What is Human Dignity? Kant Sheds Light

“We are not just material objects in a value-free universe. Kant makes the radical and highly innovative argument that autonomy of the individual is the enabling condition of moral philosophy.”

While there remains no consensus on what dignity means, by far, the most important and famous conception remains the classical liberal account of dignity developed by Immanuel Kant. This fame is well deserved, even if Kant’s articulation of his conception of dignity is occasionally quite confusing. In this article, I will briefly discuss Kant’s conception of human dignity.

Part of the difficulty in giving an account of Kant’s conception of dignity is the different formulations given. Moreover, it is not always clear what theoretical role dignity is intended to play in the Kantian system. At points, Kant seems to argue that dignity flows from, and is thus conceptually subordinate to, human autonomy, which is taken to be the central feature of human life which gives us moral value generally.

At other points, Kant gives dignity a more central place. Indeed, in some interpretations of his work, it would almost seem to warrant place of pride in the entire moral system. Unfortunately, there is no space to deal with all of these conceptual difficulties here, let alone to provide a rigorous articulation of all possible formulations of Kant’s conception of dignity. Instead, after briefly discussing some of these challenges, I will focus on reconstructing Kant’s conception in the strongest possible light.

Kant’s most famous formulation of dignity is that human dignity is a status which places the life of human beings above all. As a rhetorical statement, this is about as good as Kant gets, and it remains a deeply moving formulation of his conception. However, by itself, the formulation tells us little about Kant’s overall conception, aside from the worth he ascribes to human life. To better understand why he ascribes us this value, we need to dig deeper into the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals.