Dignity and Preservation of Personhood

Abstract

This paper sketches a partial account of human dignity. The account is Kantian in the loose sense of having been inspired by some of Kant’s views. But it contrasts sharply with a traditional Kantian account. The paper tries to isolate some shortcomings of the traditional account – in particular that it condemns as morally impermissible certain actions of heroic self-sacrifice as well as certain actions of privileging the young over the old in the distribution of scarce, life-saving resources. The new account attempts to avoid such implications while preserving some of the traditional account’s attractive features. According to the new account, dignity is preeminent and unconditional value, possessed by all and only persons, that is, beings who have certain psychological capacities, including autonomy. An agent’s action expresses respect for persons’ dignity if, without treating anyone merely as a means, he or she aims in performing it to maximize persons’ preservation. The paper distinguishes between two dimensions along which person preservation might be maximized and suggests how to weigh each of these dimensions in decisions about whom to try to preserve.