Human Dignity and Bioethics

286 | Diana Schaub
sufferer displays a dignity and excellence that a passive and uncomprehending
animal does not.*
Although Meilaender reiterates that he finds “something offensive”
about the aristocratic view of human dignity, it seems to me
that he himself regularly recurs to a version of it and that he can’t
help but do so. After all, in Christianity, the message to respect basic
humanity came from the fullest and purest humanity. The bearer of
the message was not just a godly man, but God become man. We are
to imitate His perfection. Christian virtues may be different from
classical virtues, but the standard is if anything higher.
Meilaender appeals to Lincoln for evidence of what he calls “the
problem we have with an inegalitarian concept of dignity.” I too accept
Lincoln as an authority. However, I don’t find Lincoln at all
offended by the aristocratic view. In fact, Lincoln always starts his
explications of the meaning of the Declaration by acknowledging
the fact of human inequality. Men are not equal in all sorts of features
and capacities, and Lincoln lists many of them. For Lincoln,
admitting the existence of various politically and socially significant
inequalities should not in any way imperil the real truth of the Declaration,
namely that men are equal in their natural rights to life
and liberty. Lincoln speaks of equal rights, not equal dignity. I suspect
that we may have gone awry when we confounded the language
of dignity with that of equality. Dignity was not a word either the
Founders or Lincoln employed much, and when they did it was in a
frankly meritocratic sense.
Moreover, in the passage Meilaender cites it is worth noting that
Lincoln illustrates the equality of rights by saying that human beings
are equal in their right to eat “the bread that…[their] own hands
have earned.” Even this equal right hinges on earning. Labor is the
title to property, and men will labor unequally. Lincoln does not
here tell us what those who are unable to labor are entitled to. I don’t
* In fairness, however, to the other animals, I would just note that Homer ascribes
virtues to them as well. Penelope is not the only paragon of patience in the Odyssey.
When Odysseus finds his great-hearted dog Argos on a dung heap, covered in
ticks, awaiting his return, he sheds tears for his faithful companion. (See Homer,
Odyssey 17.300ff.) Though Penelope too suffers from an infestation of the human
equivalent of dog ticks (the suitors), her wit is a resource that Argos does not have.
Perhaps that is why Odysseus is able to suppress his tears for the long-suffering
Penelope.