Down With Human Dignity!

Well, it finally happened. A modernist has revealed the true beliefs behind the Culture of Death. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has written an article in The New Republic (May 28, 2008) called "The Stupidity of Dignity." As the title indicates, Pinker argues that the whole concept of human dignity is a "stupid" measure to use in bioethics.

Pinker sees human dignity as a constraint on the freedom of scientists, patients and patients' caretakers. In fact, Pinker objects to any constraint imposed on personal autonomy by any objective moral standard. To a modernist, personal autonomy is the only legitimate objective moral standard. Furthermore, those who are unable to assert their personal autonomy (the unborn, the comatose, the seriously disabled) should have no influence over people who are able to assert themselves. The modernist ideal of freedom (personal autonomy) really boils down to an ideology of power.

Under Pinker's standards, our culture should not only accept abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research (those are the convenient issues to which he applies his philosophy), but logically we should also accept

• infanticide
• experimentation on the severely mentally disabled
• extermination of the same
• immediate "euthanasia" of comatose patients

In Pinker's mindset anyone unable to exert personal autonomy is unworthy of consideration. However, in the real world of medical ethics is it too paranoid to think that medical decisions would also come down to who has the greater power? What happens when a patient's choice conflicts with the choice of a caregiver? Will a doctor be forced to follow the caregiver's requests over the patient's because the caregiver has more power to express personal autonomy (just let him die so I can be free)? If such a situation becomes acceptable in our culture, how then can we judge the Nazi medical experimentations on the Jews? Was this not simply the more powerful exercising their will over the less powerful? Certainly we could not argue that animal experimentation of any kind is evil. It is just the more powerful animal exercising power over the weaker. Let's be clear that Pinker is not suggesting that these practices of power are acceptable. To a modernist, everybody should have the right to exercise personal autonomy. However, in the real world exercises of personal autonomy tend to conflict. The modernist philosophy doesn't seem to handle such conflicts too well.

What's even more bothersome is Pinker's emaciated definition of human dignity. To him, human dignity is not an objective quality afforded by human nature. Modernists don't even believe in human nature so Pinker doesn't really have a foundation from which to truly understand the ideal that he is tearing down. To Pinker, human dignity is nothing more than the trappings of respect. My dignity is nothing more than my subjective demand that other people treat me as if I were important.

Since this conceptualization of human dignity is so core to the modernist view of bioethics, I plan to take a closer look at this article in future blog posts.