my spontaneous reaction at the fun fair: you cannot do this to a human being. It violates his dignity. ‘Isn't this terrific?’, the man next to me exclaimed at a particularly far throw. ‘Repulsive’, I said, ‘intolerable!’ ‘But why’, the man responded in an irritated manner, ‘nobody forced him into this, he is getting paid and it's great fun!’ ‘It violates his dignity!’, I said angrily. It was strange to utter this solemn word in the midst of the hooting crowd – a bit like surfacing out of the water and gasping for breath. ‘Nonsense’, the man said as he turned to leave, ‘what is dignity anyway?’
Dwarf-tossing is like shot-putting or hammer throwing. Bodies are thrown and what matters is that they are thrown as far as possible. The only thing that is important about the shot and the hammer is that they are bodies – objects that have a mass and a weight. This is also the case with the dwarf who is tossed. He is treated as a mere body, as a thing. The moment he is being thrown, nothing else matters: that he is a human being who can also move independently; that he is a body with experience, for whom it feels a certain way to be grabbed and thrown; that in the process he has feelings like powerlessness, repugnance or fear; that he has desires, for example that this may end soon; that he might have his own views of the hooting crowd, about the whole nature of the event and about his fate as a small person. All of this is being blanked out by the throwers and the audience. It is not of interest, quasi forgotten. And now we have an initial explanation for the disgust one might feel at the event: the human who is being tossed is deprived of his dignity, because it is disregarded that he is also a subject. He is thereby reduced to a mere object, a thing, and in this objectification lies the loss of dignity.
Yet this explanation does not go far enough. If a fire breaks out in a cinema, everyone will try to make their way out without regard for others. They will push other visitors aside, knock them over and kick them. They will treat them like objects that are in the way, as if they were clearing a mass out of the way. During a mass panic, the individual no longer cares that others are also subjects with experiences like himself. This is cruel, but this is not the cruelty of stolen dignity. When in this scenario a tall person grabs a small person and tosses him away like an object in order to clear space, this is different from dwarf-tossing at the fun fair. In what sense?
There is a difference in situation, that is matched by a difference in motivation. The motivation of people trying to escape is blind panic which only leaves room for the one thought: getting out! The cruelty which reduces others to bodies that are in the way is not deliberate and tactical. It is the blind cruelty of the will to survive. ‘What else could I have done, my life was at stake!’, the tall one will say, who first grabbed and slung away a chair and then a person. There is no such excuse at the fun fair. There humans are tossed for mere pleasure. And if put this way, something else becomes apparent that makes this situation a degrading one. The pleasure of the gawping and hooting crowd consists in experiencing how a human is turned into a mere thing. They do not forget for a moment that the object that is tossed is a person, a living being and a centre of experience like them. If they forgot it, all the fun would be gone. That the person tossed for pleasure is deprived of their dignity therefore means that an individual who is clearly a subject is, without the need to do so and on purpose, treated like a mere object, a thing. This is one of the things that the judges who banned the event wanted to prevent.
The other thing that mattered to them was that the dwarf who is tossed is turned into a plaything. He is a thing with which one plays tossing games and organizes throwing competitions. He is considered and used as a means, an instrument to this end. During the competition he is only a plaything, only a means for the end of the competition and the entertainment of the audience. He himself does not at all appear in the game as someone who also experiences the situation. His perspective, his view of things, is treated as if it did not exist. This also happens when people are abused as human shields or walking bombs. They are, like the dwarf who is tossed, reduced to being bodies that are deployed for an end. The element of the game, of a spectacle and of entertainment might be missing here, but both cases have something crucial in common, namely that humans are used exclusively as a means to an end.
What the judges had in mind was an understanding of dignity that implies that humans, even when we regard and deploy them in a variety of ways as means and instruments in order to achieve an end, may not be reduced to this end, this function, either in the way they are viewed or in their treatment. Even when we have a purposeful, functional relation to them this may not be the only relation that leads us. In order to preserve their dignity, it must not be forgotten that the individuals themselves also matter. This is, the judges believed, precisely what disturbs and disgusts us about the dwarf-tossing. By using a person as a missile and a mere plaything, so that he himself no longer matters in any way, he is deprived of the most precious status that exists: the status as an end in itself.
Soldiers in war are also deprived of their dignity according to this understanding of the idea. They are sent to the front when it is known that they will be nothing but cannon fodder – human shields that run, fall and die, so that the others from the back ranks can attack better. Jakob von Gunten in Robert Walser's novel of the same name imagines what it would be like marching to Russia as a soldier under Napoleon: ‘I would be only a little cog in the machine of a great design, not a person any more. I would know nothing of my parents any more, of relatives, songs, personal troubles or hopes, nothing of the meaning and magic of home any more. Soldierly discipline and patience would have made me into a firm and impenetrable, almost empty lump of body.’
Slaughterhouses
Visiting a slaughterhouse is distressing. Why? There are streams of blood and excrement, it reeks and one hears the fearful cries of the animals, which stay in the memory for a long time. A slaughterhouse is a factory of death. Thousands of animals are carted in in order to be mechanically killed and then processed into meat portions in a meat factory. Each of these animals, beyond being a living organism, is also a centre of experience. It senses its movements, feels hunger, thirst and pain, experiences pleasure and fear. Its experiences are simpler than ours, but they are experiences, and in this sense, such an animal is a subject. And now it is simply killed because we want to eat it. This thought alone is oppressive. ‘But animals also eat each other!’ But they do not establish killing factories with killing machines that are designed to execute as many animals as possible in the shortest possible time; to turn as large a number of animals as possible in the shortest possible time into saleable meat portions.
What disturbs us is not the killing alone. It is also the thought that the animals that end up here were from the beginning only bred, fed and cared for in order to be killed and turned into a product. It is the fact that these animals, who often grow up in a cramped and artificial environment, are at no moment in their lives treated as if they themselves – their lives and needs – mattered. From their conception to their death they are never anything other than the precursor to an edible supermarket product. They are things that are fed in order to then feed us. Nothing about the way they are treated gives them a chance to live as ends in themselves – the way we grant it to pets and as animals living in the wild are able to. When we leave the slaughterhouse, we not only feel sick because of the blood and the smell. It disgusts us because it makes us aware in a drastic way of something that we might well know already: that animals too can be treated in an undignified manner. And if we perceive it that way, this is because we apply the standard that we discussed earlier, namely that dignity consists in being treated not only as a means but also as an end in itself.
What If It is Voluntary?
In the evening after the event I met the star of the dwarf-tossing competition at his trailer.
‘How can you bear this?’, I asked.
‘No problem’, he said, ‘it's a soft landing.’
‘That's not what I mean’, I said, ‘I don't mean the risk.’
‘What then?’
‘Dignity.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I'm talking about the fact that when you're tossed, you're treated as just an object, as a thing.’
‘Sometimes people toss children and they squeal with pleasure.’
‘That's different. They're not treated as just things, but as human beings who are given pleasure. It's about them and what they experience.’
‘Have you seen the boy who is catapulted with a swing to the very top of a human pyramid? After all, he's also being tossed and not for his pleasure.’
‘He's doing something during it. He turns and paddles in a certain way. He spent a long time practising it. He demonstrates a skill. He's a performer.’
‘There's a circus in the next town where a person is shot into the air through a gun barrel and then falls into a net.’
I had seen something like this when I was a child. At the time I had found it sensational and been completely absorbed by the thrill of the danger the man was putting himself in. Now I hesitated. Eventually I said:
‘The man is not tossed by anyone. No one is handling him. He puts himself under the control of a machine.’
‘And you have less of a problem with that? He's not doing anything either. Something is just happening to him, too.’
‘That's true’, I said, ‘But you…you're being grabbed. It's obvious that you are being used, and that this is just about using you.’
‘Using me? For what?’
‘For entertainment. For fun.’
‘When a clown trips someone, they're also being used to make the audience laugh. And actors also – ’
‘That's different. In that case, something is acted out. It's a shared performance to which everybody contributes something. You, by contrast, don't entertain through what you're doing, but through what is done to you. That way you become just a plaything for others.’
A dangerous gleam came into his eyes.
‘Let me tell you something. When you look like me, it's damn difficult to make a living. Who are you to talk? You can choose among thousands of occupations. I can't. Who would employ a dwarf? And what's more, I volunteered to be in the show. I took the decision to be tossed. Okay, you can say that I'm being used for the amusement of others. But I decided to let myself be used and be gaped at. It was my free decision. It was my free choice of career – even if you probably find this word ridiculous. And that's why you can't come along and blather on about lost dignity. Have you ever heard of Manuel? Manuel Wackenheim, the French dwarf? He went as far as the UN to fight for his right to be tossed in a circus. He lost. The judges said that it violates human dignity. I'm asking you, what about the dignity that lies in the freedom of choice?’
We will see later in this chapter how important the opportunity for free choice is to the experience of dignity as autonomy. When it is restricted or destroyed, dignity is in danger. Free choice is a necessary condition of dignity. Is it also a sufficient condition? The supreme court did not think so. Freedom of choice does not in itself confer dignity. We can freely choose to do something that violates our dignity, despite being voluntary. And this is why the court set a limit on freedom in this instance. One could say that the court deprived someone of his freedom in order to save his dignity. Underlying this is a conception of dignity that can be explained this way: although dignity is something that can also be determined individually, it is not only something that is under the control of individuals. There is also something greater, something objective about it that always affects individuals, but reaches beyond them. It characterizes an entire way of living. It is this entire way of living that is under threat when dwarfs are tossed – when human beings are degraded by being turned into objects and mere means. This way of living has to be protected by the legal system. Compared to an individual's freedom of choice, this way of living is the higher good. We are prohibited from wilfully gambling away our dignity.
The man I met at the trailer had not only spoken of his free choice but also of his difficulty in finding employment. What he said haunted me. During our conversation I had come dangerously close to claiming that he was, in terms of his employment, leading an undignified life. Nobody could accept being told that. It would amount to personal annihilation. This explained his irritation. He had then had recourse to a defence that drew out something important: our judgements about dignity do not only depend on the action, but also the situation. The more oppressive and the more hopeless a situation is, the greater our tolerance of lost dignity. It may be that a person is in distress and has no choice but to sell himself as a plaything. In that case, our judgement could be that he is robbed of his dignity not only through being treated as a mere thing and means, but also through being forced to gamble it away by selling himself. And that being the case, we can actually no longer say that he is gambling it away, for the gambling away of dignity requires freedom.
Humiliation as Demonstrated Powerlessness
When we are disregarded as subjects or misused as mere objects we feel humiliated. Humiliation is the experience of having our dignity taken away by someone else. What is at the core of this experience?
It is an experience of powerlessness. But what actually is powerlessness? The absence of power. But not every absence of power is what we call powerlessness. We do not have the power to alter planetary orbits, to turn water into wine or to cross the seas by foot. We know that we will never be able to do this, and yet we do not experience this as powerlessness. Powerlessness is the absence of a specific power: the power to be able to fulfil a desire. From an entirely formal point of view, the following applies: whenever we cannot fulfil one of our desires we are powerless. Yet the powerlessness we experience during an act of humiliation is a particular kind of powerlessness. It is the inability to fulfil a desire that is critical to our life.
It might be the desire for freedom of movement. That it cannot be fulfilled is the powerlessness of the paralysed, the captive or the individual in front of whose eyes a wall is built that will separate her from her family and prevent her from leaving the country. It might be the desire to have a certain career or occupation. That it cannot be fulfilled is the powerlessness of the unemployed. It might be the desire to buy oneself the necessaries of life and medicines. That it cannot be fulfilled is the powerlessness of the poor. It might be the vain desire to prevent suffering, for example when one has to look on impotently at a child drowning in the floods, at relatives being deported, at someone screaming in pain. And finally, powerlessness might consist in being forced by someone to act against desires that are part of our self-image, for example by betraying a friend, defiling a holy object or committing to a hated ideology.
An instance of powerlessness that merely happens to us is not of itself a humiliation. Earthquakes, famines and epidemics make us powerless but do not humiliate us. The powerlessness of humiliation is also not the kind of powerlessness that individuals can experience when their own abilities are not enough, for example when they fail to overcome an obstacle or to solve a problem. The powerlessness of humiliation has to do with other people. Viewed conceptually, humiliation requires a perpetrator and a victim. One person humiliates another. He humiliates him by bringing him into a position of powerlessness. This powerlessness is never unintended or unplanned. When I am knocked over and dragged along by a panicking crowd, it is powerlessness, but it is not humiliation. Humiliation only arises when one person purposely brings another into a position of powerlessness.
Merely making someone powerless is also not enough. When someone puts me in a position of powerlessness while acting in secret, so that I only suffer the pure result of her action, I do not experience it as humiliation. What matters is that I experience how the perpetrator enacts powerlessness, that she demonstrates to me how she renders me powerless. The experience of humiliation is thus an experience of powerlessness where its originator makes sure that I feel it as something that he does to me. Before my very eyes, he creates the wall that will destroy my life. He summons me to the boss's office where he fires me. He forces the Jews to clean the street with a toothbrush. Humiliation is demonstrated powerlessness. What belongs to it is arbitrariness as an expression of power – the conscious decision to perform an action despite having the option to refrain. The wall does not have to be built. The lay-off is humiliating because there is no compelling reason for it.
Yet humiliation is more than the naked demonstration of powerlessness. The person who humiliates me not only makes me feel that she is the originator of my powerlessness, but also that she enjoys and savours seeing me powerless. What is demonstrated is thus not only powerlessness but also its enjoyment. It is demonstrated by the individual who grins at the people standing by the window, powerless and desperate, while he puts stone after stone upon the wall. He makes sure his victims see him enjoying this demonstration. The experience of demonstrated powerlessness is bad enough. But what makes humiliation one of the most horrendous experiences that we know is this last element of having to experience how our powerlessness is enjoyed by its originator and how thoroughly he makes sure that we notice his enjoyment. You could see all of this in the pictures of American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison relishing the sight of stacked up naked prisoners.
Escaping to an Inner Fortress
Dignity is the right not to be humiliated. What can I do if this right is violated? I cannot simply endure a humiliation. I cannot simply persevere through this terrible experience. But what can I do? I can beg and plead with the perpetrators not to do this to me – to tear down the wall or to rehire me. But this feels like being held aloft in the hands of a laughing giant. Begging only worsens the situation as it acknowledges the powerlessness. Every rejected plea is another experience of powerlessness that reinforces the previous ones.
We sometimes say that an individual who gives way to such hopeless pleading is humiliating himself, but this is actually wrong and even absurd. After all, he does not enjoy making himself powerless, and individuals generally do not cause their own powerlessness. Saying that he is humiliating himself is a misleading rendition of the idea that by begging and pleading, he affirms and reinforces his humiliation and thereby additionally gambles away his dignity.
What is the alternative? We need one, for mere endurance is impossible, as it would be unbearable. We need to somehow confront powerlessness, at least internally. And through our reaction we must avoid gambling away our dignity. After I had discussed with the dwarf the meaning of the verdict against his French colleague, I got up to leave. He then said:
‘Nobody can take away my dignity – no matter what they do.’
‘Doesn't it bother you that others are entertained by your appearance, and that tossing you further adds to their entertainment?’
‘That's their problem, not mine.’
‘But don't you feel humiliated?’
‘I close my eyes and think of something nice. Afterwards it's like it didn't happen.’
Is it possible to save our dignity by escaping to an inner fortress during a humiliating situation, where others cannot reach us? This is the attempt to withdraw internally from the situation, evading our perpetrators' scornful, humiliating glances. We reject internally those who control us externally: ‘You can't get me where I'm going! The person you're trying to humiliate is no longer here! No one will be home when you arrive with your humiliations and try to gloat over my powerlessness! I've disappeared inside and now your humiliating gestures can't touch me.’ Lip service might be the model here: one performs what looks like a meaningful deed, but which is in reality nothing but an empty, automatic movement, from which one as an experiencing subject has withdrawn a long time ago. I could try this strategy when, surrounded by the others' scornful laughter, I am forced to clean the street with a toothbrush – vacant movement as the last defence of dignity. Or is this a self-delusion, essential to our emotional survival, but unable to prevent the loss of dignity? I return to this in Chapter 5.
Having Rights
Rights are a bulwark against dependence that is caused by arbitrary action. They therefore contribute to our experience of dignity as autonomy. People with rights can make demands. They do not need to ask to do something or to have something done for them. They can claim or sue for it. They are not dependent on anyone's goodwill. They cannot be shoved around like those without rights. When I have a right to something, it means that others have a duty to do or to abstain from doing something for me. My legal position provides me with autonomy in the sense that it offers protection against arbitrariness.
Rights are a bulwark against powerlessness as they give me the power to stand my ground. They are therefore also a bulwark against humiliation. They narrow the scope of those who want to demonstrate my powerlessness to me and enjoy seeing me powerless. I can take legal action when I am feeling powerless. If a court declares that I am right and I have been able to hold my ground, I feel as if my dignity has been restored or affirmed. The previous humiliation has been repealed.
I come home and see a gang of people who are about to clear out and destroy my house. They roar with delight on seeing my impotence, and this is humiliating. In a society without rights this deprives me of my dignity and there is nothing to be done against this powerlessness. As a subject with rights, by contrast, I have this dignity: I can call the police to put an end to the powerlessness. I have a right to it and in this right lies my dignity. This dignity accrues to me through the acknowledgement that I am a subject with rights. And when I am annihilated as a legal subject, I am deprived or robbed of my dignity.
Being Patronized
When we demand to be treated as autonomous human beings, we claim that we are mature and responsible for ourselves. When someone contests this by nannying us and making decisions over our head, we feel disfranchised and patronized. We experience a loss of authority over our life, of the power to decide freely and act independently. Others now determine what we may want and do, and this can mean humiliation and endanger our dignity.
Yet dignity is not always under threat when we are patronized. It depends on who takes away that authority and autonomy and for what reasons. The worst case is that of a despot. He and his clique, the party, force upon us an entire way of living that runs counter to our thinking, desires and conduct. We are made compliant through threats, surveillance, blackmail and torture and are forced to surrender authority over our lives completely. Under the rule of such total arbitrariness, someone else decides where we should live, where we should work and even whom we should love and marry. Our speech is also controlled, and ideally the despot would even like to dominate our inner lives, our thoughts, feelings and desires.
This happens in the world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. ‘The party seeks power entirely for its own sake’, O'Brien, the chief torturer says to his victim Winston. ‘Power is not a means, it is an end.’ The paternalistic treatment and oppression of citizens does not in the slightest serve their wellbeing, their benefit or their protection. They are not for a single moment viewed and treated as ends in themselves, but are nothing but playthings of power. And they are humiliated. O'Brien again and again relishes the powerlessness that he inflicts on Winston and makes sure that Winston sees his enjoyment. He is not only a monster because he does not shy away from any kind of physical cruelty, but also – and especially – because he makes Winston see his own powerlessness. He is a master in the art of humiliation.
Of course, not every state intervention in our life is a paternalistic act that violates our dignity. Laws passed by parliaments are often commands and prohibitions that narrow our freedom. They diminish individual authority and, in that sense, laws are paternalistic – we can no longer do everything we want to do. This ranges from issues of transport, over property and commerce to laws that prohibit crimes. We are required to wear helmets and safety belts, banned from smoking in certain places, from dealing drugs, from entering or interfering with others' property, from purposely hurting or killing people. The reason we accept these things is because – overall – they protect our dignity. This does not represent a submission to despotic power, but a renunciation of freedom for the benefit of society. The idea is that we sacrifice freedom for the common good, which also benefits individuals. Because of this logic, we are expected to accept these paternalistic laws. What is crucial is that such laws should be explained to us in every single case and that we can follow their logic. This is respectful of our dignity as subjects, of us as thinking, comprehending beings who refuse to accept incomprehensible, blind impositions. We might see individual cases differently, doubt the alleged evidence and question the conclusiveness of the arguments. But as long as we have the freedom to have our views heard and to be involved in the discussion, our dignity is not violated. It is only violated when we are silenced. Only then are paternalistic actions an experience of powerlessness and humiliation.
I once flew to Teheran to attend a book fair. As we were landing, the pilot made an announcement. ‘I would like to remind all women on board that they are required to wear a headscarf on leaving the plane’, he said. ‘This also applies to foreign visitors.’ I knew about this rule and yet I could not believe this was really possible – a state that prescribes what people have to wear. At the fair I was introduced to my translator. I wanted to shake her hand, but it remained concealed by her black dress. ‘It is not permitted for a strange man to shake a woman's hand’, I was told. Later on I happened to be walking next to a female stranger in the street. A revolutionary guard jumped out of an archway and grabbed by arm. ‘You not go with woman!’, he said. I explained that I had not been walking with the woman, but accidentally happened to be walking next to her. ‘You not go with woman!’, he repeated. I rebooked my flight and went home early. When I turned on the television that night, I saw a report about women in Saudi Arabia who are not allowed to drive cars and may only travel with a male guardian.
A few days later, a law was implemented in France that prohibits women from wearing religious headscarves and burkas in public. ‘This is intolerably paternalistic!’, a woman said to the camera. ‘Telling us how to dress! I feel violated in my dignity!’ ‘France is a secular state and does not tolerate symbols of religious oppression in its public sphere’, a government representative said. ‘But I don't feel oppressed! I want to wear the veil!’, the women exclaimed, ‘It's part of my religious dignity!’ ‘The state sees this differently’, the man said, ‘it has to protect the constitution by defending the principle of secularism and prohibiting its violation.’ ‘I feel humiliated when you force me to take off my scarf!’, the woman screamed. ‘I feel so powerless!’
