Dignity: A history

The concept of dignity typically brings to mind an idea of moral status that supposedly belongs to all humans equally, and which serves as the basis of human rights. But this moralized meaning of dignity is historically very young. Until the mid-nineteenth century, dignity suggested an idea about merit: it connoted elevated social rank, of the sort that marked nobility or ecclesiastic preferment. What explains this radical change in meaning? And before this change, did anything like the moralized concept of dignity exist, that is, before it was named by the term dignity ? If so, exactly how old is the moralized concept of dignity? In this volume, leading scholars across a range of disciplines attempt to answer these questions by clarifying the presently murky history of dignity, from classical Greek thought through the Middle Ages and Enlightenment to the present day. In the process, four platitudes about the history of human dignity are undermined: (1) the Roman notion of dignitas is not the ancient starting point of our modern moralized notion; (2) neither the medieval Christian doctrine of imago Dei nor the renaissance speech of Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, was a genuine locus classicus of dignity discussion; (3) Immanuel Kant is not the early modern proprietor of the concept; (4) the universalization of the concept of dignity in the postmodern world (ca. 1800-present) is not the result of its constitutional indoctrination by the wise forefathers of liberal states like America or France

Adam smith on dignity and equality

Where exactly should we place Adam Smith in the cannon of classical liberalism? Smith\u27s advocacy of free market economics and defence of religious liberty in The Wealth of Nations suffice for including him somewhere in that tradition.1 The nature and extent of Smith\u27s liberalism, however, remain up for debate. One recent trend has been to characterise Smith as a proponent of social liberalism. This includes those like Stephen Darwall, Samuel Fleischacker and Charles Griswold, who have drawn attention to a kind of descriptive moral egalitarianism in Smith.2 Humans, Smith seems to hold, are naturally disposed to valuing one another under a conception of equality. But that is not all these scholars suggest. They have also hinted at something more contentious-the idea that, according to Smith, we value one another in a way resonant with contemporary notions of human dignity, conceived as the inherent value of persons grounding certain rights to, or restrictions on, treatment by others.3 In saying so, these scholars have hit upon something remarkable. However, I also think their arguments in this respect are both indirect and incomplete. Consequently, the full import of Smith\u27s view remains obscure. This essay aims to bring some clarity. 1I intend this historically. I grant there are good reasons to be sceptical about the ultimate fate of liberty in capitalist society (e.g. Marxist reasons and reasons based on various postmodern critiques of enlightenment ideology). Also, the designation free market should be understood loosely, as most scholars now agree it is a mistake to identify Smith with thoroughgoing laissez-faire economics. 2Darwall, S., Sympathetic Liberalism: Recent Work on Adam Smith, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 28 (1999) No. 2: 139-64; Fleischacker, S., A Third Concept of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) and On Adam Smith\u27s Wealth of Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Griswold, C., Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Other major commentators holding some version of this view might include Raphael, D. D. The Impartial Spectator (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) and Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith\u27s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce and Conscience (London: Routledge, 1994). 3See e.g. Fleischacker (2004), 205; Darwall at 142, 156 and Griswold at 235-239. However, one must read Fleischacker carefully, for he also uses the adjectival dignified to express Smith\u27s concern with what is honourable or respectable about persons, which use does not obviously match up with the notion of inherent value (see e.g. p. 207). Darwall\u27s argument includes by far the most explicit discussion of dignity as I\u27ve defined it. But as Darwall\u27s article is ostensibly a book review (albeit a substantive one that addresses three books at once, including Griswold\u27s), it cannot be called a direct inquiry. Griswold never explicitly puts his interpretation in terms of dignity, but that is clearly what he is after. Thus Darwall also reads him that way. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC