58 - On the border of life and death: human dignity and bioethics

Summary

A greater number of explicit references to human dignity can be found in bioethical debates than in virtually any other context. This may have its ground in the subject-matter of bioethical debates, namely, questions of life and death, which undoubtedly concern the dignity of a person. It may, however, also be a consequence of the strong influence that various religions and ideologies have on these debates. It seems that, in bioethics, the term ‘human dignity’ is quite often used in a way that seems to distinguish different ideological camps, which gave rise to the idea that the term would be connected to a conservative-communitarian network with strong links in various religious circles.

The underlying problem in discussing the role of human dignity in bioethics is that most approaches in bioethics are not appropriate for developing an adequate understanding of human dignity as a foundational concept from which the human rights are derived. I briefly discuss two examples: Jonsen and Toulmin (1988) claimed that bioethical debates should centre on cases, rather than principles (Düwell 2012: 51–8). They argued that the appropriate way to deal with bioethical cases would be to compare between those cases where we agree in our moral judgments and those cases of medical practice where we are uncertain about what we ought to do. By a critical discussion and comparison of cases it would be much more likely that we would come to an agreement than if we focus on abstract principles and their contested philosophical background theories. Such case-oriented, sometimes even anti-theoretical approaches are quite dominant in bioethics. If human dignity is to be interpreted as a principle from which human rights can be derived, it would be difficult to relate this principle to a case-oriented approach in the first place.