Human Dignity and Bioethics

Two Arguments from Human Dignity | 443
Assume that if human beings have worth, then they should not have
to live lives which do not befit their worth. Since human beings do
have worth by (1f):
(3f)
Human beings should not have to live lives that do not
befit their worth.
From (3f) and (2f) we get the claim that human beings should not
have to live in conditions of gross material deprivation. And so the
Fittingness Argument concludes:
C: Human beings are entitled to access to material conditions
that are not conditions of gross material
deprivation.
And if we assume—as I did when I laid out the Simple Argument—
that national governments are obliged to guarantee that people do
not have to live in ways that do not befit their worth, then the argument
shows why national governments are obliged to guarantee that
people do not have to live in conditions of gross material deprivation.
The Fittingness Argument thus purports to show how fundamental
documents could move from claims about human dignity to secondgeneration
rights.
Like the Simple Argument, the Fittingness Argument may not often
be laid out explicitly. Like the Simple Argument, it raises questions.
Among the most pressing of these are questions about premise
(1f), questions about human worth and its grounds. These questions
will eventually have to be confronted, but I want to put them off for
now. For looking at the rest of the argument enables us to appreciate
its appeal.
To begin to see that appeal, note that there is an immediately
apparent difference between the Simple Argument and the Fittingness
Argument. If we modify premise (2) of the Simple Argument in the
way that the Fittingness Argument does, then the conjunction of (1f)
and (2f) does not raise the same puzzlement that the juxtaposition of
(1) and (2) did. That juxtaposition was puzzling because (2) seemed
to suggest that humans could lack the dignity that (1) said they have.
By contrast, it does not seem nearly so problematic to say, as (1f)