Human Dignity and Bioethics

334 | Susan M. Shell
modern moral discourse. Few thinkers on either the right or left, and
whether religious or secular, fail to pay him homage. Prevailing contemporary
views concerning patient “autonomy” and informed consent
surely reflect a clear Kantian provenance. 1 On the other hand,
his thought can appear too rigidly dualistic to offer much practical
guidance on more difficult and contentious issues, such as stem cell
research and other matters that touch upon the limits of what is and
isn’t “human.” My guiding hypothesis is that a more complete and
fully rounded view of Kant’s thought can indeed shed useful, nonquestion-begging
light on such liminal questions. Despite his reputation
as a rigid dualist, Kant’s thought has much to offer bioethical
debate in a liberal democratic context. As I hope to show, one need
not be a strict Kantian to find many of his arguments helpful in supplying
common ground to citizens of otherwise diverse moral and
religious views. The key to such a retrieval lies in giving Kant’s notion
of “humanity” as embodied rationality the attention it deserves.
Dignity and Embodied Rationality
Kant’s concept of human dignity has two components: humanity
and dignity. “Dignity” (Würde) designates a value that has no equivalent—i.e.,
that which is “beyond price.” As he puts it in a famous
passage of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals:
What is related to general human inclinations and needs
has a market price; that which, even without presupposing
such a need, conforms with a certain taste…has a fancy price;
but that which constitutes the condition under which alone
something can be an end in itself has not merely a relative
value, that is, a price, but an inner value, that is, dignity….
Morality, and humanity insofar as it is capable of morality, is
that which alone has dignity. 2
This manner of speaking has particular resonance in a commercial
society like ours, in which almost all goods are commodified or
seem capable of becoming so. The concept of “dignity” gains much
of its moral force from its insistence upon an absolute limit to the