HUMAN DIGNITY

"Personhood," I believe, is an achievement concept. A human being is a person to the degree to which he or she becomes an integrated, creative, freely-acting social and moral being. I have an identity as a person, then, only insofar as I realize the spontaneity of my spiritual being and, in and through the riven conditions, features, characteristics of my individual being, attain to what I ought to be, as that "ought" is itself dynamically determined within the creative process of my historical becoming. In short, a person, I would want to argue, is an articulation of a unique subjectivity whose rightness is secured through an affirmation of the spiritual ground of one's being and the creative transformation of the constraints, limitations and conditions of one's individual being.

A person is thus grounded in freedom. Or, to put it another way, human beings are free to the degree to which they achieve personhood. I am free to the degree to which I have appropriated my experience and act, in and through that integrated ownership, with creative skill and power. I am free when my own power of being is expressed rightly in action. Freedom, as I understand it, is thus more of a quality than a condition; it is integral to a person and his/her action and not something (e.g., a "free-will") which makes a certain kind of (morally responsible) action possible.

The question, then, which often arises at this point is: If human beings are more or less persons, having realized their spontaneity and having achieved freedom in varying degrees, should not some human beings count for more than others and enjoy special privileges and be accorded exceptional rights? Ought not societies to be structured, as indeed they often have been both East and West, North and South, hierarchically in ways that take these differences between human beings into account? The answer, I believe, is that when one achieves personhood and freedom, one has precisely the nonegoistic, loving sensitivity and concern that carries along with it the recognition of a nondiscriminatory spiritual worth obtaining throughout life. A person affirms quite spontaneously and naturally the intrinsic worth, the dignity, of every human being--and it is this recognition, this affirmation, which makes possible a political/moral understanding that is commensurate with the spiritual potentialities of man.

Traditionally, at least in Western experience, the notion of the intrinsic worth of every human being has been grounded, for the most part, in some form or other of Theism. It is because we are equal in the eyes of God as His creatures, made in His image, that we are granted equal spiritual value. On this basis, some theologians would even go so far as to extend the concept of dignity to the inorganic as well as to the living. Paul Tillich, for example, writes:

Self-transcendence in the sense of greatness implies selftranscendence in the sense of dignity. It might seem that this term belongs exclusively to the personal-communal realm because it presupposes complete centeredness and freedom. But one element of dignity is inviolability, which is a valid element of all reality, giving dignity to the inorganic as well as the personal.⁽²⁰⁷⁾

For some considerable time now (at least since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution), however, most philosophers, and indeed many theologians, have not appealed to Theism with its self-transcendence to ground their ethical and political beliefs in dignity and equality; rather they have struggled to find other strictly rational, pragmatic or utilitarian justifications. One need not, I think, strain moral sensitivity in this way; for, as I will try to show, it is sufficient for upholding the intrinsic worth of everyone that it is the natural expression of a person to so perceive others in those terms. The fact that a person recognizes spontaneously the inherent dignity of others provides the best warrant for asserting that dignity and for exploring the ways in which it can best be expressed in our political and socialmoral experience. Inherent or intrinsic dignity rests on the solid foundation that it is spirit which sees spirit.⁽²⁰⁸⁾

In his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, and elsewhere, Kant--a paradigm of one who seeks a strictly rational justification for morality--sets a sharp opposition between duty and inclination; he goes so far as to disallow moral value to those actions or states which incline spontaneously toward the good. "[M]any persons," Kant writes, are "so sympathetically constituted that without any motive of vanity or selfishness they find an inner satisfaction in spreading joy, and rejoice in the contentment of others which they have made possible. But I say that . . . that kind of action has no true moral worth."⁽²⁰⁹⁾ For an action to have "true moral worth," according to Kant, it must be done not from inclination, but entirely from duty. It must be carried out as an act of rational obedience to the moral law (expressed as a categorical imperative); it must be an act of will totally independent of what and who one is as a person. "Thus everything empirical," Kant says, "is not only unworthy to be an ingredient in the principle of morality but is even highly prejudicial to the purity of moral practices themselves."⁽²¹⁰⁾

It is thus entirely conceivable that we could have a perfectly wretched human being, filled with all manner of hate and resentment, who nevertheless would be supremely moral if he acted rationally according to the principle of duty. There is indeed something ludicrous in divorcing morality from the qualities of a person--what he/she "inclines" towards--and in seeking a purely rational ground for morality; especially one that can support the principles necessary for a just and fulfilling social and political order.

One form of Kant's categorical imperative, however, declares that `one must always treat others as ends never as means,' which is to say that one must act towards others with the recognition of their intrinsic worth. This recognition, however, cannot itself, as Kant unwittingly showed, be grounded in a purely rational will; rather it is presupposed in the very possibility of such a will. With Kant, this presupposition of a primal human dignity no doubt derived from his own rich theistic background. The inherent dignity of every human being may, however, be affirmed, and on a stronger, unshakable footing, as it is the natural, spontaneous way in which a genuine person--one whose inclinations are, as it were, in order--regards others.

The intrinsic dignity of a person shows the person as inviolate. Intrinsic dignity is thus one of the value conditions constituting the individual, and as such can be cultivated, albeit never as a mere act of will.

Dignity becomes then a manner of one's standing in the world. It is a fundamental state or quality of a human being as well as a source of his/her judgment and action. To rob a person of dignity is to reduce the person precisely to a mere thing (a "means"). We rightly call inhumane any treatment of another which is designed to deprive him of his dignity.

The awareness of one's own primal dignity, we have said, brings with it a natural extension of that awareness to others. There is, in short, a native tendency--let us call it an "inner logic"--to recognize and acknowledge the worth of others the moment that one recognizes and claims it for oneself. It would be inherently contradictory for a person who has realized to the full his own dignity to act immorally, to willfully deprive another of his/her personhood and freedom or, given the opportunity, to fail to enhance the personhood of the other.

Intrinsic dignity, we affirm, belongs to individuals as a primal condition of their being; and yet, at the same time, it is a social phenomenon, for it demands recognition and acknowledgment in order for it to become a living force and for it to be sustained by the love it affords to others. With its insistence upon qualitative differentiation among human beings (between "the herd" and those endowed with a privileged "beautiful soul") romantic individualism (with which the view here being articulated is often confounded) was entirely ego-based. It recognized the social only as it was a field upon which one's own dignity could be acted out and not as that which informs one's dignity at the core.

One who successfully cultivates his/her dignity does not think of himself as superior but as worthy--and it is precisely that which is affirmed as well in others.

EVIL

Evil exists. Evil-doers exist. The evil that human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another and upon the world seems without boundary: the holocaust, genocide, torture--and the little acts that are calculated to hurt, to humiliate, to violate and degrade.

Evil is the betrayal of dignity. It is thus a spiritual sickness, a disease of the soul. Lacking the self-esteem that flows from the awareness of their own inherent dignity, the doers of evil, while bringing about immense harm and suffering, in fact destroy themselves. Evil-doers know nothing of the joy of being.

Evil is ignorance, but not as a mere lack of knowing something or other, as if evil could be dispelled if only one had a certain piece of knowledge. Rather, it is ignorance as a failure to achieve a spiritual state of knowing being; one which renders one incapable of intentionally harming or degrading others. Evil does not disappear in knowledge, as though it never existed in the first place: it is seen as it is and is inwardly transformed and transfigured. Nicholas Berdyaev notes that

The genesis of evil shows that we must both recognize its positive significance . . . and condemn it, waging an unwearying struggle against it. The positive meaning of evil lies solely in the enrichment of life brought about by the heroic struggle against it and victory over it.⁽²¹¹⁾

One must indeed struggle with the tendencies toward evil whenever they appear within oneself and in others; but a "victory" over evil is possible only when evil is radically denied. As the Augustinian side of Christian theology recognized, evil is the absence of what is truly significant (the good); it can have no positive meaning of its own.

Now this is certainly more than a logical or semantic quibble over the definition (meaning) of terms; and it extends as well beyond any concern to develop a theodicy. For to give positive meaning to evil, if only of an instrumental sort, is to allow some value to the degradation of the spiritual quality of life. Evil is utter nonsense. It needs to be understood; it needs to be explained; it needs to be addressed socially, politically; it does not need to be, and it cannot be, justified.

This brings us to the concept of Power.

POWER

Men, women, children need, and therefore oftentimes desperately seek, to be able to effectuate change, to control others and themselves, to influence events, to acquire some degree of mastery over their lives; in short, to have power. Power takes many forms--from a crude display of physical force exercised against another, to a spontaneous expression of authoritative competency. There are raw physical actions; there are subtle manipulations of others; there are legitimated modes of compelling authority; and there are triumphant self-over-comings and acts of beauty and grace.

We need then to distinguish broadly at least between coercive power and creative power. Coercive power demands the obedience of the other (be it person, event, situation) to one's own will. It is ego-based. It assumes struggle, engagement, victory or defeat. Creative power, on the other hand (te, as I understand the Chinese), seeks the realization of a harmony that is constituted in and through diverse and oftentimes conflicting elements. Creative power is an expression of freedom in action. It is exercised in celebration and joy.

Creative power is not an imposition of order upon chaos; a therapeutic overcoming of the forces of darkness; or a simple overflow of exuberant feeling which is "expressive" of its bearer's personality (as has sometimes been thought). Rather it is just that mastery, that skillful acting (wu wei), which is grounded in an essential understanding of things and being (Tao), and is realized concretely in consummate forms of acting freely. Creative power, unlike coercive power, aims to promote human fulfillment. It translates into the social/moral/political arena as the authority which issues from competency: the authoritative in sharp contrast to the authoritarian. Creative power strives, in short, to enhance the dignity of persons.

Wu wei, as I understand it, thus holds that action--in this context political/moral action--needs to be performed always in a spirit of care and devotion. In Confucian terms, a person in authority should possess that authority in virtue of his competency, the authority consisting then not so much in imposing one's will upon others but in orchestrating their talents and achievements. Creative power is carried out at once thoughtfully and spontaneously with the intent of enhancing the welfare of all.⁽²¹²⁾

CREATIVE POWER IN WORK AND SOCIAL RELATIONS

Paul Ricoeur argues that

Work calls into play the power relations of man over man within the context of the relations of force between man and nature. Indeed, through work, human resistance takes on the character of a rationally organized battle against nature that makes nature appear as a reservoir of forces to be conquered. . . . Now, the force of man's work also figures among the forces to be mastered. The rational organization of the battle against nature also implies an organization of human efforts in projects, plans and programs. In this way man ranks among the number of resistances to be overcome by man. His work is a productive force to be organized: by means of his work he enters into relations of subordination.⁽²¹³⁾

And thus

Authority is not bad in itself. Control is a necessary `differentiation' between man and is implied in the essence of the political sphere.⁽²¹⁴⁾

Insufficient attention, it seems, has been paid in ethical thought to the politics of work, which is somewhat surprising insofar as the vast majority of power relationships (and aspirations and frustrations) for most persons, especially in a liberal democratic society, occur in the workplace, rather than in the governmental arena. Day to day power situations arise more as we are workers than as we are citizens (of a state).

Given unlimited leisure, which is mistakenly taken as the opposite of work, most persons would go mad--or they would impose upon themselves all manner of new tasks. It is not so much the flight from boredom as such, however, that drives man to work, as the need to accept challenges, to have an appropriate field to engender and play out one's energies and talents (let alone "to make a living"). Within the social/economic structures that have developed, this means institutionalized, organized productivity of one sort or another where labor is offered, money is given, power is acquired.

A distinction needs to be made, I believe, between working at something or other and working to; with the former we have action carried out primarily for the sake of the end to be achieved, with the later tasks are undertaken for their inherent value as well as for a purpose to be fulfilled. Working to exhibits, and contributes to, a person's autonomy and dignity. It is not part of a battle to be waged with nature, a battle requiring "resistances to be overcome" both with nature and with fellow workers. Working to is joyous work: it is playful skill in action.

Most work that is carried out or tasks undertaken are not, by their very nature and character, able to be done by a single person working alone; most work requires some degree of group participation and always implies a social context--and hence becomes "political". It is here that the ideals of a creative morality that I have been trying to sketch can be seen to be clearly superior to any other ethical/political style, insofar as they allow for, indeed call for, autonomy and respect for individual dignity. The ideas allow for work to be a working to, a kind of creative play.

Authoritarian models of work relations obtain whenever one is compelled to assume subordinate/superior roles as part of a system that places power in a very few and legitimates their being able to tell others what to do unquestioningly. In authoritarian work relations power often seems to get exercised as much for its own sake as for the goal to be attained, for the system when carried to its near extreme usually proves to be highly inefficient and counterproductive in the end. With the authoritarian model, the worker is a mere instrument or thing, a piece of a larger whole and is thus regarded as utterly replaceable. He/she is discouraged, indeed often prevented, from acquiring distinctive skills of a sort that would command a large measure of autonomy (and hence the traditional difficulty authoritarian structures have when dealing with both craftsmen and peasants). Where initiative and pride of work are denied, not only are human beings degraded, but--the pragmatic will appreciate--the productive purpose or goal is certain to be unrealized.

Turning to so-called "democratic" models of work relations, we find that they usually contain a large dose of the authoritarian, certainly within corporate/state capitalist economies--especially historically, in their early stages of growth. However, they strive over time, at least within the framework of liberal political democracy, to safeguard individual rights (with laws and regulations governing safety, minimum wages, child labor and the like) and to allow for the promotion of the worker's welfare through collective actions (e.g., union bargaining). The democratic model encourages the full rationalization of the productive process, whether in factory or in office, through specialization of skills and wage differentials. It remains, however, dedicated to work in the spirit of working at. Work being essentially instrumental to the end product of profit for the company or for the individual, will always be alienating to some highly significant degree.

Democratic work-models are to be found, of course, not only in capitalist economies but in socialist ones as well. But oftentimes they have the ironic peculiarity that the worker, while not being easily replaced, often is regarded and regards himself ever more keenly as superfluous or inessential. Where "everybody must work," jobs having to be provided for all, most work becomes meaningless. Numerous people are provided to do what could be done more effectively and meaningfully by only a few.

Nevertheless, insofar as the democratic model of work relations does call upon worker initiatives--where by `worker' we mean all who are involved in the productive system of goods and services, the clerk as well as the surgeon. With their participation in various and diverse decisions involving their work, we have an important advance from the authoritarian model. This advance points in the direction of the creative moral ideal, where in actuality some essential aspects of the democratic are retained.

The creative moral ideal honors skill and excellence, for it recognizes that mastery of an activity provides one of the strongest basis for freedom and autonomy. Mastery, in no matter in what area, requires a firm willingness to learn, which in turn means disciplining one's immediate inclinations and desire for individual self-expression and subordinating oneself to the demands of the task and of the teacher. In the master/apprentice relationship, which is freely constituted, the apprentice does what he is told to do, not because of a hierarchical, wage-structured authority, as if the master were a "boss", but because the apprentice recognizes the master's superior competency, from which he hopes to learn and eventually to emulate. The whole purpose of being an apprentice is to become a master.

The creative moral ideal, then, is one which seeks to harmonize various competencies--in a spirit in which what appears to be necessary is seen as an opportunity for genuine play. Work becomes a devout service, an offering of one's skill as a kind of ritual participation or contribution. Creative workers are able to serve one another without becoming servile. They organize a task to be carried out in ways wherein each person recognizes for him/her self--and is so recognized by the others--how best to contribute the appropriate skill. The "leaders" are granted the obligation to lead, to orchestrate the action, through the recognition of their superior ability to do so. "Power" is thus turned to imaginative ways of sharing responsibility and to mutual satisfaction in what is achieved.

Any discussion of the politics and morality of work relations must today address the question as to "whether, in an ideal society, certain roles should be assigned to females and others to males."⁽²¹⁵⁾ Now the question as framed assumes "roles" and their "assignment," nevertheless its intent is clear and the question needs to be addressed within the framework of a creative morality. How should sex/gender differences be taken into account in the politics of work relations? Do men and women have special, distinctive capacities for different kinds of skills or competencies?

In Joseph R. Lucas' essay "Because You Are a Woman," one reads:

There are no conclusive arguments about feminine abilities and attitudes. But the discoveries of the scientists, so far as they go, lend some support to traditional views. It could well be the case that intellectual and psychological characteristics are, like physical ones, influenced by genetic factors. If this is so, the way in which a particular pair of genes in an individual genotype will be manifested in the phenotype will depend on the other genes in the genotype, and may depend greatly on whether there are two X chromosomes or one X and one Y. It could be that the masculine mind is typically more vigorous and combative, and the feminine mind typically more intuitive and responsive, with correspondingly different ranges of interests and inclinations.⁽²¹⁶⁾

But is it not the case that we take the customary to be what is typical and then go on to assume, as Mill showed, that it is what is most natural? "So true is it," Mill writes, "that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural."⁽²¹⁷⁾

In the last analysis it may simply be impossible to disentangle the genetic from the social in accounting for whatever differences (other than the obvious biological ones) might obtain between men and women. In any case, the central question has to do with what importance is to be ascribed to whatever those differences might be. Obviously some differences between human beings (male or female) might be relevant in some work contexts (physical strength in some forms of construction labor) but not in others (say in computer programming); some differences (e.g., one's eye color) might hardly ever be relevant; some might always or nearly always be relevant (with our present technology we wouldn't have blind persons as airplane pilots). The significance of differences in human beings in work relations is always contextual--and subject to change.

If a person's own identity has some bearing on the work roles that are most appropriate to the person, as indeed it would seem to have, then sex-differences have to make some kind of difference in work-roles: but precisely what kind of difference still remains as the question.

Quite clearly much of what traditionally has passed for what is appropriate in sex-roles is more a matter of socialization and history than of personal identity based on somatic considerations. There doesn't seem to be anything in psychosomatic personal identity, for instance, that would require that women do the cooking.

Assuming that it is possible to know what is "typical" in sex differentiation with any degree of precision (which is, of course, doubtful) we still have the problem about how the "exceptional" are to be treated. The answer seems obvious: every person should have the opportunity (the liberty) to act freely, to have an artful destiny within the conditions of his/her being. This means that there ought not to be any compulsory sex-role differentiation (the determination of "occupation" by sex) either by legal or social pressure coercion. Although it may in fact turn out that, for whatever psychological, genetic, or social-historical reasons or causes, in various contexts most men or most women might choose one or another kind of role (as being most in accord with what they understand their own nature to be).

In sum: I have tried to sketch, in broad terms, some select principles of what I call a "creative morality"--a morality for persons, which defines a person as a developed, integrated, social human being who has, from the realization of a spiritual ground of being, successfully articulated the given conditions of his or her individuality to create a non-ego-centered, loving being. A person is thus an achievement, not a given. Part and parcel of this achievement is the recognition of one's own worth as a person and the extension, in a wholly natural way, of that recognition to others. A person affirms human dignity and strives to enhance it in self and others.

Evil, which is the most fundamental antithesis to the realization of dignity, must be recognized for what it is, but never given a positive value. No instrumental value ascribed to evil can overcome its inherent tendency to deny the very basis for, and the achievement of, personhood. It must simply, as far as possible, be overcome.

Two kinds of power need to be recognized in social/moral/political relations. These are coercive power and creative power. Coercive power is ego centered and demands obedience to one's will. Creative power is non-ego-centered and strives to bring forth new meaning and value in all situations. Creative power is the free expression of realized persons and is exhibited throughout the range of a person's activities and relations with others,

The area where power gets displayed most readily in human experience seems to be in work relations, an area often neglected in ethical and political theory. We distinguish two very different styles of working, which we call working-at and working-to. Working-at is carried out strictly for the realization of ends extrinsic to the work itself and is associated most clearly in authoritarian structures of political work relations, but also, in modified and softened ways, in so-called democratic models as well. Working-to, on the other hand, calls for a free association in work relations, laying stress on the attainment of excellence through the ordering of achieved competencies. Working-to is thus joyous work and becomes the ideal for all work relations.

A special problem arises today with the concerns voiced by feminist thinkers who reject differentiation of roles by sex or gender. We conclude that differences between persons by way of sex and gender are significant only in certain contexts, but are never of the sort which would rule out any person's having the opportunity to act freely, to attain a rich autonomy within the conditions of their individual being.

University of Hawaii

Honolulu, Hawaii