Human Dignity in Discourse Ethics

In discourse theories of morality, the semantics of human dignity has received little theoretical attention from Apel and Habermas, although Apel considers human dignity to be a moral foundation of human rights and Habermas grants it a function in the discourse of bioethics. This essay aims to remedy this deficiency. I propose to explain human dignity in the discourse-ethics framework as the basal moral status that moral agents ascribe to themselves because they must understand themselves both as subjects of morality who can confer status and, at the same time, as moral objects of other moral agents who, in turn, can confer status. By distinguishing between reasons that specify the normative content of human dignity status and reasons that guide the practice of ascribing status to individuals of a certain kind, two objections to the moral notion of human dignity can be dismissed: The objection that this notion is the result of a naturalistic fallacy, and the objection that it is the expression of speciesist arrogance. The conceptual structure of being an individual of a particular species, and thus having dignity that belongs to individuals of that species, is compatible with various normative contents of dignity. But as long as we do not get to know moral agents of non-human kind, we are justified in marking out human dignity as the basal status.