Dignity and the Relational Self

I've just finished the exhausting task of working through the nearly 600 page Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President's Council on Bioethics and am beginning to gain a sense of how best to understand the notion of dignity.  In particular, I've been struck by a point Holmes Rolston III makes in his contribution to the collection.  Like many other theorists, Rolston takes great pains to explain what distinguishes us from other animals in order to locate the source of our dignity.  Indeed, he does so at least as thoroughly and eloquently as anyone I've read on the topic.  (This is no surprise, given the reputation he has established throughout his career.)  While his theism is unquestionably in the background of his account, nothing he says depends on theism, so we can safely set that whole issue aside.

At one point in his discussion, Rolston mentions the fact that we as individuals can situate ourselves within a personal history.  We can look to the past and project into the future.  This, I think, is a key insight into the notion of dignity, particularly if we tie it to the narrative conception of the self; it's worth more development than Rolston devotes to it.  Each person's narrative embodies and expresses goals, values, motivations, etc., all of which are at the heart of our self-conception and self-respect.  Because of this, we see ourselves as objects of respect--we feel an imperative that others ought to treat us in a certain way.  And, because we are capable of imaginative projection (a high-level type of empathy), we similarly perceive others as objects of respect.

Discussions of dignity commonly distinguish between dignity that is due to a person simply in virtue of being a person, and a type of dignity that has to do with having high standing.  I believe the account I'm developing above can accommodate both of these types of dignity.  Foundational dignity can be tied to the capacity of forming a narrative, while "dignity as an achievement" can be tied to the value of the narratives we construct/live.

Of course, all this needs to be spelled out in much greater detail, but for the first time, I feel like I might have something useful to contribute to the conversation.