Human Dignity and Bioethics

8
Dignity and Enhancement
Nick Bostrom
Does human enhancement threaten our dignity, as some prominent
commentators have asserted? Or could our dignity perhaps
be technologically enhanced? After disentangling several different
concepts of dignity, this essay focuses on the idea of dignity as a
quality, a kind of excellence admitting of degrees and applicable to
entities both within and without the human realm. I argue that dignity
in this sense interacts with enhancement in complex ways which
bring to light some fundamental issues in value theory, and that the
effects of any given enhancement must be evaluated in its appropriate
empirical context. Yet it is possible that through enhancement
we could become better able to appreciate and secure many forms
of dignity that are overlooked or missing under current conditions.
I also suggest that, in a posthuman world, dignity as a quality could
grow in importance as an organizing moral/aesthetic idea.
The Meanings of Dignity and Enhancement
The idea of dignity looms large in the postwar landscape of public
ethics. Human dignity has received prominent billing in numerous
national and international declarations and constitutions. Like some
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