Liberalism and Human Dignity

While doing some background reading for a course on Bioethics, I ran across a compelling argument from Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P. in his book Biomedicine & Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics in which he uses the idea of human dignity and the ideals as held by liberals to show that liberalism is at its core a contradiction when it comes to the selective or extrinsic application of who has human dignity and how much dignity they are allotted.

The argument goes like this.

Liberalism prizes personal autonomy above all else. Anything that seeks to limit personal autonomy or at least their perception of personal autonomy (pro-life movements, legislation for traditional marriage, the expectation of never having one’s feelings hurt are just a few examples) is seen as an evil and should be decried. Therefore the liberal calls slavery, the holocaust, and genocide evil not because they are intrinsically but because they limit the autonomy in these groups of people. If one considers the current transgender movement and bathroom politics, it boils down to the liberal autonomy of the person and those who deny that a man who thinks he is a woman can use the women’s bathroom is evil because the man is having his autonomy limited. 

Post World War II, in response to the German, Japanese, and Italian regimes who disregarded human dignity from large groups of people, the natural thing to do was emphasize human dignity, as is evident in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The preamble of the UDHR uses terms such as “universal” and says that human dignity is “intrinsic,” and human dignity is the foundation for freedom and justice. A glance at the German Constitution will find in Article 1.1 the following: “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.” Two documents that many liberals will point to as foundational in the progress of the world’s understanding of human dignity and what rights are extended to each person.

Liberals, he argues, are forced to acknowledge human dignity, because there would be no other possible way to decry specific horrors; however, they fall into sloppy and inconsistent thinking by insisting everything depends on human dignity and at the same time ignoring that human dignity is intrinsic and not extrinsic and instead places human dignity only on extrinsic values. Likewise, the average liberal does not even begin to acknowledge or ignores the roots of the concept of human dignity as stemming from the Judeo-Christian tradition of man being made in the image and likeness of God, because it challenges the liberal philosophy. In other words, liberals, when discussing human dignity, fail to adhere to the law of non-contradiction, for human dignity cannot be universal and intrinsic and at the same time be limited and extrinsic.

He lists three main problems with this thinking:

1. It leaves those who are most vulnerable in danger, as it says those lacking a specific trait has no or limited human dignity. For example: if you can no longer provide a useful skill to the state because you are too old or sick, your dignity may be revoked. See The Twilight Zone episode titled “The Obsolete Man.”
2. It reduces man from being an ineffable mystery to a set of values or principles that a person, group, state, or culture value most – in other words, in an attempt to give and protect human dignity, it must limit or deny human dignity to others. The liberal here risks a new kind of tyranny in that the group can value the wrong things or change what it values from one day to the next. See The Twilight Zone episode “A World of His Own” or “Eye of the Beholder.”
3. Lastly, in an attempt at equality and by basing it only on extrinsic principles, what is actually created is an environment of hostility as it ignores the very fact that, extrinsically speaking, there is always someone who is still more intelligent, more pretty, more athletic in the world. See The Twilight Zone episode “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” for an example of people trying to level extrinsic principles of beauty – or if you prefer a real-world example, it is akin to the idea that everyone gets a participation trophy or everyone gets a medal for running a race – or if you want a more real-world example turn on the news and watch the many college protests over the years due to speakers holding views that a large liberal population does not like because it hurts their feelings or makes them feel attacked. The danger in this is that it leads to a false elevation of some and the forced tearing down of others and does not and cannot allow a society to flourish. In other words, this last point leads to communism.

In brief, the authors uses the liberal idea of human dignity to argue that liberalism is not only sloppy thinking when it comes to human dignity, but it is dangerous and, at its heart, relativistic. This particular liberal mindset was on full display at the Ben Shapiro event at UC Berkley, where he went toe to toe with various students during the q&a segment over the philosophical understanding of abortion, life, and other issues. There, many of the liberal questioners’ arguments often began rationally, but quickly digressed from a rational argument to emotional reasoning to the underlying rationale of maintaining extreme personal autonomy. To put it slightly differently, they liberal questioners wanted to know how to maintain the worldview that they are indeed the center of the universe and all that matters.