Human dignity: indisputable or dangerous?
Homo sapiens is a remarkable species and knows it. The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which is the basis for human rights law across the world, claims that, “basic rights and fundamental freedoms are inherent to all human beings, inalienable and equally applicable to everyone”. [1] No other species on earth does, or could, make such claims about itself, and our species has not made such claims about any other species. It is no coincidence that the UDHR was produced in 1948. It was an attempt to prevent a reoccurrence of the horrific abuses of the Nazis in preceding years.
That humans have had a unique impact on planet Earth is beyond dispute. Networks of roads and patchworks of fields, manmade islands and lakes, megacities and opencast mines tell the story. Our planetary mastery is clear, but it is also costly. We have polluted the environment and driven other species to extinction. Concerned about this rapacious exploitation of nature, some thinkers blame it on our belief in human uniqueness. Philosopher Richard Ryder, for example, brands our claims to superiority over other species as ‘speciesism’. [2] Arguing from his belief that life on earth evolved without a guiding intelligence, he calls us to accept that we have no greater intrinsic value than other species so we can learn to live in harmony with nature.
How are we to decide between these options? Is belief in human dignity a vital principle to protect lives and promote equality, or is it a dangerous delusion that threatens all life on our planet? To answer that question, we must first consider the evidence for human uniqueness.
Crossing disciplines in search of human uniqueness
The physical sciences suggest that humans are nothing special. Chemically, human bodies comprise the same elements as every organic lifeform – lots of oxygen, carbon and hydrogen with smatterings of other elements – and our genes and proteins are not dissimilar from those of other species with physical similarities. Biologically, our bodies are unusually upright, with over-sized brains and odd hair distribution, but we can hardly claim to be a unique kind of thing. We are born, grow, eat, sleep, reproduce and die like all living things.
The social sciences, however, tell a different story. Human social behaviour is clearly exceptional when compared with other species. Researchers speak of distinct ‘cultures’ among subpopulations of great apes that have learned different solutions to challenges, [3] but human cultures are vastly more advanced, not only because of their distinctive artefacts, but also because of diverse underlying values and beliefs that give rise to those superficial elements. And nothing akin to human politics, economics or religion is observed in other intelligent species like dolphins, pigs, ravens and chimpanzees. Socially we are vastly more developed than any other species on earth.
Our social exceptionalism results from our remarkable minds, but is the human mind truly unique on this planet? Charles Darwin recognised the ‘immense’ superiority of the human mind, but insisted that the difference, ‘certainly is one of degree and not of kind’. [4] Modern researchers divide over whether Darwin got this right. Experiments to test the mental capacities of non-verbal species are notoriously difficult to design and conduct, and conclusions are highly dependent on interpretation. Some researchers claim that qualities once thought to be unique to humans, like basic moral instincts, can be seen in non-human species. [5] Others insist that human thinking is so different from that of animals, for example our basing of morality in socially agreed values and codes rather than basic instincts alone, that human minds must be of a different kind than non-human minds. [6]
One of the most interesting areas of research concerns ‘theory of mind’ (ToM), which is the ability to understand that the thoughts of another individual may be different from one’s own. Adult humans normally possess this ability in multiple orders. Not only can we understand that another person may hold a different perspective from us (first order ToM), but we also know the other person will be making a judgement about our perspective which could be right or wrong (second order ToM). We can take this to additional orders. The other person can realise that we might recognise that they are making a judgement about our perspective, and so on. Some experts claim that chimpanzees possess first order ToM, [7] while others insist they do not, [8] but it seems clear that only humans have higher orders. In this, it seems, human minds are truly unique and distinct from animal minds.
Astonishing contradictions in human nature
Homo sapiens has exceptional mental and social abilities, but it can use them for great good and great harm. ToM enables us to cooperate creatively in caring for others and destructively to deceive them. The same capacities of reason that crafted the UDHR developed Nazi ideology. Our technological abilities give us modern scientific healthcare and mass warfare. The same ingenuity allows us to destroy our environment and to find ways to prevent its destruction. We are, to use the words of seventeenth century pioneering mathematician and scientist, Blaise Pascal, a species of ‘astonishing contradictions’, characterised by both ‘greatness’ and ‘wretchedness’. [9]
Indeed, our ability to make moral judgements between wretchedness or evil and greatness or good is another distinctively human trait. Pascal argued that the ‘true religion’ must explain both of these traits and our ability to distinguish them. Questions about human nature inevitably lead us beyond the realm of experience and the tools we use to understand it – the physical and social sciences – to metaphysical questions that are the realm of philosophy and religion. In this too, humans are special. Across cultures and throughout history we have sought a remedy for our contradictions. We long for ultimate purpose and our lives are peppered with experiences of shame and guilt, awe and wonder, love and grief, that seem to point beyond ourselves to a transcendent reality. Most humans eventually discover that life in this world can never fully satisfy our deepest longings. We instinctively sense that, as atheist-turned-Christian C.S. Lewis said, we are “made for another world”. [10]
The roots of human dignity and depravity
Our lived experience leaves most humans stubbornly resistant to the claim that we are merely beasts. The ideas of equality and inalienable rights that underpin our political and legal systems and that surface daily in comments in the news and media appeal to our innate sense of justice and our longing for significance. But the principles of dignity, equality and inalienable rights codified in the UDHR have not typically been agreed by human societies throughout history. The Nazis were only the last in a long line of regimes that denied such ideas. To most human societies it has seemed appropriate to judge the value of human individuals on factors like social class, sex, abilities, ethnicity, potential or wealth. The widespread acceptance of slavery across cultures is just one indication of this reality.
Where, then, did the idea that every human life has special value come from? Historian Tom Holland [11] and sociologist Rodney Stark, [12] among others, have demonstrated that it came into Western thought from Christianity. Darwinian ethicist Peter Singer agrees, seeing it as a result of, “Judeo-Christian doctrines”. [13] Like Richard Ryder, Singer believes this Christian belief is to blame for our abuses of nature. He might be right if human dignity was all that Christianity taught. But Christianity also acknowledges human wretchedness or, we could say, depravity. The Christian faith teaches that we have dignity because we were uniquely created in the image of a wise and loving Creator and that we are depraved because we rejected of the Creator’s rule. Pascal believed that Christianity was, therefore, the only belief system that adequately explains both human wretchedness. All other philosophies and religions tend to present humans as less than we truly are – merely beasts – or as more than we are – godlike beings.
Believing in our dignity but denying our depravity is dangerous. It could well seem to justify the abuses of nature that concern Ryder and Singer. But it is equally, perhaps more, dangerous to deny our dignity as Ryder and Singer do. They may mean well, but the world they would lead us into is one in which the value of a life is judged by its abilities and potential. In such a world, what protection would there be for the disabled, the weak and the elderly? How would we keep ideologies like racism, sexism and ableism in check? History should be cause for caution. Christianity’s great gift of human dignity should not be lightly thrown away. Ryder and Singer may be right in recognising its dangers, but the correction we need is not to abandon it, but to reclaim the Christian understanding of human sinfulness and accountability to God which is its necessary counterpart.
Conclusion: special in dignity, depravity and dependency
Is there anything that makes humans special? We have a special dignity that shines in our remarkable mental and social abilities and in the creativity cooperation for good that flow from them. We have a special depravity that is demonstrated in the harm we cause to nature and to one another. A naturalistic philosophy that looks only to the physical sciences for answers cannot adequately explain this contradiction. Nor can a humanistic philosophy that looks additionally to the social sciences. Only Christianity adequately explains these twin aspects of human nature and it call us to acknowledge a third: our dependency on God. We Homo sapiens are a special species. We know it. But until we know our Creator we will not know what to do with it.
References
[1] ‘The Foundation of International Human Rights Law’, United Nations. Available: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/udhr/foundation-of-international-human-rights-law [accessed 18 October 2023]
[2] Ryder, Richard (2005) ‘All beings that feel pain deserve human rights’, The Guardian Available: https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/aug/06/animalwelfare [accessed 18 October 2023]
[3] Byrne, Richard W. (1996) ‘Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 362, pp.577–585
[4] Darwin, Charles (1871) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, London: John Murray, p.125-126.
[5] Frans de Waal quoted in Angier, Natalie (2001) ‘Confessions of a Lonely Atheist’, New York Times Magazine, 14th January.
[6] Guldberg, Helene (2011) ‘Only Humans Have Morality, Not Animals: Only humans make moral judgements and moral choices’, Psychology Today.
[7] Kano, Fumihiro et al. (2019) ‘ Great apes use self-experience to anticipate an agent’s action in a false-belief test’ proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(42): 20904-20909.
[8] Penn, Derek C., and Daniel J. Povinelli (2007) ‘On the lack of evidence that non-human animals possess anything remotely resembling a ‘theory of mind’’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 362: 731–744
[9] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 430.
[10] Lewis, C.S. (1955) Mere Christianity. London: Fontana Books. p.118.
[11] Holland, Tom (2019) Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. London: Little, Brown.
[12] Stark, Rodney (2015) How The West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity. Wilmington: ISI Books.
[13] Singer, Peter (1989) ‘All Animals are Equal’ in Regan, Tom, and Singer, Peter (eds) Animal Rights and Human Obligations. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. pp. 148-162.
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