Human Dignity and Bioethics

The Lived Experience of Human Dignity | 537
Habermas and Ratzinger, even while each held to its own metaphysical
beliefs.
Sadly, the world had to experience the massive deprivations of
human dignity of World War II and the world scene following it
to understand human dignity in a way no purely conceptual analysis
could. To paraphrase John Keats, dignity became an axiom only
when it was “proven” on the “pulses” of the whole world. Only when
we all had gone some way on the “same steps” did we grasp how
intimately our humanity was embedded in our inherent dignity. We
then understood what happens to dignity when humanity is “delivered”
to tyrannical regimes; let us hope we will not also have to learn
what happens to human dignity when humanity is delivered to “the
process of technicalization,” the “problem” that troubled Marcel.