Abstract
The concept of human dignity plays an important role in the public discussion about ethical questions concerning modern medicine and biology. At the same time, there is a widespread skepticism about the possibility to determine the content and the claims of human dignity. The article goes back to Kantian Moral Philosophy, in order to show that human dignity has in fact a determinable content not as a norm in itself, but as the principle and ground of human rights and any deontological norms in biomedical ethics. When it comes to defining the scope of human dignity, i.e., the question which entities are protected by human dignity, Kant clearly can be found on the “pro life”-side of the controversy. This, however, is the result of some specific implications of Kant’s transcendental approach that may be put into question.
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Notes
Pagination indicates first the page of the Cambridge University Press edition, then the page from the Akademie Ausgabe of Kant’s works.
A good survey of the discussion can be found in Jaber 2003. The German Bundestag’s Study Commission “Law and Ethics in Modern Medicine” also understands “Human dignity” essentially as a “right to non-instrumentalization” (cf. in particular: Study Commission “Law and Ethics in Modern Medicine” 2002, p. 18).
The only prominent legal work to appear in the German language recently that has argued along these lines is Enders 1997.
For the sake of completeness we cite it here: “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (Kant 1996a, p. 73/AA 4: 421).
Volker Gerhardt argues against this by interpreting the passage as stating that the embryo is a person before birth only if the parents would acknowledge him as a person in an act of freedom that corresponds to the act of love that lead to conception. Admittedly, this interpretation suffers from the disadvantage that it projects into the text precisely the opposite of what is clearly stated there. Moreover, it attributes to Kant a very un-Kantian, very romantic concept of freedom. The result is more an act of hermeneutical violence than a hermeneutical act of love enacted in freedom (cf. Gerhardt 2004, pp. 122–127).
Cf. Kant’s explanation in the footnote to the above quoted § 28 of the Doctrine of Right, in which he goes so far as to say that since the noumenal side of human beings cannot be subjected to the form of intuition of time, it is not even possible to think of the homo noumenon as created by God!.
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Rothhaar, M. Human dignity and human rights in bioethics: the Kantian approach. Med Health Care and Philos 13, 251–257 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-010-9249-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-010-9249-0