Human Dignity and Bioethics

Two Arguments from Human Dignity | 465
of dignity, depending upon their stage of development. 24 Other passages
seem to foreclose this possibility by asserting that all human beings
have dignity equally. 25 In one critical place, at which the Council
tries to draw normative conclusions from ascriptions of dignity, the
argument for those conclusions seems to depend, not just upon the
claim that all have dignity equally, but also on the claim that the basis
of human dignity is the same for all. 26
It does not follow from anything I have said that human beings
who are incapable of a sense of justice do not have basic entitlements,
or that they do not have the same entitlements as those who can
develop and exercise a sense of justice. But if they cannot develop
and exercise a sense of justice, then it is hard to see how their government’s
respect for their dignity or worth requires it to respect them as
beings who can develop and exercise that capacity. And it is hard to
see how government could be bound to show respect for their worth
by taking account of hypothetical reasoning into which they could
or would enter. The grounds for the entitlements held by those who
can and those who cannot develop a sense of justice would therefore
seem to be different, even if the entitlements enjoyed by both groups
turn out to be the same. If this is so then, while dignity may be a
useful second-level concept, the hope that some unitary account of
human dignity can provide a single foundation for the basic entitlements
of all human beings would seem to be misplaced.