Читать книгу The Handbook of Communication Rights, Law, and Ethics - Группа авторов - Страница 26

The historical itinerary we have just examined invites us to draw some provisional conclusions about the essence of dignity.

Only the human being fully and unconditionally possesses the quality of being irreplaceable, unexchangeable, an end in itself, and never a means. The following example is a rough illustration of the fundamental idea. Let us imagine a public highway that is under construction and has to pass through some private property: the state is empowered to expropriate the land by paying a fair market price, since a private interest should yield to the higher public interest. The land can be expropriated, but naturally the owner can never be, not even in the name of the common good or collective progress. From this, we can deduce a rule: private interest yields to a general interest but, in turn, general interest yields to private dignity, for which there is no possible fair market price.

So, dignity could be defined precisely as that which cannot be expropriated and makes the individual resistant to everything, general interest or common good included. Ever since Aristotle claimed in Politics that “the city-state is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually” (1253a), civic virtue has required the citizen to give way to the priority of the common good. But even virtue understood in these terms has its limits, the principal of which is dignity, that intimate quality of the individual, resembling a diamond in its beauty, brilliance, and strength, which resists any good cause that involves the collectivization of the individual.

In the name of dignity, the citizen opposes the Machiavellianism of reasons of state, both old and new, and when it demands his collaboration saying that many others already collaborate, his reply will be what could be the motto of dignity; “Although others do, I won’t.”

In the name of dignity, the citizen opposes the possible tyrannies of majorities, which are not all-powerful – not even if they are democratic – and he rejects the utilitarian law of the happiness of the greatest number.

We should not expect the concept to provide a definitive solution, like the answer in a crossword, to the myriad of situations that raise so many subtle questions on applied ethics (bioethics, technology, business). Those who criticize the emptiness of the concept probably suffer from excessive expectations and feel disappointed because they find that there isn’t a recipe book to resolve dilemmas that are best resolved by applying prudence in each particular case. There is always a hiatus between the theory of the concept and the reality of experience, which nobody can expect to bridge once and for all with norms that are so universal that we will be relieved in the future, as if we were robots, of the bother of thinking and deciding. Dignity presents itself only as a humanist principle of antiutilitarian orientation, which frequently falls foul of the desire to legitimize moral actions by their advantageous consequences for many or for the majority (consequentialist ethics).

So dignity might also be described as something that is a hindrance. It makes committing iniquities more difficult, of course; but, more interestingly, it also sometimes hinders just causes, such as material and technical progress, economic and social efficiency, or public utility. And this hindering, obstructive, and paralyzing effect, which often accompanies dignity and which makes us stop and consider, opens our eyes to the dignitas of precisely those who are a hindrance, because they are no longer useful, they are left over, always threatened by a history that would advance more quickly without them. So, if to begin with, dignity resembled a luminous aura surrounding only perfection, its meaning is now widened to include the dignity of imperfection in all its forms, which are often even more powerfully and visually noticeable.

The transition from a state of nature to one of civilization is manifest in a social organization that gives preference to the residual, the surplus, dignity’s favorites; that preference might be exemplified, in our daily urban experience, by an expensive car that has been driving at speed but has to pull up and stop because of a distracted child or an awkward old person slowly walking over a crosswalk. In the world of nature, the struggle to survive is won by the strongest or the best adapted. Humankind enters that combat in better conditions because it has substituted ferocious teeth and sharpened claws for symbolic language and technology, which have worked the miracle of adapting nature to its needs and of dominating the other species. Having reached a certain level of social evolution, without any apparent evolutionary advantage, the human species, allowing themselves a luxury, which apparently only they can enjoy, raises up a humanitarian ideal that overturns the law of the survival of the fittest prevailing in the natural world and puts in its place a new and revolutionary law of the survival of the weakest.

Perhaps the first vestige in history of recognizably human behavior was found only a couple of decades ago in the excavations at Dmanisi (Georgia): the fossilized remains of hominids who lived in the area 1.8 million years ago. Among them was a jawbone, which exhibited the peculiarity of not having any teeth. It must have belonged to an old person who was unable to feed themself and needed the cooperation of the group to ingest a mash of prechewed meat. There is no other record of a prior fossilized hominid with such a great loss of teeth and remodeling of the jaw. There is no information either regarding primates with a similar degree of tooth loss. Before the Dmanisi discovery, there were no known cases of longevity either in hominids or chimpanzees, which in any event never outlived the postreproductive period. Once the basic biological function to ensure the perpetuation of the species had been accomplished – reproduction with transmission of the genetic heritage – the individual was headed towards a quick death. Why prolong life? Evolution is blind in respect of old age, a sheer biological absurdity.

Dmanisi certifies the birth of group cooperation, which was antievolutionary, antinatural, and antiutilitarian – in other words, genuinely human. The old fellow served no useful purpose, and in spite of that, the group considered him worthy of care and protection. The first flashing glory of dignity occurred at Dmanisi.