Human Dignity and Bioethics

Two Arguments from Human Dignity | 463
Conclusion
As I noted in section I, arguments from human dignity are often presented
as alternatives to arguments that rely upon a social contract.
Even when arguments from dignity support the same entitlements as
contractualist arguments, arguments from dignity are often thought
to provide an independent route to those entitlements. Sometimes,
as we saw, arguments from human dignity are said to be not just independent
of contractualist arguments, but preferable to them. They
are said to provide a justification for basic entitlements that does not
suffer from the various defects that are alleged to afflict social contract
theory.
I have examined two arguments that appeal to human dignity to
ground basic entitlements. One, the Fittingness Argument, fails because
it requires government to avert a bad that is not properly connected
with the human interests government is supposed to advance.
The argument therefore misconstrues the ways in which government
must respect human worth. The Aristotelian Argument avoids the difficulties
that undermine the Fittingness Argument. But if the arguments
of the previous section are correct, then—if human beings
can develop and exercise a sense of justice—the conclusions of the
Aristotelian Argument need to be reached via conclusions about the
content of a hypothetical agreement. In that case, the Aristotelian Argument
depends upon a contractualist argument to support the basic
entitlements asserted in its conclusion. This suggests that, if human
beings can develop and exercise a sense of justice, then the contrast
between contractualist arguments and the Aristotelian Argument from
Human Dignity is a false contrast. The claim that the Aristotelian Argument
can avoid the defects of contractualist arguments because it is
independent of those arguments is mistaken.
I have not argued that the value of human dignity is dispensable
or that it does not play an essential role in arguments from human
dignity. Indeed, I have granted here that government must respect
those features of human beings that are thought to ground human
dignity. I said at the outset that I think the concept of human dignity
can be used to draw attention to those features and to express agreement
about their moral significance. “Dignity” is, I said, a useful
second-level concept. And I have assumed that the duty to respect