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Zaynab El Bernoussi, Dignity: Its History and Meaning By Michael Rosen Harvard University Press. 2012. 200 pages. $21.95 hardback, Social Forces, Volume 94, Issue 4, June 2016, Page e109, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou130
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Extract
The idea of writing a book about dignity came to Rosen after realizing that he did not know much about the concept in general and within philosophy in particular. Naturally, being a philosopher, he reviewed his knowledge about the concept in the discipline of philosophy, questioning once again the underlying fundamentals of the discipline itself. Rosen teaches us that philosophy is a holistic discipline, meaning that all the theories and problems relate to one another, whereas experimental science is about establishing solid and repeatable results, something you can hardly do in philosophy. The titles that he chooses for his chapters are rather entertaining: “The Shibboleth of All Empty-Headed Moralists,” “Dwarves with Dignity,” and the ambitious “Formula of Humanity.” The book is an examination of dignity as a concept in history, philosophy, and legislation, focused primarily on continental European intellectual thought.
In the first part of the book, Rosen attempts to define this slippery concept. Is dignity just about flattering our self-esteem without any genuine substance behind it, as a sort of Schopenhauerian humbug (1)? A straight answer is No, because dignity is central to the modern human rights discourse as established by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, there seems to be a lack of philosophical interest in dignity that is quite striking. Philosopher Ruth Macklin, in an editorial in the British Medical Journal in 2002, even states that the concept is useless. Rosen concedes that there is a distinct value of dignity but claims it is not a universal moral value as the Universal Declaration and the Grundgesetz, the constitutional law in Germany, would have it (6). Indeed, people's understandings of the concept differ widely. Moreover, different disciplines make various associations with the concept of dignity, associations such as dignity and clinical studies, dignity and human rights, and dignity and spirituality. Andy H. Y. Ho, from the Centre on Behavioral Health at the University of Hong Kong, conducted research (2013) about death and dignity in the city of Hong Kong. He conducted interviews with people from different age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds, finding out that they attached different meanings to dignity. Some associated dignity with money, privacy, belonging, or even autonomy. In my current research (2014) on the use of the concept of dignity in the 2011 revolution in Egypt, I interview different protesters who also do not seem to converge toward a common understanding of the concept of dignity, similar to the research on dignity and death. This supports Rosen's point that there is a distinct, variable, and even personal value to dignity.
