Human Dignity and Bioethics

Human Dignity and Public Discourse | 223
The people who are the American polis are deeply attached to the
concept of the dignity of the human person. For those who have a
moral adherence to this constitutional order and the means it provides
for addressing the res publica, that is a factor of considerable significance.
Yet there are those who contend that such popular attachments
are prejudices or unreflective biases that have no legitimate
place in authentically public discourse. Well known is the proscription,
commonly associated with John Rawls, of “comprehensive accounts”
from authentically public discourse. The proscription is most
rigorously asserted when such comprehensive accounts are perceived
to be “religious” in nature.
The moral authority of those who would make the rules for what
is to be admitted and what is to be excluded from public discourse is
far from being clear to many students of these arguments and is totally
baffling to the people who are the public. The perfectly understandable
suspicion is that there is a self-serving dynamic in the efforts of
some to appoint themselves the gatekeepers and border patrol of the
public square, admitting some arguments and excluding others. The
proscription of comprehensive accounts—especially when they are
religious or associated with a religious tradition—gives a monopoly
on the public square to accounts that are non-religious or anti-religious
in character. Such accounts are, in fact, no less comprehensive,
as has been persuasively argued by, among others, Alasdair MacIntyre
in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? 3 Conflicts that are described as
being between reason and tradition are typically conflicts between
different traditions of reason, each invoking its own authorities.
In the comprehensive accounts that would proscribe other comprehensive
accounts, especially if they are perceived as “religious” in
nature, the operative assumption is typically atheism. This is not to
say that all who support such proscriptions are atheists. It is to say
that, in their moral reasoning, they are methodological atheists. Only
those arguments are to be admitted to public deliberation that proceed
as if God does not exist. This is a non-rational prejudice in
which the great majority of Americans do not acquiesce. Whether by
invoking Pascal’s Wager or some other argument, they believe it is a
great deal more rational to proceed as if God does exist. In any event,
they do so proceed. The politically sovereign people are free to acknowledge,
and generally do acknowledge, a sovereignty higher than