HUMILIATION, DEGRADATION, DEHUMANIZATION

LIBRARY OF ETHICS AND APPLIED PHILOSOPHY

VOLUME 24

Editor in Chief

Marcus Düwell, Utrecht University, Utrecht, NL

Editorial Board

Deryck Beyleveld, Durham University, Durham, U.K.

David Copp, University of Florida, USA
Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research, New York, USA
Martin van Hees, Groningen University, Netherlands
Thomas Hill, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
Samuel Kerstein, University of Maryland, College Park
Will Kymlicka, Queens University, Ontario, Canada
Philip van Parijs, Louvaine-la-Neuve (Belgium) en Harvard, USA
Qui Renzong
Peter Schaber, Ethikzentrum, University of Zürich, Switzerland
Thomas Schmidt, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

For futher volumes:

http://www.springer.com/series/6230
HUMILIATION,
DEGRADATION,
DEHUMANIZATION
Human Dignity Violated

Edited by

PAULUS KAUFMANN
University of Zurich, Switzerland

HANNES KUCH
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

CHRISTIAN NEUHÄUSER
Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

and
ELAINE WEBSTER
University of Strathclyde, UK

123
Editors
Paulus Kaufmann Hannes Kuch
Universität Zürich FU Berlin
Ethik-Zentrum SFB Kulturen des Performativen
Zollikerstr. 117 Grunewaldstr. 35
8008 Zürich 12165 Berlin
Switzerland Germany
[email protected] [email protected]

Christian Neuhäuser Elaine Webster

Ruhr-University Bochum University of Strathclyde
Department of Philosophy Law School
Universitätsstraße 150 St James’ Road
44780 Bochum G4 0LT Glasgow
Germany The Lord Hope Bldg.
[email protected] United Kingdom
[email protected]

ISSN 1387-6678
ISBN 978-90-481-9660-9 e-ISBN 978-90-481-9661-6
DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010936345

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written
permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose
of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

Printed on acid-free paper

Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Foreword

Human dignity is the main philosophical foundation of human rights, as expressed

in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and many other documents. The concept of human dignity is meant to distinguish
human beings from other creatures, notably animals. It underlines the uniqueness
of human beings among all creatures, above all their free will, individual auton-
omy and capability of independent decision-making based on reason and free moral
choice. But philosophers disagree on how to define human dignity and, as with
human rights, the concept is often regarded as a Western one not applicable to other
cultures. On the other hand, with the recognition of poverty and climate change as
major violations of human rights and faced with certain challenges to the uniqueness
of humanity caused by modern science and technology, notably biomedicine and
genetic engineering, the concept of human dignity features again more prominently
in the contemporary human rights discourse.
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the Swiss Foreign Minister presented an Agenda for Human Rights enti-
tled “Protecting Dignity” which had been drafted by a Panel of Eminent Persons
from all world regions.1 While reaffirming that “human dignity, which is inher-
ent in all human beings, is the moral and philosophical justification for equality
and other universal human rights”, the Agenda recognizes at the same time that
“only certain violations of human rights constitute an attack on human dignity”.
As a consequence, the Agenda “primarily aims at addressing human rights issues
directly linked to human dignity”, such as poverty and climate change, migra-
tion and urbanization, armed conflicts and weapons of mass destruction, racism,
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, terrorism
and counter-terrorism, organized crime and human trafficking, inhuman prison
conditions, arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearance.
By identifying these most serious human rights violations as attacks on human
dignity, the drafters of the Swiss Agenda for Human Rights follow a similarly neg-
ative approach as the authors of the present book. By focussing on violations of
human dignity, they address the question what it means for human beings all over

1 www.UDHR60.ch.

v
vi Foreword

the world to be degraded, humiliated and dehumanized. What do victims of slavery

and torture, poverty and starvation, armed conflict and domestic violence, corporal
and capital punishment, racism and genocide, arbitrary detention and enforced dis-
appearance, rape and human trafficking have in common? In my opinion, it is the
experience of absolute powerlessness which creates the feeling among the victims
of certain gross human rights violations to have lost their dignity and humanity.
As the slave holder exercises absolute power over slaves, the torturer, the rapist,
the genocidaire, the trafficker exercises absolute power over their respective vic-
tims. Many victims of torture, rape, trafficking, female genital mutilation, corporal
punishment and inhuman prison conditions whom I interviewed in my function as
Special Rapporteur on Torture in all world regions had reached a stage in which they
regarded death as a relief compared to the suffering of being further dehumanized.
That is why the right to human dignity seems to be even more important than the
right to life and why “ticking bombs” and similar scenarios can never be used to
balance security and saving lives of individuals against human dignity.
By addressing various aspects of human dignity and ways how human beings
continue to be deprived by other human beings of this essential aspect of being
human, the present volume constitutes an important contribution to the contem-
porary inter-disciplinary discourse on the relationship between human rights and
human dignity.

Vienna, January 2010 Manfred Nowak (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute

of Human Rights, University of Vienna;
U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment)
Contents

1 Human Dignity Violated: A Negative Approach – Introduction . . 1

Paulus Kaufmann, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhäuser,
and Elaine Webster
2 Three Crucial Turns on the Road to an Adequate
Understanding of Human Dignity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Ralf Stoecker

Part I Conceptions and Theories

3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Christian Neuhäuser
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability . . 37
Hannes Kuch
5 Instrumentalization: What Does It Mean to Use a Person? . . . . . 57
Paulus Kaufmann
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Elaine Webster
7 Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human . . . . . . . . 85
Sophie Oliver

Part II Practices of Violating Human Dignity

8 Torture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Andreas Maier
9 Rape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Ivana Radačić
10 Social Exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Steffen K. Herrmann
11 Absolute Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Peter Schaber

vii
viii Contents

12 Relative Poverty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Julia Müller and Christian Neuhäuser
13 Labor Exploitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Kirsteen Shields
14 Bonded Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Tamara Enhuber

Part III Conclusions for a Positive Account of Human Dignity

15 Human Dignity and Human Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Marcus Düwell
16 Dignity and Preservation of Personhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Samuel J. Kerstein
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity:
A Human Rights Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Arnd Pollmann
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Contributors

Marcus Düwell Department of Philosophy, University of Utrecht, Netherlands,

[email protected]
Tamara Enhuber Department of Anthropology, University of Trier, Germany,
[email protected]
Steffen K. Herrmann Department of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin,
Germany, [email protected]
Paulus Kaufmann Centre for Ethics, University of Zurich, Switzerland,
[email protected]
Samuel J. Kerstein Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, USA,
[email protected]
Hannes Kuch Department of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany,
[email protected]
Andreas Maier Centre for Ethics, University of Zurich, Switzerland,
[email protected]
Julia Müller Department of Philosophy, University of Potsdam, Potsdam,
Germany
Christian Neuhäuser Department of Philosophy, Ruhr-University Bochum,
Germany, [email protected]
Sophie Oliver University of Konstanz, Germany,
[email protected]
Arnd Pollmann Institute of Philosophy, Otto-Von-Guericke-University
Magdeburg, Germany, [email protected]
Ivana Radačić Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences, Centre for Croatian Studies,
University of Zagreb, Croatia, [email protected]

ix
x Contributors

Peter Schaber Centre for Ethics, University of Zürich, Switzerland,

[email protected]
Kirsteen Shields London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for
the Study of Human Rights, UK, [email protected]
Ralf Stoecker Department of Philosophy, University of Potsdam, Germany,
[email protected]
Elaine Webster Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law, University of
Strathclyde, UK, [email protected]
About the Authors

Marcus Düwell studied Philosophy, German literature and theology in Tübingen

and Munich. He received his PhD in philosophy for a thesis about the relation
between ethics and aesthetics. From 1993 to 2001 he was Academic Coordinator
of the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities at Tübingen
University. Since 2002 he has held a chair in Philosophical Ethics at the
Department of Philosophy at Utrecht University and is research director of the
Ethiek Instituut at Utrecht University and director of the Netherlands Research
School for Practical Philosophy. Some Publications: Ästhetische Erfahrung und
Moral (Aesthetical Experience and Morality) (Alber 1999); Bioethik – Methoden,
Theorien, Bereiche (Bioethics-Methods Theory, Dimensions) (Metzler 2008).
Handbuch Ethik (Metzler, 2002, 2. Aufl. 2006); Bioethik – Eine Einführung
(Suhrkamp 2003); Bioethics in Cultural Contexts (Springer 2006); The Contingent
Nature of Life (Springer 2008), in preparation: Cambridge Handbook on Human
Dignity (Cambridge University Press 2011).
Tamara Enhuber, M.A. Sociology. Studied at Hamburg School of Economics and
Politics and at the Graduate Faculty, New School, New York. Has worked as a
consultant for UN agencies, international human rights organizations, development
agencies and trade unions. Currently doctoral candidate at the University of Trier.
Research interests are contentious politics, subaltern studies, collective identities,
and bonded labour in south Asia, drawing from the fields of political, historical
and industrial sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and south Asian studies.
Award of various fellowships in Germany and the U.S.
Steffen K. Herrmann, M.A. Philosophy. Is research assistant at the Department
of Philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin and member of the interdisciplinary
research project “Performing Culture”. Within this context he works in the research
project “The Performance of Linguistic Violence”. He studied philosophy, soci-
ology and literature in Frankfurt/Main and Berlin. His main research interests
lie in the field of social philosophy, namely theories of recognition and other-
ness; philosophies of language and performativity; studies on power and violence.
Currently he is working on his dissertation “Symbolic Vulnerability. Recognition
and Misrecognition in Hegel and Levinas”. He is co-editor of two antholo-
gies on language and violence: Verletzende Worte. Die Grammatik sprachlicher

xi
xii About the Authors

Missachtung (Words that Wound. The Grammar of Linguistic Misrecognition)

(Transcript 2007); Philosophien sprachlicher Gewalt. 21 Grundpositionen von
Platon bis Butler (Philosophy of Linguistic Violence. 21 Key Concepts from Platon
to Butler) (Velbrück 2010).

Paulus Kaufmann studied philosophy and Japanese studies at the universities of

Hamburg, Zurich and Fukui. He is now research assistant at the Center for Ethics
and at the Institute for East-Asian-Studies, both at the University of Zurich, and
wrote his PhD-thesis on using people merely as means. His research focuses on
normative ethics and premodern Japanese thought, especially on Kukai.

Samuel J. Kerstein is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of

Maryland, College Park. His main interests lie in ethical theory, bioethics, and the
history of philosophy, especially Kant. In several articles and a book, Kant’s Search
for the Supreme Principle of Morality, he has examined the foundations of Kantian
ethics. He is now elaborating and defending moral principles inspired by Kant’s
Formula of Humanity. With the help of these principles, he is engaging with issues
in bioethics, such as how we ought to distribute scarce, life-saving resources and the
moral permissibility of offers to purchase organs for transplanation.

Hannes Kuch is research assistant at the Department of Philosophy, Freie

Universität Berlin, and member of the Research Centre “Performing Culture”.
Within this context he works in the research project “The Performance of
Linguistic Violence”. His main interests lie in the social philosophy of recog-
nition, power and performativity. He is currently working on his PhD-thesis on
Hegel’s figure of “Master and Slave” as a theory of symbolic power. He has co-
edited two volumes on the relation of violence and language: Verletzende Worte.
Die Grammatik sprachlicher Missachtung (Words that Wound. The Grammar of
Linguistic Misrecognition) (Transcript 2007); Philosophien sprachlicher Gewalt.
21 Grundpositionen von Platon bis Butler (Philosophy of Linguistic Violence. 21
Key Concepts from Platon to Butler) (Velbrück 2010).

Andreas Maier is a graduate student at the University of Zurich and currently fin-
ishing a PhD-thesis on the concept of human dignity. Research interests include the
role of normative concepts in moral practice, the free will problem, and methods of
ethics.

Julia Müller is a PhD-student at the Department of Philosophy, University of

Potsdam, Germany. She is currently working on a thesis on the relationship between
human dignity and extreme poverty. Her research interests are applied ethics and
political philosophy.

Christian Neuhäuser is assistant professor at the Ruhr-University of Bochum. He

works and publishes in the field of practical philosophy, including on business ethics
and global justice, human rights and dignity, environmental ethics and democracy.
He also has a keen interest in action theory and questions of collective responsibility.
For more information you can visit his digital self on the university homepage.
About the Authors xiii

Sophie Oliver has recently completed an interdisciplinary PhD at the University of

London, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her doctoral
research examined the possibility of an ethics of secondary witnessing, in partic-
ular in relation to cultural memory and the experience of embodiment. Awarded a
Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, she is currently
working on a new project about the aesthetics of secondary witnessing in relation to
memorial culture in Berlin. She has published a number of articles in peer-reviewed
journals, and is a contributor to various edited books on a range of themes including
human rights, cultural theory and media representations of trauma.

Arnd Pollmann is Assistant Professor of Practical Philosophy at the Otto-

von-Guericke-University of Magdeburg, Germany. His main interests lie in eth-
ical theory, moral philosophy, political philosophy, human rights, human dig-
nity and bioethics. He is also co-founder of the interdisciplinary “Arbeitsstelle
Menschenrechte” (Working Group for Human Rights) at the University of
Magdeburg and co-editor of the “Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte” (Journal for
Human Rights). Publications include: Integrität. Aufnahme einer sozialphilosophis-
chen Personalie (Transcript 2005); (together with Christoph Menke) Philosophie
der Menschenrechte. Zur Einführung (Junius 2007); Unmoral. Ein philosophisches
Handbuch. Von Ausbeutung bis Zwang (C.H. Beck 2010).

Ivana Radačić holds a LLB from the University of Zagreb, MPhil in criminological
research from the University of Cambridge, LLM from the University of Michigan
and PhD in law from University College London. She is senior research assistant
at the Ivo Pilar Institute for Social Sciences in Zagreb and a lecturer at the Centre
for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb. She also teaches at the Centre for Peace
Studies and the Centre for Women’s Studies, and she was a visiting professor at UN
University for Peace and UCL. Ivana previously worked as a lawyer at the European
Court of Human Rights, and has held interships with Human Rights Watch, New
York, and Interights, London. She is a Council of Europe expert on human rights
and she cooperates with a number of NGOs in Croatia on strategic litigation and
human rights education. She has published a number of articles, contributed to two
books and edited a book on feminist legal theory. Her research interests are: human
rights, specifically women’s human rights and European human rights law, as well
as feminist legal theory.

Peter Schaber is Professor for Applied Ethics at the University of Zurich. He has
worked on different topics in normative ethics as well as in applied ethics. His publi-
cations deal with issues of global justice as well as with bioethical issues. Together
with a colleague he edited a volume on World Poverty and Ethics (2007) and is
planning to edit one on Migration and Ethics. He just has finished a manuscript on
“Instrumentalization and Human Dignity” and is currently working on a book on
“The Ethics of Physician-assisted Suicide”.

Kirsteen Shields is Fellow in Human Rights at the London School of Economics.

She writes on the relationship between trade and human rights and she teaches on
xiv About the Authors

the regulation of corporations in respect of human rights and the environment at the
School of Law within the University of London.
Ralf Stoecker is professor of philosophy at the University of Potsdam, Germany.
He has worked on various topics in philosophy ranging from metaphysics and ontol-
ogy to anthropology and applied ethics. His areas of research are philosophical
action theory, matters of life and death, and the role of human dignity in ethics.
His publications on the latter theme address applied topics such as: human dignity
in embryos, human dignity and capital punishment, human dignity and brain death,
honour killing; as well as more theoretical articles, e.g. about human dignity and
self-respect and human dignity and the paradox of humiliation. He is the editor
of Menschenwürde – Annäherung an einen Begriff (Wien 2003). Stoecker’s contri-
bution “Three Crucial Turns on the Road to an Adequate Understanding of Human
Dignity” was completed while he was a fellow of an interdisciplinary research group
on human dignity in modern medicine at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research,
Bielefeld.
Elaine Webster is Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law
and Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.
Her research focuses on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights
prohibiting torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particu-
lar, on interpretation of the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment in
which the concept of human dignity is understood to act as a guiding force in the
European Court of Human Rights’ teleological interpretation. Elaine studied Law
and French Language (L.L.B. Hons) at the University of Glasgow, International
Politics (M.A.) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, Human Rights and
Democratisation (M.A.) at the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights,
Venice, Italy/Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and a PhD at the University
of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Chapter 1
Human Dignity Violated:
A Negative Approach – Introduction

Paulus Kaufmann, Hannes Kuch, Christian Neuhäuser, and Elaine Webster

The concept of human dignity is one of the few philosophical notions that has gained
popular currency beyond specialist academic discourse. From the writings of Pico
della Mirandola, Immanuel Kant and other philosophers it has found its way into
our colloquial vocabulary. Appeals to human dignity are an important part of ethical,
legal and political discourse nowadays and appear frequently in national constitu-
tions and UN documents, in newspapers, NGO publications and in human rights
discourse. But what is it that motivates all this talk about human dignity?
A look at the philosophical literature from whence the concept has emerged often
yields contradictory and disappointing answers to this question. For example, we
find a debate between philosophers who claim that human dignity is a metaphysi-
cal property possessed by all human beings serving as the fundamental foundation
for the whole of morality (Kass 2002, President’s Council on Bioethics 2008) and
philosophers and scientists who dismiss talk about dignity as useless, stupid or even
dangerous (Macklin 2003, Pinker 2008). But debates such as this suffer from various
shortcomings. Firstly, in these debates the role of human dignity is often character-
ized as either the supreme foundation of morality or as nothing at all. Alternative
and more specific roles are ignored and the many dimensions of the concept thereby
drift out of sight. Secondly, the debate is often restricted to examples from the area
of bioethics and applied only to contested topics such as abortion, euthanasia and
genetic enhancement. Thirdly, the theoretical discussion about human dignity usu-
ally starts with abstract values such as the sanctity of life or with human capacities
such as autonomy, rationality or moral agency. While all of these debated topics
are certainly important, they somehow seem to miss our primary interest in human
dignity. UN documents, newspapers and NGO publications that address the ques-
tion of human dignity refer to humiliation and degrading treatment, torture and war,
poverty and slavery. The philosophical notion of human dignity has entered these
discourses because the concept seems particularly apt as part of a description of such
morally repugnant acts and practices that form a part of our modern experience of

P. Kaufmann (B)
Centre for Ethics, University of Zurich, Switzerland
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 1

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_1,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
2 P. Kaufmann et al.

the world. It is our conviction that any satisfactory conception of dignity should be
able to explain the reality of its violation and should not be detached from concrete
occurrences and interpretations in social life, since this is what motivates us to talk
about dignity in the first place.
In this book, therefore, we propose to look more closely at dignity violations and
adopt what we call a “negative approach to human dignity”. In his contribution to
this anthology Ralf Stoecker will provide one detailed view of what this approach
may amount to. At present, we will confine ourselves to a few remarks on the main
characteristics of this approach.
Instead of deducing moral principles from an abstract conception of human dig-
nity, all of our contributions start from some act or practice that often is or can be
characterized as a violation of human dignity. They take the contemporary discourse
on human dignity as a starting point and draw their material from legal sources, his-
torical documents, testimonies and many other kinds of literature that employ the
concept of human dignity. The contributions to this book can all be said to proceed
from philosopher Avishai Margalit’s insight that we learn most about human dig-
nity when we look at its violations and focus on what it means for people to be
degraded, humiliated and wronged in many other ways (Margalit 1996). The con-
tributions thereby stress the phenomena that make us care about dignity rather than
analyzing abstract values and capacities.
Of course, in order to develop a philosophical conception of human dignity
abstract values and human capacities have to be considered as well. Something has
to be said about the grounds for human dignity and about the structure of a moral
theory that rests on such a conception. We do not want to deny the importance of
these matters and are well aware of the shortcomings of philosophical approaches
that confine themselves to analyzing concrete cases. But at the same time, we want
to emphasize that the phenomena should not be lost from sight. The contributions
in this volume demonstrate the complexity of the phenomena that may be labelled
“violations of human dignity”. But they also show how conceptions of dignity can
bring order to this complexity.
To be sure, the studies in this book do not pretend to show the only way in which
certain violations of human dignity can be approached and understood. Furthermore,
the different studies are underpinned by different conceptions of human dignity and,
as such, cannot and do not purport to provide a unified picture of human dignity and
its violations. But by concentrating on concrete phenomena these studies help us
to better understand what must be explained by any ambitious account of human
dignity. What an existing theory of human dignity can glean from our book is not a
rival theory; rather, this book is a collection of reflections on various forms, dimen-
sions and practices of dignity violations, and thus it provides some raw material
that comprehensive theories should deal with, either by integrating it or by arguing
against its relevance for a comprehensive account. We do not believe, therefore, that
a unitary theory can be derived from our studies on dignity violations, but that it
can be enriched by it. We believe that any such theory will be enhanced insofar as
it takes account of at least some of the phenomena that make us think about human
dignity in the first place.
1 Human Dignity Violated: A Negative Approach 3

This book consists of three parts. In the first part we proceed from what we
understand to be some general forms of dignity violations such as humiliation,
degradation or dehumanization. These concepts are often used to characterize dig-
nity violations in general or to point to the feature that makes dignity violations
wrong. By studying these general forms more carefully the contributions of this
part aim to overcome the first shortcoming of the contemporary debate on human
dignity: They aim to gain insights into the varied roles and dimensions that dig-
nity displays. Kaufmann and Webster, for example, analyze instrumentalization
and degrading treatment respectively. From very different starting points both draw
attention to the role that the concept of dignity might play in describing the wrong
that is captured in these general expressions of dignity violations. For example,
they point to the close interrelation between dignity and autonomy and suggest that
we need both concepts to explain instrumentalization and degradation. Neuhäuser
shows in his contribution that certain forms of humiliation cannot be adequately
understood without accepting the idea that the dignity of a collective can be vio-
lated as well as the dignity of an individual. He argues that this collective dimension
of human dignity is obscured by a one-sided diet of examples and a confusion
of methodological and ethical individualism. Kuch and Oliver analyze two para-
doxes that seem to arise from the concept of dignity. Kuch asks how we can make
sense of the observation that in some atrocious circumstances people are afforded
so little recognition that they accept insult rather than endure the complete absence
of recognition. He argues that a conception of dignity based on autonomy can-
not explain this voluntary violation of one’s own dignity and that dignity should
instead be understood as a special form of vulnerability due to the human desire for
recognition. Thus, Kuch highlights the symbolic dimension of dignity violations,
since recognition is essentially related to symbolic acts of addressing one another.
Oliver focuses on the fact, documented by many testimonial accounts, that victims
of dignity violations are often described – by themselves, by perpetrators, or by by-
standers – as having lost their humanity. This description seems to be at odds with
the idea of human dignity (perceived as the key attribute of the human) as inalien-
able. Oliver argues that this logic of dehumanization should be resisted by engaging
with alternative understandings of human dignity as embodied rather than merely
transcendent. The contributions to this section, focusing on varied examples from
different fields of scholarship, aim to unearth certain features of, functions exercised
by, and conceptual relationships associated with the notion of human dignity.
The contributions of the second part deal with practices that can be seen to vio-
late human dignity. The chapters differ widely in method and context, but what
these chapters share is a starting point and a common objective: they begin from
concrete examples of what are, or might be considered to entail, dignity viola-
tions in social life. They analyze these phenomena carefully and demonstrate the
sense in which they should be perceived as dignity violations. By dealing with var-
ious forms of dignity violations this second part of the book aims to overcome the
current debate’s emphasis on a select few examples, especially from the field of
bioethics. On one hand, the chapters will examine practices that are cited regu-
larly as violations of human dignity. Maier discusses the uncontroversial example
4 P. Kaufmann et al.

of torture as a violation of human dignity, and incorporates media references and

international law approaches into a discussion that highlights that an explanation of
the wrongness of torture must address the question of moral recognition. Radačić
deals with another prime example of human dignity violation: rape. She analyses
human rights jurisprudence on rape and lays open various failures of the main-
stream human right bodies. On the other hand, some of the chapters look at practices
and conditions which cannot so easily be understood as violations of human dig-
nity. Shields delves into international labor standards to highlight the perception of
labor exploitation as a dignity violation on the basis of a lack of consent. Enhuber
focuses on cases of bonded labor in India and finds that domination is the prevail-
ing feature of such working relationships. Highlighting the dimensions of agency
and identity, she further considers the ways in which cumulative relations of sub-
jugation appear to be entrenched – but also resisted. The contributions of Schaber
and Müller and Neuhäuser deal with poverty, which is less often conceptualized as
involving violations of human dignity. These authors argue that we need the concept
of human dignity to fully explain the moral dimensions of absolute poverty and rela-
tive poverty respectively. Herrmann situates a particular form of social exclusion as
a dignity violation through a discussion of National Socialist politics of the personal
name. These reflections on some examples that can be considered as violations of
human dignity highlight particular features of these practices that give rise to human
dignity connotations, and at the same time illustrate the value of reflecting on the
substance of the phenomena themselves.
The last part of the book takes a fresh starting-point. In the chapter by Düwell
entitled “Human Dignity and Human Rights”, we have included a text that is very
critical of our approach (especially the approach as outlined by Stoecker), but which
is deemed to add a valuable, critical voice to the dynamic topic to which the book
aims to contribute. Whilst it is believed that the negative approach adopted in the
book offers a fruitful asset to any concept of human dignity, it is of course clear that
this position will not be universally shared. The book will not engage in this meta-
theoretical debate beyond the inclusion of this chapter. Instead this volume provides
space in which a negative approach can take shape, and in doing so, we hope that
it becomes clear why and how we think the negative approach can be useful and
indeed quite essential to a concept of human dignity. Moreover, in the final sec-
tion we include two other texts that also try to establish a positive account, but that
are more sympathetic towards the negative approach and see it as a valuable asset in
their undertaking. These two contributions start from insights into concrete practices
and examples, thereby showing the importance of careful observation of the phe-
nomena. They aim to build comprehensive accounts of human dignity that address
the complexity that these phenomena exhibit. The value of personhood is the focus
of Kerstein’s contribution. By discussing the examples of heroic self-sacrifice and
actions of privileging the young over the old in the distribution of scarce, life-saving
resources he aims to overcome some of the difficulties of the traditional Kantian
conception of human dignity. Pollmann starts from the twentieth century experi-
ence of totalitarian mass destruction and moves towards an innovative account of
1 Human Dignity Violated: A Negative Approach 5

human dignity that questions the traditional picture of dignity as inalienable and
equally distributed amongst all human beings.
Though varying greatly in their method, focus and conclusions, the contributions
to this anthology are united in their shared conviction that the widening of interest
in dignity beyond the gaze of specialist academic philosophy is to be welcomed.
The concept now figures prominently in political debates on many social and moral
problems of global concern. All of these debates have certainly profited from the
work of philosophers and their efforts to form a feasible conception of human dig-
nity. But we have now reached a point where philosophy can no longer ignore the
life of the notion beyond the academy; rather, academic philosophy can in turn profit
from a consideration of those phenomena, and expressions of their wrongness, that
are regarded as representing violations of human dignity.

References
Kass, Leon. 2002. Life, liberty and the defense of dignity. San Franciso, CA: Encounter Books.
Macklin, Ruth. 2003. Dignity is a useless concept. BMJ 327: 1419–1420.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pinker, Steven. 2008. The stupidity of dignity – Conservative bioethics’ latest, most dangerous
ploy. The New Republic 238: 28–31.
President’s Council on Bioethics. 2008. Human dignity and bioethics. Washington, DC: President’s
Council on Bioethics.
Chapter 2
Three Crucial Turns on the Road
to an Adequate Understanding
of Human Dignity

Ralf Stoecker

Abstract Human dignity is one of the key concepts of our ethical evaluations, in
politics, in biomedicine, as well as in everyday life. In moral philosophy, however,
human dignity is a source of intractable trouble. It has a number of characteris-
tic features which apparently do not fit into one coherent ethical concept. Hence,
philosophers tend to ignore or circumvent the concept. There is hope for a philo-
sophically attractive conception of human dignity, however, given that one takes
three crucial turns. The negative turn: to start the inquiry with violations of human
dignity. The inductive turn: to consider the whole range of applications of the con-
cept of human dignity in different areas of ethics. And finally, the historical turn: to
take into account the historical bonds between human dignity and traditional con-
ceptions of dignity. Taken together they point in the direction of an understanding
of human dignity as universal nobility.

2.1 Introduction
I could strangle him with my bare hands! Yet, I decide for a
more subtle revenge. Normally we use two washcloths: a
bright one for the face and upper part of the body and a dark
one for the legs and genitals. He, however, gets the dark
washcloth for his bum as well as for his face.
(Temsch 1994, my translation)

In the following article I shall pass in review the history of the concept of human
dignity and its philosophical shortcomings, before I argue that there is still hope for
an attractive conception of human dignity, if one is careful to take three crucial turns
that lead to it.

R. Stoecker (B)
Department of Philosophy, University of Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 7

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_2,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
8 R. Stoecker

2.2 The Roots of Human Dignity – A Standard Account

Historical accounts of human dignity typically distinguish four different sources: the
Greek and Roman heritage culminating in Cicero’s notion of “dignitas”: the biblical
conception of man and woman as being created in the image of God; Kant’s Würde
as opposed to price; and, finally, the concept of dignity that turned up after 1945
in numerous declarations and constitutional laws (for a good recent example, see
Schulman 2008). Although not unrelated, at first sight these traditions point in quite
different directions.
“Dignitas” in ancient Rome was a social concept, describing the particular social
role of a person. The bearers of the role and the people around them had to pay
duty to this social role in their behavior (Pöschl 1989). Cicero’s famous letter to his
son Tullius, “De Officiis”, was one big guide to the numerous considerations and
duties that belonged to the dignified life of a Roman aristocrat. What made Cicero’s
letter the founding document of human dignity, though, is his claim, adopted from
the Greek Stoics, that part of our obligations towards ourselves and to others is due
merely to our being human, which meant for him in the first place: being rational.
Human dignity in the biblical tradition shared two features of the Roman under-
standing: first, dignity was regarded as something of high value which, secondly,
made strong demands on the bearer of dignity herself. In contrast to the Roman
conception, however, human dignity was not merely a basic, residual dignity at the
bottom of all shades of social nobility. Quite to the contrary, the assumption that
every human being was created by God as well as in the image of God was meant
to trump and annihilate all social ranks instead. This view rarely had any political
implications, though. Human dignity for the best part of the history of Christianity
was merely regarded in terms of its bearing on the appropriate behavior of the dig-
nitary herself, and for a long time emphasis was put on the notorious failures of
meeting these demands due to human sinfulness, weakness and misery. With the
dawn of Humanism and Renaissance, however, this bleak conception of human-
ity was countered by writers (like Giovanni Pico della Mirandola) who praised the
particular ability for self-creation as the basis of human dignity – although it was
still a long way to go until these ideas had a political impact in the human rights
movements.1
The role that dignity plays in Kant’s philosophy is notoriously difficult to eluci-
date.2 In the “Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals,” he nowhere mentions the
expression “human dignity” (“Menschenwürde”); it is in this book, however, that he
develops his understanding of dignity. Following Seneca he distinguishes two kinds
of value: On the one hand, the price of something, which allows for its substitution
by something of similar price, and on the other hand, dignity, which forecloses such

1 Dignity also played an important (but presumably different) part in the Gospels, when
Jesus repeatedly exposed himself to situations that were considered as deeply undignified and
humiliating.
2 For a profound presentation, see Von der Pfordten (2006).
2 Three Crucial Turns on the Road to an Adequate Understanding of Human Dignity 9

an exchange. Almost everything of value merely has a price, according to Kant, yet
only persons – strictly, their humanity, their having reason – have dignity because the
categorical imperative puts us under the obligation never to treat someone’s human-
ity as a mere means (i.e. as in principle exchangeable). In his later “Metaphysics of
Morals,” Kant tried to draw conclusions concerning ethical applications from this
conception of human dignity; it is not clear, however, whether he really succeeded.
What is usually regarded as the fourth source of our moral conception of human
dignity is to be found in a number of legal documents published in the early years
after World War II. Almost without precedence in the history of jurisprudence, dig-
nity adopted a prominent role in the UN Charter, in the German Grundgesetz and
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to be followed by many other dec-
larations and constitutions. At least with respect to the recent German debate on
human dignity, it seems fair to say that this debate would not have taken place if
human dignity had not had such an outstanding position in the very first article
of the German Grundgesetz, which states that human dignity is inviolable. But in
spite of the prominence that these documents accord to human dignity, they remain
remarkably silent about its content.

2.3 Problems with the Concept of Human Dignity

Given that these four traditions are usually regarded as the sources of our modern
concept of human dignity, it is easy to understand why moral philosophers have
found it so difficult to incorporate this concept into a promising normative ethical
theory.
Evidently, normative ethics can hardly rely on a special relationship to God, or
on any other religious presumption. Moreover, the genuinely hierarchical Roman
understanding of dignity, treating universal dignity merely as a residual claim to
basic decency, seems to be in stark contradiction to the magnitude of the role we
would now accord to human dignity. In both respects, at any rate, referring to dignity
appears unhelpful.
Kant’s understanding suits the modern esteem for human dignity much better.
Yet at the same time his reliance on the faculty of reason seems to disclose many
people from the shelter of dignity, some of whom have been in particular need of
this shelter during history (e.g. severely mentally disabled people). In this sense,
Kant’s understanding of dignity is thus missing the universality we ascribe to human
dignity.
Human dignity, as it is employed in the legal documents, certainly has the
required universality; here the problem is that human dignity is merely stated with-
out any hint of how it should be construed or what particular role it is supposed to
play (i.e. whether it is meant to be a human right itself or even the very basis of all
human rights).
In recent years, there have been a number of philosophical attempts to circumvent
these difficulties and to develop a satisfying conception of human dignity. Religious
philosophers have tried to strengthen the idea of man and woman being created in
10 R. Stoecker

the image of God and have even argued that there could not be a non-religious justi-
fication of human dignity (or of morality at all) (Spaemann 1987 [1985], Gelernter
2008). Ronald Dworkin has advocated an understanding of human dignity associ-
ated with sanctity (Dworkin 1993: 238–240). Some philosophers have suggested
that we should construe human dignity as a demand to have one’s basic needs
fulfilled (Gewirth 1992, Nussbaum 2006). Others have opted for reductionism,
according to which human dignity is a label for our fundamental human rights
(Birnbacher 2004, Stepanians 2003). And finally, Kant’s association of human dig-
nity with reason has continued to attract many adherents who are confident that it
may last without the problematic parts (Habermas 2001).
But beneath these attempts there has always existed a temptation either to
steer a radical course and to dismiss the notion of human dignity altogether or
(much more frequently) to simply ignore it. Even a cursory glimpse into some of
today’s most prominent textbooks in applied ethics reveals that human dignity is
only rarely mentioned at all, and where it is, it is usually shrugged off as being
genuinely unclear, polemical and philosophically useless (examples are Frey and
Wellman 2003, LaFollette 2003, Rhodes et al., 2007, Beauchamp and Childress
2009). In particular in the United States, it seems, for a long time many philoso-
phers showed no motivation to engage with human dignity at all. But why should
they? Answering this question will help us to find a satisfactory account of human
dignity.

2.4 The Negative Turn

For Kant, his claim that we have a dignity that has to be respected by others was a
result of his metaphysical survey in the Groundwork. This is one possibility for
arriving at the necessity to care about human dignity: We find good theoretical
reasons to assume that we have it; i.e. our best moral theory entails that there is
something like human dignity to be respected. But, as indicated, from most theo-
retical perspectives in moral philosophy today there is no felt need to care about
human dignity.
Yet, there is another possibility of being led to human dignity in ethics. It is
exemplified by the quotation at the very beginning of this chapter. The passage is
taken from the report of a young man who worked in an outpatient nursing service
in lieu of military service. In this surprisingly frank document, he describes how he
took his revenge on a senile old man with whom he had been annoyed: He used the
washcloth first for the lower parts of the old man’s body and then the same cloth
also for his upper parts, particularly his face.
The author’s openness is so strange because, evidently, he has severely maltreated
his victim. That he nonetheless lacked any sense of guilt is certainly a reason of
societal concern. But the example also bears a philosophical challenge: the diffi-
culty of accounting for the obvious reprehensibility of the young man’s behavior.
Due to his dementia, the client presumably never realized what had been done to
2 Three Crucial Turns on the Road to an Adequate Understanding of Human Dignity 11

him. Moreover, there is no evidence in the report that the treatment harmed the
old man’s health. Hence, from a consequentialist perspective there is little reason
to complain. And although the client certainly would never have consented to hav-
ing been washed with just one washcloth, it sounds somewhat forced to maintain
that what is morally at stake in the example is merely a violation of autonomy. The
young man’s deed was so bad not just because he treated his client in a way that
he would not have agreed to but because the treatment was deeply humiliating; it
violated the old man’s dignity.
This is the point of the example: It is important for moral philosophy to find
a satisfactory account of human dignity because there are numerous instances of
vile and reprehensible behavior that could not be morally accounted for at all, or at
least not adequately, except as violations of dignity. Excremental assaults provide
typical examples, as well as some insults and sexual abuses (Des Pres 1976: passim,
Silver et al. 1986). Other examples are to be found in the public humiliation of
members of disdained minorities. When the Nazis forced Jewish citizens to scrub the
sidewalks, they certainly scared them and put them under duress, yet it is doubtful
that these aspects adequately explain why these treatments were so abominable.
What is missing, obviously, is the deeply humiliating character of being forced into
such a situation (Stoecker 2003).
The challenge of accounting for dignity in moral philosophy, if there are
instances of morally bad conduct that could not be dealt with adequately without
recourse to dignity, immediately leads to the first heuristic turn I want to suggest
for an adequate inquiry into human dignity: If we want to understand human dig-
nity, we should start with instances of its violation. Instead of attempting to derive a
conception of human dignity from our normative ethics (as Kant did) or anthropol-
ogy, we should choose a negative approach, i.e. start from situations which we are
inclined to describe as violations of human dignity and then ask what it is that makes
it so appealing to use this concept instead of referring to, for example, harming,
infringing autonomy or violating human rights.

2.5 The Inductive Turn

In Germany the debate on human dignity flared up some 10 years ago as part of
the bioethical discussion on the status of the human embryo, particularly in the
context of stem cell research and preimplantation diagnostics. It was not surprising,
therefore, that the debate was focused only on very few characteristics of human
dignity. For example, a comprehensive and widely esteemed anthology explicitly
started with the assumption that what is at stake in this discussion is merely human
dignity as the foundation of the prohibition of killing (Damschen and Schönecker
2003). Yet, although only few participants in the debate took notice of it, the notion
of human dignity had been present in very different areas of philosophy (as well as in
social sciences, politics and theology) during the previous decades. In the 1960s and
1970s, for example, nobody in Germany would have expected that a conversation
12 R. Stoecker

about human dignity concerned embryos. In those days people were worried about
violations of human dignity in Latin America, the USSR, or Vietnam, for example.
Or they used the notion to describe the situations of the inhabitants of psychiatric
clinics and jails. And 20 years before that, as I already noted, the notion of human
dignity had entered into numerous declarations and constitutions, because, to many
people, this notion of human dignity was necessary and appropriate to express the
horrendous nature of the deeds of the Nazis.
What this shows is that we have to beware of approaching human dignity in
a way that is too narrow-sighted, in particular in bioethics. Any philosophically
satisfying explanation of human dignity has to take into account how broad the
scope of its application is. Even a coarse survey shows many different areas in
which we are confronted with morally questionable actions that we are inclined
to describe as violations of human dignity: terror and torture, killing and rape,
slavery, racism, sexism, severe hunger and poverty, hard and monotonous work,
endemic unemployment, political and religious suppression, the refusal of citizen-
ship, being prohibited from maintaining personal relations, state control and the
restriction of liberty, flagrant injustice, disregard of privacy, instrumentalization,
isolation, insult, the transgression of the borders between humans and animals,
interference in our biological make-up, and so on. No doubt these cases differ con-
siderably in several respects, but they have in common that they are occasionally
regarded as threats to our human dignity, and, moreover, that there is no other
ethical principle or feature that could adequately account for their shared moral
impropriety.
At first sight, the apparently broad scope of the concept of human dignity shows
how difficult is the task of finding an adequate account that does justice to all of
these different applications. Yet, the broadness of the concept also provides us with
ample material for such an account. In order to understand what human dignity is,
we should therefore approach it from different angles, from the various areas where
we are apparently confronted with human dignity violations. In short, we should
supplement the negative approach with an inductive strategy that ideally will lead
from the scattered applications to a unified concept, in tune with our pretheoretical
intuitions.
However, the fact that we are inclined to fall back on human dignity in many
different areas of moral concern has not always provoked an interest in a profound
examination of the concept. Instead many authors took it as evidence that there is
not much more to human dignity than a moral verdict presented with special empha-
sis. According to them, the claim that a particular behavior violates someone’s
dignity is a sort of conversation stopper, saying something like: This behavior is
evil, period.
Hence, advertising the negative-inductive approach is not enough in order to
justify our confidence that one may find an ethically attractive concept of human
dignity. In the next two sections, I shall therefore try to say something more about
the content this concept might have. First, I will defend another heuristic move,
namely that we should observe something that has usually gone unnoticed in the
discussion: the intimate relationship between human dignity and dignity proper in
2 Three Crucial Turns on the Road to an Adequate Understanding of Human Dignity 13

the recent history of the concept. Secondly, I will give a sketch of where the route
to an adequate conception of human dignity might lead us, given that we obey the
three crucial turns.

2.6 The Historical Turn

There is something peculiar in the historical sketch I gave at the beginning of my
contribution. It leaves us wondering why the concept of human dignity gained its
unprecedented prominence after World War II at all. As a matter of fact, neither Kant
nor Cicero played an important part in the political debates that led, for example, to
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Grundgesetz. Christian convic-
tions certainly were influential, but there were also strong Anti-Christian currents
in these debates; hence, it could not have been merely the religious tradition that
accounts for the attractiveness of the concept of human dignity (Vögele 2000).
At least part of the answer, I believe, is to be found in another historical root
that has been oddly underestimated: the role that the notions of dignity and human
dignity played in social and political thinking during the last 200 years, and which,
no doubt, the authors of these documents vividly had in mind. In the context of this
contribution, I can only give a few hints of what I have in mind. As far as I know,
there has been no systematic survey in the histories of ideas on this topic yet.
In Germany, the first prominent occurrence of the expression “Menschenwürde”
is in Friedrich Schiller’s drama “Don Carlos.” One of the heroes of the play, the
Marquis of Posa, has rejected an offer of an influential and powerful position at the
court of the Spanish king, Philip II. Astounded by this unforeseen refusal, the king
cannot help but suspect a particularly clever kind of flattery. Thereupon Posa says:
I am well aware, Sire, of how low and mean you regard human dignity, seeing a free man’s
speech merely as the mean trick of a flatterer. And I presumably know why you are enti-
tled to think so. Men forced you into it; since they voluntarily gave up their nobility, they
voluntarily descended to this low rank (Schiller 2005: 122, my translation and emphasis).

For Schiller, “Menschenwürde” is obviously a special kind of dignity, or nobility

as he described it. And the same goes for many authors of the late eighteenth and
throughout the nineteenth century. To mention just one further example, in 1860
the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt wrote in his famous book “Die Kultur der
Renaissance in Italien”:
But by the side of all this there appeared in Italian poetry, towards the close of the fifteenth
century, signs of a more realistic treatment of rustic life. This was not possible out of Italy;
for here only did the peasant, whether laborer or proprietor, possess human dignity, personal
freedom, and the right of settlement, hard as his lot might sometimes be in other respects
(Burckhardt and Günther 1989: 348).3

3 The translation is taken from the Gutenberg Project: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/

corii10.txt (2.8.2009), my emphasis.
14 R. Stoecker

Again, Menschenwürde is far from being a mere moral status, something innate,
which we inevitably own and which we cannot lose or forfeit. Quite to the contrary,
according to Burckhardt, the peasants outside of Italy did not have it, because they
lived under circumstances that would not have allowed them a minimum of nobil-
ity, necessary for writing poetry. And, according to Schiller, we can also forfeit it
ourselves, by not behaving appropriately, for example, by toadying to the king.
In a sense, Menschenwürde for these authors is quite similar to what Cicero called
“dignitas”, yet with the crucial difference that everybody is entitled to it. It is an ideal
of universal nobility and, it must be added, it is this universal human nobility that
counts most in human relations, much more than the other, traditional, unequally
distributed kind of nobility. According to Schiller, as long as we keep our human
dignity, we can easily meet even a powerful king like Philipp II at eye level.
As I suggested, the strong continuity of the concept of human dignity with the tra-
ditional understanding of dignity as a characteristic of noblemen is usually ignored
in the current debate. A prominent exception is Jeremy Waldron who has recently
argued for a strong connection between human dignity and rank:
[. . .] once associated with hierarchical differentiations of rank and status, “dignity” now
conveys the idea that all human persons belong to the same rank and that that rank is a very
high one indeed, in many ways as high as those that were formerly regarded as ranks of
nobility (Waldron 2007: 201).

However, given that the observation is correct in that the ideal of dignity as univer-
sal nobility has played a prominent role in the development of postwar constitutions
and declarations, the project of developing an ethically attractive notion of human
dignity seems to be doomed to fail. As long ago as the late Middle Ages, rebellious
peasants asked (according to a traditional rhyme): When Adam delffid and Eve span,
who was than a gentilman? Why, after all, should we maintain that in fact both Adam
and Eve were the “gentilmen”, instead of simply assuming (as the rhyme suggests)
that there were not any noblemen around at the onset of the world and that it would
have been better if they were not around any longer? Luckily enough, we do not live
in the stratified societies of Schiller and Burckhardt any longer. Hence, the assump-
tion of universal nobility must appear unnecessarily roundabout, and politically as
well as metaphysically dubious.
In order to explain how the idea of human dignity as a kind of universal nobility
might still be worked into a satisfactory conception, I shall in the next section give
a very rough sketch of what I expect to be its central elements.

2.7 Human Dignity and the Personal Self

To be sure, when Adam delffid and Eve span, nobody was the gentilman. But
what happened to the noblemen at the end of their times, in the transition to our
modern societies? According to the sociologist Niklas Luhmann, it is a crucial fea-
ture of modern societies that their members are expected, not only to fill one or
another social position, as in the old stratified societies, but to fuse different social
2 Three Crucial Turns on the Road to an Adequate Understanding of Human Dignity 15

roles into one individual identity (Luhmann 1965). According to this account, our
“Menschenbild” is individualistic, not in the sense that we have left behind all social
dignities, but in the sense that we possess an individual dignity in conjunction with
our professional, family-related, political and other dignities.
From a sociologist’s perspective, therefore, individual dignities define tasks con-
ferred to the individual by the society: we are supposed to act according to a dignity.
The modern state, in turn, should better enable its citizens to fulfill these tasks in
order to secure its proper functioning. This is, according to Luhmann, the functional
role of Article 1 of the Grundgesetz.
From the perspective of a moral philosopher, though, it would obviously be
unjustified to simply follow social practice and to state a moral obligation to obey
whatever behavioral demands flow from individual identity. Our identities are sub-
ject to continuous reconsideration and reconstruction; they are neither sacrosanct to
us nor to others. What is not so morally innocuous is whether we care about our
identities at all, since this is at the very heart of our conception of self-respect: Self-
respect is an evaluative attitude we have towards our individual dignity. And from
the ethical perspective, self-respect is something valuable that has to be respected.
Displaying self-respect, however, may be an easier or a more difficult task
according to the circumstances. On the one hand, these circumstances could be so
demanding that almost nobody could stand upright, heroically saving her or his face
(for example, in concentration camps, under torture, in situations of great pain and
terror). On the other hand, one may find oneself in very special situations – such as
weakness, illness, confusion, or even unconsciousness – in which one is unable to
take care of oneself and hence is dependent on the help of others to save one’s face.
In both kinds of situation, human dignity is typically at stake. Although nobody
has an unconditional right to keep his individually chosen dignity (frauds, big-
mouths and stuck-up peacocks may very well be cut down to size), it is of utmost
importance to give everybody the possibility to keep a minimally decent identity,
an identity that does not comprise situations in which, for example, one might fall
victim to mordant offences, wild cruelty or total helplessness.
Jean Amery, a member of the resistance against the German occupation in
Belgium, once described his experience of the Gestapo torture as follows: “Whoever
fell victim to torture will never feel at home in the world again. The shame of the
annihilation can never be wiped out” (Améry 1977: 73). It is this existential and,
according to Amery, incurable harm to the victim’s life prospects, and therefore
to his or her self, which makes torture such an extreme case of a violation of the
demand of human dignity and, hence, makes it under all circumstances atrocious, in
addition to, and perhaps even above, the physical and mental pain it causes.
Torture, of course, is not the only way of violating human dignity. Perhaps the
most common violation of human dignity is world hunger and poverty, since almost
every individual personality is dependent on a sufficient satisfaction of the person’s
basic needs.
And there are still many other violations of human dignity, most of which may be
described as less severe violations, yet they all share the basic feature of cutting into
a person’s ability to keep a decent identity. Avishai Margalit, who has developed
16 R. Stoecker

his account of a decent society on very similar considerations, has discussed a num-
ber of different, familiar cases in which a state might threaten its citizens’ dignity:
for example, racism, unemployment, bureaucracy (Margalit 1996). Erving Goffman
has described the mechanisms of stigmatization that do not allow proper identities
(Goffman 1963). And, finally, examples like the one of the old man who has no
choice but to live the life of someone who has his own feces smeared into his face
show how human dignity can be violated by nurses and medical staff (Agich 2007,
Franklin et al., 2006).
I merely wanted to sketch the understanding we arrive at if we take the three turns
that I regard as crucial in the inquiry into human dignity. The negative turn, i.e. to
start with violations, not only provides us with a philosophical motivation to look
into human dignity but also gives us an idea of which features may be essential. The
inductive turn, i.e. to consider the whole range of applications in different areas of
ethics, is a good antidote to rash solutions. And finally, the historical turn, i.e. to take
into account the historical bonds between human dignity and traditional conceptions
of dignity, leads in the direction of an understanding of human dignity as universal
nobility, which in my eyes probably points to the best way of seeing ourselves.4

References
Agich, George J. 2007. Reflections on the function of dignity in the context of caring for old people.
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 32(5): 483–494.
Améry, Jean. 1977. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten.
Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Beauchamp, Tom L., and James F. Childress. 2009. Principles of biomedical ethics. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Birnbacher, Dieter. 2004. Menschenwürde – abwägbar oder unabwägbar? In Biomedizin und
Menschenwürde, ed. Matthias Kettner. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
Burckhardt, Jacob, and Horst Günther. 1989. Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien.
Frankfurt/Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.
Damschen, Gregor, and Dieter Schönecker. 2003. Der moralische Status menschlicher Embryonen:
Pro und contra Spezies-, Kontinuums-, Identitäts- und Potentialitätsargument. New York, NY:
De Gruyter.
Des Pres, Terrence. 1976. The survivor: An anatomy of life in the death camps. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1993. Life’s dominion – An argument about abortion and euthanasia.
Hammersmith: Harper Collins.
Franklin, Lise-Lotte, Britt-Marie Ternestedt, and Lennart Nordenfelt. 2006. Views on dignity of
elderly nursing home residents. Nursing Ethics 13(2): 130–146.
Frey, Raymond G., and Christopher Heath Wellman. 2003. A companion to applied ethics. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.

4 I want to thank the editors of this volume not only for their patience but primarily for their numer-
ous helpful suggestions and remarks that have definitely improved whatever quality there is in this
paper.
2 Three Crucial Turns on the Road to an Adequate Understanding of Human Dignity 17

Gelernter, David. 2008. The religious character of human dignity. In Human dignity and bioethics,
ed. President’s Council on Bioethics, 387–405. Washington, DC: President’s Council on
Bioethics.
Gewirth, Alan. 1992. Human dignity as the basis of rights. In The constitution of rights – Human
dignity and american values, eds. Michael J. Meyer and William Parent. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma. Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
LaFollette, Hugh. 2003. The Oxford handbook of practical ethics. Oxford and New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1965. Grundrechte als Institution. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven. 2006. Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species member-
ship, the tanner lectures on human values. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press.
Pöschl, Viktor. 1989. Der Begriff der Würde im antiken Rom und später. Heidelberg: Carl Winter
Universitätsverlag.
Rhodes, Rosamond, Leslie Francis, and Anita Silvers. 2007. The Blackwell guide to medical ethics.
Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Schiller, Friedrich. 2005. Don Carlos. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Schulman, Adam. 2008. Bioethics and the question of human dignity. In Human dignity and
bioethics, ed. President’s Council on Bioethics, 3–18. Washington, DC: President’s Council
on Bioethics.
Silver, Maury et al. 1986. Humiliation: Feeling, social control and the construction of identity.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 16(3): 269–283.
Spaemann, Robert. 1987 [1985]. Über den Begriff der Menschenwürde. In Das Natürliche und das
Vernünftige, 77–106. München: Piper.
Stepanians, Markus. 2003. Gleiche Würde, gleiche Rechte. In Menschenwürde – Annäherung an
einen Begriff, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 81–103. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Stoecker, Ralf. 2003. Menschenwürde und das Paradox der Entwürdigung. In Menschenwürde –
Annäherung an einen Begriff, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 133–151. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Temsch, Jochen. 1994. Das wird schon wieder. Die Zeit 25(11): 1994.
Vögele, Wolfgang. 2000. Menschenwürde zwischen Recht und Theologie. Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser.
Von der Pfordten, Dietmar. 2006. Zur Würde des Menschen bei Kant. Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik
14: 501–517.
Waldron, Jeremy. 2007. Dignity and rank. European Journal of Sociology 48(2): 201–237.
 Part I
Conceptions and Theories
Chapter 3
Humiliation: The Collective Dimension

Christian Neuhäuser

Abstract There are two possible understandings of the idea of a collective dimen-
sion of humiliation. One is: Can collectives violate human dignity? And the other
is: Can someone violate the (human) dignity of a collective? The first understand-
ing points to the familiar direction of collective agency and collective responsibility.
We ask questions like: Are the Germans responsible for the Holocaust? Is the United
States to blame for Guantanamo Bay? And: Do men add to the subjection of women
by tolerating or downplaying its importance? There is an ongoing debate over the
question whether there can be collective agency and responsibility and how it should
be understood if it exists at all.1 Although this is surely an important debate, it is
not the question I want to focus on. My concern here is the second understanding
of the question: Can someone violate the human dignity of a collective? The initial
response to this question seems to be no, because collectives have no dignity and
certainly nothing like human dignity. I think this answer is plainly wrong because it
rests on a confusion of methodological and ethical individualism (Lukes 1973). It is
correct that collective entities do not have dignity apart from their human members,
but this does not mean that we have to look at individuals alone and not at groups
when being concerned about humiliations. In what follows, I will explain how an
account of collective or, rather, shared dignity can be understood and why this is not
an issue ethical individuals need to fret about. First, I will describe three ways in
which a group can be humiliated. I will then assess how the third and most indirect
way, namely group humiliation through the humiliation of individual members, can
be understood. Finally, I will outline how an account of shared dignity might help
us to understand the role of a concept of special group rights within the family of
human rights.

C. Neuhäuser (B)
Department of Philosophy, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
1 Recent accounts of shared intentions and collective or corporate responsibility can be found in an

anthology by Peter French (French and Wettstein 2006).

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 21

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_3,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
22 C. Neuhäuser

3.1 Three Ways of Humiliating a Group

At first sight it seems to be strange to assume that a collective can be humiliated. A
collective might be able to act and might even be a responsible agent, but it certainly
is not a fully-fledged person with dignity. I do not want to argue this point and,
therefore, concede that it is better to talk about groups when it comes to dignity
and about collective or corporate agents only when it comes to responsibility. The
question of collective humiliation is, therefore, not whether a collective has personal
dignity but whether groups have something like shared dignity. I think it can be
shown that individuals indeed share dignity within groups (Bayertz 1996, Kretzmer
and Klein 2002, Stoecker 2003). A good way of pointing to this fact is by looking
at ways in which groups are humiliated.
I will follow Margalit in using humiliation as a normative concept and not only
as a psychological one: “Humiliation is any sort of behaviour or condition that
constitutes a sound reason for a person to consider his or her self-respect injured”
(Margalit 1996: 9). Someone can feel humiliated without in fact being humiliated.
And one can respond to a humiliation with different feelings, or stoic indifference.
It is important to see what humiliations in the normative sense are about: They
attempt to lower someone below the status of a human being as a person with dig-
nity through an improper attitude or treatment. In this normative sense, humiliation
is close to dehumanization, and not all kinds of degrading treatment can be under-
stood as humiliating. On this understanding, I see three different ways of humiliating
a group.2
1. The first case can be called direct group humiliation, since in this case all
members of a group are directly humiliated precisely because they are members of
this group. Imagine that special sections are opened at airport controls for people
who appear to be of Islamic religion and that they are checked in an especially thor-
ough way because they are rated as possible terrorists.3 Such a treatment would be
humiliating for each and every affected individual. However, this procedure can also
be regarded as a form of group humiliation because the individuals are humiliated
as members of a group (namely people of Islamic faith). I think it is rather impor-
tant to point out the role of the group here. It is by virtue, and only by virtue, of
being a member of this group that these individuals are humiliated. The humiliation
depends on the attributes that are ascribed to the group and the humiliating attitude

2 My thanks go to the colloquium on applied ethics at the University of Potsdam for pointing out
that there is a strong need to separate these cases.
3 Some people have suggested to me that thorough controls in themselves are not humiliating. I
think this is somewhat isolating the example from its social context. Consider that these people are
singled out just because of their religion and see in the eyes of all other people from whom they
are separated the fearful question: Are you a terrorist? This clearly has to count as a humiliation,
because these persons are not judged for what they are but for the worst anybody could be and they
have no way of telling the other customers: Look, this is just a weird misunderstanding.
3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension 23

towards the group that is perceived in such a way. A struggle for recognition must
therefore focus on the group level and should not isolate the affected individuals.4
It should be clarified whether a threat of direct group humiliation exists for all
groups or only for those Margalit and Raz call encompassing groups (Margalit and
Raz 1990: 439–461). Encompassing groups play a significant role in their individ-
ual members’ lives and are important for their self-definition. This is why hurting
an encompassing group amounts to damaging the self-image of its individual mem-
bers. Margalit asserts that a decent society does not reject legitimate encompassing
groups, i.e. groups that are not humiliating others (Margalit 1996: 141). I agree that
a group must be legitimate in this sense to earn the right not to be rejected, but I do
not think that direct group humiliation can only exist when it comes to encompass-
ing groups. The reason for this is quite simple: The direct humiliation of a group
can transform a group into an encompassing group and any group, however ran-
dom, can be directly humiliated. Imagine that the special airport controls are not
designed for people of Islamic religion, but for those with green eyes who are taller
than 180 cm. Before this regulation there was probably no such an encompassing
group of tall, green-eyed people at all. But when the regulation is enforced, it will
quickly become obvious what kinds of people are singled out and that this is all
they have in common. It is by virtue of those attributes that they are humiliated, and
those attributes lead them to form an encompassing group exactly because this group
becomes important for their self-definition through the shared fate of humiliation at
airports.5
One objection might state that this account of direct group humiliation overlooks
the fact that not all people of Islamic religion would be humiliated by selective air-
port controls, because many people never fly. One answer would be to construct
smaller groups, namely those who fly and are of Islamic religion, or those who are
tall and green-eyed. This, however, would mean to overlook an important difference
between the two groups of people of Islamic religion, on the one side, and Muslims
who fly, on the other. It is not only the case that everyone should be allowed to fly
without being humiliated, Muslim or not. It is furthermore the case that even those
of Islamic religion who do not fly are potentially humiliated, because flying is some-
thing that might well fit into their self-concept and could come about instantly. I will
come back to potential problems regarding the treatment of Muslims in Western
societies when I discuss representative group humiliation later.
2. The second case can be called symbolic group humiliation. Here, not all mem-
bers of a group are directly confronted or threatened with humiliating acts. Instead,

4 This is also clearly captured in the social and political theory of recognition developed by Axel
Honneth (1996).
5 This is not meant to negate that in fact the groups that are humiliated for certain reasons, because
they are of different faith for instance or are of a lower social status. In fact there is always a story
behind humiliating attitudes and behavior and it is important to look at this history when one wants
to overcome this indecency.
24 C. Neuhäuser

a symbol of the group is in some way defiled, which then constitutes a humilia-
tion for all members of this group and therefore a group humiliation in the sense
of a humiliation of shared dignity. There are many cases of this kind of symbolic
group humiliation. Think of the defilement of a Jewish graveyard or the abasing
picturing of homosexuals on TV. These are clear cases, but things get more compli-
cated when we think of the burning of American flags or the ridiculing of religious
leaders. Normally, we do not take these acts to constitute serious humiliations, but
rather something like maybe tolerable, maybe insulting mocking. Why are the first
two examples cases of symbolic group humiliation and not the other two?
One suggestion would be that the first two cases are indeed threatening, only in
an indirect way. The rejection from humankind is not only pictured but connected
to some real danger. In the case of the homosexuals, they were and in some ways
still are not treated as equals in our societies. And the history of the Holocaust is
still very much alive today. Therefore, the defilement of a group symbol must be
connected to a real threat in order to constitute a symbolic group humiliation and
not merely a form of mocking.6 Only then the symbolic action bears the power that
warrants calling it a rejection from humankind. This is why the burning of American
flags is not humiliating, even if it is intended to be so. It may still be perceived as
insulting, but that (as I will argue later) is another matter.
It is important to note that the existence of a real threat is not enough to estab-
lish this connection between symbolization and humiliation. There must be a closer
conceptual link. For instance, many people think the Muhammad caricatures were
not humiliating even though people of Islamic religion might be subject to diverse
threats in Western societies. They were not humiliating because they were not
intended to humiliate, but only to mock. This accounts for a striking difference
between direct group humiliations (and representative group humiliations), on the
one hand, and symbolic group humiliations, on the other. Normally, humiliations
do not have to be intended as humiliations and not even to be perceived as humil-
iations in order to be humiliating. It is enough to see from an external perspective
that someone is rejected from humankind or not granted proper self-control. In the
case of symbolic humiliations, a direct connection between the symbolic act and the
humiliation of the victims is absent. This connection has to be established through
intentions.
In cases of symbolic group humiliations, the humiliation is dependent on the
displayed connection to real threats. This display must be intended otherwise the
perception of the connection is only a misunderstanding. Take again the example of
the defilement of Jewish graveyards. This is humiliating, because it reminds one of
the Shoah, and, moreover, it is threatening as a matter of fact when someone goes as
far as besmearing gravestones. What else is he ready to do?7 But even a caricature

6 Note that the idea of a connection does not necessarily imply that there is a precursor of a future
violation, it can also point at past violations in order to be humiliating, but it must be linked to
those grim memories in order for that to be so (Thompson 2002: 101–113).
7 An act that is intended to humiliate, like the defilement of Jewish graveyards, does not have to
lead to felt humiliation, but can lead to other feelings like anger or fear. In many cases, anger might
3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension 25

of defiled Jewish graveyards would be humiliating, because we cannot imagine that

someone would do this without thinking of the Holocaust. It is reasonable to assume
that to produce such a caricature was intended to be and therefore is humiliating.
Following this line of thought, it is questionable if in the light of Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay the Muhammad caricatures must be intended to be humiliating. I
don’t want to take a stance here and think that it is open to further debate if the link
between those incidents is tight enough or not. The crucial question here is: Were
and are the prisoners mistreated because they are seen as evil terrorists or because
they are seen as Muslims, or both? What is very troublesome about this group of
cases is that some people seem to lose sight of the fact that the two groups are
totally different, which already constitutes a major humiliation of a whole group of
many millions of religious people.
3. The third case can be called representative group humiliation. Here a whole
group is humiliated through the humiliation of one or more of its members. In
cases that belong to this category the specific elements of the other two forms of
humiliation are often combined. Individual persons are humiliated because they are
members of a specific group, and at the same time this individual humiliation con-
stitutes a symbolic group humiliation. I think the case of representative humiliation
is the most difficult to understand, because it is far from self-evident how the humil-
iation of some individuals can constitute the humiliation of a whole group. I also
think that this case provides the strongest argument for specific group rights. This is
why I will take a closer look at representative group humiliations in the next section
before discussing the role of group rights within the family of human rights.

3.2 Can the Humiliation of Some Individuals Violate

the Dignity of a Group?

We have already seen that this question seems to be very strange because a collective
certainly does not have dignity. This is certainly true, but there is still something to
be said for the idea of representative group humiliation. I will start out with a rather
innocent example to establish the more basic points of what this idea might be about.
From there I will consider different attempts to formulate a concept of representative
group humiliation, whereas rejecting the first attempts lead to a more comprehensive
account of representative group humiliation.
If we say that one soccer team humiliated another one, this sounds metaphorical
not only because soccer teams normally do not humiliate each other (as individual
players appear to do – remember the Zidane-Materazzi case). This way of talking
(a soccer team is humiliated) is also metaphorical because the team itself cannot be

be an appropriate reaction to an attempt to humiliate. Nonetheless, the act of defilement of Jewish

graveyards still qualifies as humiliating in a normative sense. I thank Guy Stroumsa for pointing
this out to me.
26 C. Neuhäuser

humiliated. Of course not, one feels inclined to add, because evidently only the indi-
vidual members of the team as beings with dignity can be humiliated. This seems
to be true, since without the players there would be no team, and, moreover, it is
the players who feel the stain of dishonor and not some strange collective entity.
Again, this is certainly the case, but still something strange is happening. Think of
the players on the bench or the fans in the ranks. Without doubt they also feel humil-
iated, at least if they are good team members and real fans. But how can that be?
They did not play; they did not get beaten, smashed and crushed. To summarize:
No act of humiliation was carried out against them. The answer to this little puzzle
is quite obvious and straightforward: They feel debased because they identify with
their team. They are all part of it and whether they play an active role does not matter
in the least. “They live and die with their band,” so to say.
Following these suggestions, an initial way of explaining the idea that a collective
can be humiliated shows up. I will follow this thread of thought and give a number of
possible understandings of representative group humiliations ranging from number
A to D, where the first three suggestions (A–C) prove inadequate but eventually lead
to the fourth, complete understanding of representative group humiliations (D). The
initial approach goes like this:
(A) If one member or some members of a group are humiliated, the whole group is
humiliated.

Although the point of identification with a group seems to be well captured in sen-
tence (A), there is a problem, namely that its content is certainly too strong. Think
again of the maybe humiliating comment Materazzi made to Zidane (or the other
way round). Let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that it was indeed a humiliating
comment. Still, only Zidane was affected, maybe also some of his family members,
but certainly not his team or the whole French nation. Sentence (A) must be wrong
because it would include lots of cases where in fact no group was humiliated.
Although (A) is not the formulation I am looking for, however, there is a trouble-
free pass to improvement. As we have seen, the humiliating comment made to
Zidane had nothing to do with the team, but only with him and maybe his fam-
ily. Therefore, we can infer, the humiliation of a group member must somehow be
directed at that group in order for the group to be humiliated. It is tempting to con-
nect collective humiliation to the intention not only to humiliate the individual but
the whole group. In my view, this does not work out, and I will now have to put the
example of football aside and move on to more troubling examples to show why. It
is difficult to talk about such gruesome cases in philosophical papers because it is
hard to pay due respect to their sad significance and to grasp their full reality. I think
it is nonetheless important to deal with them because, in the end, ethical theorists
should be especially concerned about such cases and learn to develop the sensitive
language that is needed to deal with them, especially when it comes to concepts like
humiliation and dignity.
There are cases where the intention to humiliate the whole group does play
an important role. The systematic use of rape as a means of inhuman warfare is
an example of such an intended group humiliation and, moreover, an example of
3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension 27

the inhumanness of warfare (Human Rights Watch 2000, Barstow 2000). Although
intentions to humiliate the whole group certainly play a role, this is rather on a
psychological and not on a normative level. Margalit uses the example of the con-
tented slave Uncle Tom to emphasize that humiliations need not be felt in order to
exist (Margalit 1996: 35–39). In the case of Uncle Tom, we would say that he is
humiliated and that it is much worse because he does not even know. We would say
so because his enslavement expresses that he is not seen as a fully accepted mem-
ber of humankind and that he does not possess the form of self-control necessary
for self-respect and that in itself is humiliating. This is the difference between a
normative and a psychological notion of humiliation, already hinted at earlier.
One may argue that there might be a difference between individual and group
cases when it comes to the question of intention, but that does not seem to be the
case. If women live in a society where they are treated as subhuman compared to
men, this is humiliating. It does not have to be intended as being humiliating; it can
even be intended as appropriate treatment, like Aristotle thought of the treatment of
women and slaves (Schofield 2005: 91–120). Even a woman who personally lives
in a loving and caring environment and is treated as equal, as might have been the
case with Aspasia, the wife of Pericles, has a right to see herself as humiliated in a
society where women generally are not seen as equal human beings. I will, therefore,
move forward with the account of representative group humiliation without using
intention but only a weaker notion of directedness. The importance of the shared
part of identity can then be expressed like this:
(B) If a humiliation is directed against a collectively shared part of identity, the whole group
is humiliated and not only the violated individual.

This formulation sounds somewhat better than sentence (A) because it emphasizes
the link between the humiliated individual and the humiliated group. But it is still too
strong. To explain why it is not appropriate, I will refer to the difference between
humiliation and insult, also introduced by Margalit. To insult someone means to
diminish his social position. To humiliate someone means to diminish her self-
respect (Margalit 1996: 119–120). The first might be an attack on his honor, but
only the latter is an attack on her human dignity. So it is not only important that a
humiliation is about a shared part of identity, but it has to be a shared part that is
constitutive for self-respect.
When exactly is a shared identity constitutive for self-respect? I think there is no
easy answer to this question because it is difficult to draw a clear line between
social honor and human dignity. Margalit names three ways to humiliate some-
one: “(1) treating human beings as if they were not human – as beasts, machines,
or subhumans; (2) performing actions that manifest or lead to loss of basic con-
trol; and (3) rejecting a human being from the ‘family of Man’.” (Margalit 1996:
144) The problem with the differentiation between dignity and honor in light of this
understanding of humiliation is that taking away someone’s social honor is not only
insulting or degrading sometimes but can also be humiliating in the fundamental
sense that it is violating human dignity. Think of the rather peculiar group of bird
lovers. One bird lover might not think that his being a member of a group of bird
28 C. Neuhäuser

lovers is a big deal for him. If, for instance, he is ridiculed by his colleagues for
his intense bird loving, then he probably feels insulted, but not humiliated, because
he is not rejected from humankind. But imagine he learns that in another company
some bird lovers are not promoted for the sole reason that they are bird lovers, or
they are given the meanest and lowest jobs despite their qualifications and desire for
much better jobs. In this case, he might think that this indeed is humiliating for bird
lovers in general.
Whether something is humiliating or only insulting for a group cannot depend,
therefore, on the importance of the group and whether this group is somehow of
existential importance and connected to the innermost needs of an individual. It
has to depend on the kind of behavior that is directed against the group mem-
bers. A fairly unimportant group can become really important when it is humiliated.
Although this is already captured in the normative notion of humiliation, it might
be helpful to point out that there needs to be a link of a special kind between the
acts carried out against the members of the group and their self-respect in respect
to what is shared in this group. The cases in which the humiliation itself constitutes
the importance of the shared identity that makes it constitutive for self-respect are
then included in such a clarification. The formulation can therefore be changed as
follows:
(C) If a humiliation is directed against a collectively shared part of identity that is constitu-
tive for the self-respect of the members of this collective, not only the violated individual
but the whole group is humiliated.

This is getting close to what I am looking for, but there still is a problem, because the
tie between the self-respect of an individual and a group still seems to be too tight.
Consider this: Whenever an individual is humiliated, and this is directly connected
to a part of her shared identity, all those who share this part are also humiliated. It is
certainly true that this formulation now excludes many cases, but there are still some
other cases that need to be excluded. This is because in some cases the humiliation
of one person is humiliating for those who share her identity in a relevant way; there
are others where it is only insulting, and there are those where it might not have any
(justified) group effects at all.8

8 Samuel Kerstein suggested that the humiliation of a group member might be welcomed, even
when it is directed against a shared part of identity that is constitutive for the self-respect of the
members of the group. This could be the case when one member of a group is just taking it much
too far in being proud of having this identity. Likewise Marcus Düwell suggested that it might be
called for to humiliate those who are themselves very humiliating in their attitude. I think a group
can rightfully want one of its members to be insulted, but not to be humiliated. And it might be that
there are cases where humiliation is the only response to prevent humiliation and, therefore, some
kind of self-defence. But I have no clue how such cases would look and how it can be made certain
that those members of the group who do not humiliate are also not humiliated. Moreover, I think
both have something similar in mind that is degrading but not humiliating. There are probably
many cases where degrading someone can be justified; there are no cases where it is justified to
humiliate someone, or, at least, I can think of none.
3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension 29

How can this be the case? The humiliation of one group member is insulting
for the whole group when there is some strong sense of a common fate, includ-
ing a feeling of solidarity that leads to profound sympathy. If such a connection
between members in a group is lacking, a humiliation of one member might be per-
ceived without any reaction at all. This would explain why the feeling of being
insulted is sometimes present and sometimes absent, and always justified when
present. It does not explain why the humiliation of some members of a group is
not always humiliating for all members of the group in the normative sense of the
notion.
I believe the difference comes from the role played by social reactive attitudes
in the construction of self-respect. We need to know how and where we stand in
society, how we are perceived by the dominant culture, and if our way of living is
recognized as acceptable and respected as such (Stoecker 2004: 107–119). When a
humiliation is not sanctioned by a society or not strongly opposed, then this reactive
attitude or its lack constitutes a collective humiliation. Why is this the case? What
does society have to do with self-respect? The idea is quite simple. As pointed out
above, I need to have the feeling that I am recognized as an equal human being with
self-respect by the society that I belong to. If a member of a group with which I
identify is humiliated as a member of this group and I happen to live in a society
where nobody cares about this humiliation, then I am humiliated too. This is because
my identity is not respected in the society I belong to – even if I myself might still
be treated as an equal human being, this is only due to chance and I am therefore
not a full member of society. Since being a recognized member of society is con-
stitutive for my self-respect, I am humiliated when I have reason to feel excluded
from society, which is the case when those with whom I share my identity are not
cared for in times of grave mistreatment. If, on the other hand, the humiliation is not
carried out by representatives of the society I belong to and if there is an adequate
social reaction to it, then I do not have any reason to feel humiliated. I might still
have a reason to feel insulted if I feel strong sympathy with the insulted individ-
ual, since the act of humiliation is so closely connected to an identity I share. And
although my self-respect is not diminished, the humiliation of someone who is so
much like me might by itself give me a reason to feel insulted on his or her behalf
and on behalf of what we have in common. This leads to the following series of
claims:
(D1 ) If a humiliation is directed against a collectively shared part of identity that is consti-
tutive for the self-respect of the members of this collective, not only the violated individual
but the whole group is either insulted or humiliated.
(D2 ) An act is humiliating for a group when it is sanctioned on a social level, or no
appropriate measures against it are taken.
(D3 ) An act might be insulting for a group when appropriate measures against the
humiliation of one of its members are taken.

I think these statements capture the collective dimension of human dignity when
it comes to representative group humiliations. This final account of representative
group humiliation can be rephrased in the following way:
30 C. Neuhäuser

(I) The humiliation of some members of a group is humiliating for the whole group, if:
(II) the humiliation is directed against a collectively shared part of identity;
(III) this shared part of identity is constitutive for the self-respect of the members of this
group;
(IV) the humiliation is sanctioned on a social level and/or no appropriate measures against
it are taken.

Before I move on to clarify some open points and discuss whether group humil-
iations can be a basis for group rights, I want to examine three examples for
representative group humiliations.
Until as late as 1997, it was not legally forbidden in Germany for men to force
their wives into sexual intercourse as long as no serious physical harm was done,
because spousal rape was not legally recognized.9 Such a rape is humiliating for
women in the normative sense of the notion, regardless of being recognized as such,
because women are not treated as autonomous agents with self-respect when they
have no control over their sexual activities. Even a woman in a loving and caring
relationship who is not threatened in this way has a right to see herself as humiliated
in a society in which spousal rape is not recognized as something that is humili-
ating and legally forbidden. This is the case because society tells her that in some
way women should not or need not have control over themselves as men do. Such
an attitude is an attack on the self-respect of women as equal human beings, and,
therefore, they are seen as subhuman in this respect.
Now what if a spousal rape is carried out, but is condemned and sanctioned on a
social level? The raped woman is humiliated by her husband, but other women are
not humiliated, because society shows that it sees the act as what it is: the humilia-
tion of a woman by her husband and therefore as a violation of her right to be treated
as a person with self-respect. Out of a sense of solidarity and sympathy other women
might still feel insulted by that act, but that is another matter. Moreover, the raped
woman is humiliated in the normative sense, but the reactive attitude on a social
level also tries to tell her that she does not need to feel humiliated in the psycho-
logical sense because society recognizes the way she is treated as a violation of her
rights. Rights that she is still capable to make full use of on a normative level, once
she is protected from her husband.
Another example is the turmoil that is often caused by the mistreatment of
individuals by the police. In 1992, the Los Angeles riots started after four white
policemen were acquitted despite the fact that they had beaten up a black person.
In the present context, it is an interesting fact that the riot did not start directly after
the beating became public but only when it turned out that the policemen would
not be punished. This can be seen as a response towards a social reactive attitude
which was experienced as a representative group humiliation. This is not to say that
the riots were justified in any way – in fact, many serious crimes were committed;

9 For data on rapes in marriages: Vergewaltigung in der Ehe: “Wer den eigenen Mann anzeigt, setzt
sich nicht mehr an den gemeinsamen Tisch.” Der Tagesspiegel, 26 July 2000.
3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension 31

at least 53 persons were killed, many more injured, and a lot of private and public
property destroyed. The judges, attorneys and members of the jury made two mis-
takes. First they did not sentence the four policemen, who obviously committed a
serious crime. Second they were not aware of the public dimension of the case. They
did not foresee that many people would identify with Rodney King, not because he
was a criminal but because he was black. Those people saw King as a black person
mistreated by white policemen. In their eyes this mistreatment was a humiliating act
because he was not treated as white criminals would have been. When the police-
men were not punished for their crime, society sanctioned this humiliation and it
became a case of representative group humiliation.
A third example I already touched upon earlier might be the treatment of some
people of Islamic religion in the course of what is now called the war against ter-
rorism. In Guantanamo Bay, people are treated as prisoners of war without any
acknowledged legal status and in a way that is harshly criticized by many human
rights groups and activists. During the war in Iraq, some American soldiers tor-
tured Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. The goal of this torture was not to acquire
information, which is also humiliating. The goal was no other but to humiliate the
prisoners.10 These are humiliating acts, and in my understanding torture is never
justified, and even the most dangerous prisoners should never be treated the way
they are in Guantanamo Bay. I do not wish to discuss the connection between dam-
aged pride and the desire to humiliate others, which often goes hand in hand on
an individual level and might also be an important explanation on a social level. I
am more concerned with the question of whether or not Guantanamo Bay and Abu
Ghraib can be seen as cases of representative group humiliation. I think that they
should not be understood in this way for two reasons. First, in Guantanamo Bay, the
victims are seen as terrorists. This is not to say that there is no danger that Western
society is on the edge of committing cases of representative group humiliations. I
think it is imperative to move very carefully here by being especially clear that ter-
rorism and Islam have no internal connection at all. Not only are group humiliations
morally as bad as individual humiliations, but, moreover, severe damage is done to
peaceful and respectful relations between two groups of people when members of
one humiliates members of the other.
This danger gives additional urgency to the question whether special group rights
are justified that apply when a group is humiliated or threatened with humiliation.
In order to discuss this point I want to clarify some aspects of the normative account
of humiliation presented above and discuss the difference between group rights that
have their basis in ethical holism and group rights that have their basis in ethical
individualism.

10 There are now many books on Guantanamo Bay. One by an activist insider is: C. Stafford Smith
(2007) One that explores the ethical dimension of the case: C. Butler (2007). There are even more
books published on Abu Ghraib. For an investigative journalist’s perspective: M. Danner (2005).
For interesting reflections of an art historian: S. F. Eisenman (2007). Material on both cases can be
found in: W. F. Zimmerman (2004).
32 C. Neuhäuser

3.3 The Normative Account of Humiliation and Group Rights

By now it should be clear that in my opinion there clearly are cases of collec-
tive humiliation. Dignity can be shared in groups, and our self-respect is highly
dependent on the social role played by those groups we belong to. First, individ-
uals belonging to a group can be humiliated because every member of this group
in a certain situation will be humiliated. This I called direct group humiliation and
gave the example of special and degrading airport controls. Second, whole groups
of individuals can be humiliated through the mistreatment of certain symbols of
the group when this mistreatment is connected to past humiliations or the threat of
present humiliations. This I called symbolic group humiliation and gave the exam-
ple of the defilement of graveyards. Third, whole groups can be humiliated when
one or more of its members are humiliated and that is somehow sanctioned by soci-
ety. This I called representative group humiliation and discussed at length, giving
the examples of spousal marriage, racist policemen, and torture in Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay.
But does this account of group humiliation and shared dignity give rise to spe-
cial group rights, or can the importance of this collective dimension of dignity be
captured in individual rights? The right to form and take part in non-humiliating
groups, for instance, is an individual right and not a group right. The same is true
for the right to be treated as an equal human being with dignity, regardless of what
kind of non-humiliating groups one belongs to. So maybe there is no need for group
rights, even though dignity as such might be essentially social. One of the impor-
tant implications of the normative concept of dignity is indeed that only individual
human beings and all individual human beings have dignity. If one accepts that
human dignity is the fundamental basis for human rights, then all basic rights have
to be justified with reference to individual dignity and not to the cultural or other
importance of some group. However, it would be a misunderstanding to think that
ethical individualism blocks the possibility of special group rights that are based
in the dignity of individuals. The idea of shared dignity and collective humiliation
might help us in figuring out whether we need such rights. Before I turn to the ques-
tion of how group rights can be understood in the light of shared dignity, I want to
clarify two points concerning the normative idea of dignity and humiliation. These
clarifications are needed in order to stress the importance of the collective aspect of
dignity and to point out that this does not lead to normative collectivism or holism,
as Popper designated the enemies of his open society, which is primarily a society
of ethical individualists.
Above, I have followed Margalit’s claim that there is a difference between dignity
and honor, but I have also claimed that diminishing social honor can be humiliating.
This seems to confuse the distinction between insult and humiliation. Indeed, there
seems to be a problem with the clear differentiation between humiliation and insult
as conceived by Margalit. I think there are ways of diminishing someone’s social
honor that are not only insulting but humiliating. This is the case because being
an honorable member of a society can be essential for someone’s self-respect as
a human being. Consider the case of a respectable school teacher suspended from
3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension 33

his duty because he believes in the “wrong” religion. This is an attack on his social
honor, but it is also humiliating because it destroys the former teacher’s self-respect.
The destruction is not due to the fact that he cannot teach anymore – maybe he did
not like teaching at all; the way people look at him in public is the real problem.
Still, the teacher is not rejected from humanity but only from the group of those
who are thought to be fit to be teachers. Maybe people think: Well, he is a good
man and fellow citizen, but we cannot let someone with such a religion instruct our
children. Being a teacher is not essential to live a good life and also not essential to
be respected as a human being. If the person never was a teacher then, for him, this
would not be a problem at all. But we would still say that it really is humiliating for
this person to be suspended from his duties just because of his religion.
The answer to this puzzle lies in the notion of social dignity. When Margalit only
talks about dignity, on the one hand, and social honor, on the other, he neglects
something like social dignity, which lies in-between. Social dignity is dignity and
not only honor, because without it someone is not a fully respected member of a
society. But it is social and not human dignity, because this does not necessarily
mean that someone could not be a respected member in another kind of society of
humans. The rejection depends on the standards of this particular society and not
on the fundamental idea of being human. For instance, not having any shoes to put
on certainly is debasing in our society, but it does not have to be an issue at all in a
totally different society. The distinction between the two kinds of dignity can also
be seen as the background for the differentiation between absolute poverty, which
is a problem from the perspective of human dignity, and relative poverty, which
is a problem from the perspective of social dignity (Ladwig 2002). These examples
should make clear that what counts as humiliating is sometimes dependent on social
conditions. It is not the case that some basic material conditions just have to be
fulfilled and above that bottom line questions of humiliation do not arise anymore.
When women do not have equal access to public offices this is humiliating because
it implies that women are not seen as equal beings and are somehow subhuman
compared with men.
The concept of social dignity can be seen as an argument for group rights to equal
treatment and recognition and special policies that lead to the fulfillment of rights
like, for instance, affirmative action. This is because whether a society is confronted
with a humiliating discrimination or not can only be seen on a group level and not on
an individual level, or to put it in other words: Only then the structural discrimination
which constitutes the humiliation becomes visible.
There is another issue that needs to be solved. Of course, there are cases where
members of a group feel humiliated, when in fact they are not. These cases resemble
those where individuals feel humiliated, when in fact they are not. The point is that
they ground their self-respect in the wrong things – things that have nothing to do
with their ability to live a decent life as a human being in a particular society. When
someone thinks that he needs to have a very nice handbag or she needs to have a
very expensive car in order to have reason to respect him- or herself, that person is
surely mistaken (at least in most societies). If, for instance, the car or the handbag
is taken away from them for whatever reasons, and if they are still able to dress and
34 C. Neuhäuser

travel properly, no humiliation has taken place. They may have been insulted, but
that is a completely different issue.11
A good example for such a misunderstanding of group humiliation is provided by
Turkish criminal law. According to article 301 of the Turkish penal code, it is a crime
to insult “Turkishness.” For instance, the writer Orhan Pamuk was charged with
insulting “Turkishness” when stating that: “Thirty thousand Kurds and a million
Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.”12
Article 301 makes at least two mistakes. First, there is nothing like “Turkishness”
that can be insulted or humiliated, and the same is true for states, nations, churches,
religions, and so on; neither they nor any other institution can be humiliated. It
is only individual beings that can be humiliated, because only they have dignity
grounded in the fact that they are sentient beings, free agents, and autonomous per-
sons.13 Second, it is wrong to accuse someone of humiliation where, in fact, no
humiliation has taken place, even if there are feelings of humiliation. To state that
some group committed serious crimes is not humiliating for any individuals, though
it can be controversial and felt to be insulting when wrong, and then it calls for
an apology. The consequences, if the accusation is correct, might be degrading, for
instance, because reparations have to be paid and attempts of reconciliation made
(Thompson 2002), but insulting or degrading someone is different from humiliation
because it does not have to be, and often is not, connected to dehumanization.
Following this line of thought, the question arises how humiliating groups should
be treated. In my view, even with humiliating groups humiliations have to be
avoided, in a similar way in which the humiliation of individual beings always has to
be avoided. This is the case because in a certain fundamental sense dignity is some-
thing that nobody can ever lose, which demands that this person or group should be
treated with some respect and not in a humiliating way.14 It might still be acceptable
to insult a humiliating group or to degrade it, but that still is another matter.
So what about group rights? To ground a possible account of group rights in
human dignity and the protection from humiliation certainly rules out those group

11 One might think that they are not treated as rational agents when treated like this, but this is not
the case given that rational reasons are given for this action. One might also think that they are
not treated as autonomous agents. I think this is also not the case because one of their autonomous
decisions is not respected, which is different from not treating some as a person with autonomy.
12 In the end, the case was dropped. See: “Court Drops Turkish Writer’s Case,” BBC, 23 January
2006.
13 This account is obviously based on the Kantian idea that our dignity stems from our nature
as rational beings and, therefore, as free agents. It also extends this account, however, because it
recognizes that we are sentient beings with rationality in the Kantian sense (Baumann 2003: 19–34,
Schaber 2003: 119–131).
14 This idea also goes back to Kant and his idea that everything has a price (Preis) while only human
beings have dignity (Würde). In the German constitution this is captured in article 1, paragraph 1:
“Human dignity is inviolable. To respect and to protect it is the duty of all state authority.” This
leads to the problem of the paradox of humiliation, i.e. the question why dignity matters when
it cannot be violated. A solution to this problem is presented by Ralf Stoecker (Stoecker 2003:
133–151).
3 Humiliation: The Collective Dimension 35

rights that are themselves humiliating. It cannot be the case that some groups have
special rights because they see themselves as more human or in any other way
ethically superior to other groups. This is why the special rights of, for instance,
apartheid can never be justified and are ruled out by any account of shared dignity
based on ethical individualism. Group rights based on human dignity can therefore
never help to justify the superiority of any group. Instead they have an enabling
aspect. Non-humiliating groups that are not recognized as equals in their social
environment are violated in their fundamental rights, and this gives rise to certain
claims to affirmative action to put it differently: When groups are humiliated and
not treated as equals as they should, a duty to grant them this equal status arises.
Moreover, group rights based on human dignity are also protective. When a group
is threatened in its status as a recognized part of the social whole, it has a right to
protective actions, like campaigns raising awareness or the persecution of those who
humiliate its members or symbols. These measures are precisely what I call social
reactive attitudes in the context of representative group humiliation.
As a consequence, it can be claimed that there should be special enabling rights
for women as long as they are not treated as equals. As soon as they have the same
access to the same social positions without affirmative action, this special treatment
has to be stopped in order to avoid new inequalities. The same holds for poor peo-
ple. Being poor disables one from exercising one’s rights as a citizen. This disability
can easily be removed and is, therefore, humiliating. Affirmative action is needed to
help poor people out of their poverty and provide them with the material basis nec-
essary to be able to live as equal citizens in their society. As soon as this is achieved,
redistribution cannot be grounded in social dignity anymore. One might think that
further redistribution is still needed, but then it would have to be grounded in differ-
ent principles provided, for instance, by a stronger account of social equality. These
are examples for enabling rights. Let’s turn to protective rights: For instance, the
elderly or people of Islamic faith might have a claim to special protective rights. In
my view, they are not seen or treated as subhuman (yet), but there is a certain danger
in our societies’ present attitude of Westernism and anti-aging rhetoric. Examples
like these highlight the importance of group rights as a political measure to end or
prevent the humiliating treatment of legitimate groups or groups that are constituted
by their humiliating situation.
Although there is much more to be said about group rights, I will end here and
summarize. The view I presented on the different forms of the humiliation of groups,
of shared dignity, and of group rights can help us to overcome the danger of an
evanescence of dignity which could come about through an attitude of radical indi-
vidualization. On such an account, persons are seen as atomic entities that do not
need to have social ties in order to live a decent or even a good life. The alternative
account of shared dignity and the three ways of humiliating groups show that this is
false. At the same time it should be clear that group rights have to be based in ethical
individualism in order to overcome totalitarian tendencies and the attempted justi-
fication of humiliating attitudes towards other groups. Only under these conditions
will a peaceful coexistence of culturally diverse groups that nonetheless respect each
other become possible.
36 C. Neuhäuser

References
Barstow, Anne. 2000. War’s dirty secrets: Rape, prostitution and other crimes against women.
Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim.
Baumann, Peter. 2003. Menschenwürde und das Bedürfnis nach Respekt. In Menschenwürde.
Annäherungen an einen Begriff, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 19–34. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Bayertz, Kurt, ed. 1996. Sanctity of life and human dignity. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Butler, Clark, ed. 2007. Guantanamo bay and the judicial-moral treatment of the other. West
Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Danner, Mark. 2005. Torture and truth: Abu Ghraib and America in Iraq. London: Granta.
Eisenman, Stephen. 2007. The Abu Ghraib effect. London: Reaktion.
French, Peter and Howard Wettstein, eds. 2006. Shared intentions and collective responsibility.
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. XXX. Boston, MA: Blackwell.
Honneth, Axel. 1996. The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts.
Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Human Rights Watch. 2000. Kosovo: Rape as a weapon of “ethnic cleansing”. New York, NY:
Human Rights Watch.
Kretzmer, David and Eckart Klein, eds. 2002. The concept of human dignity in human rights
discourse. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.
Ladwig, Bernd. 2002. Arm und Reich. Eine Normative Betrachtung. In Was Reichtümer vermögen.
Gewinner und VerliererInnen in Europäischen Wohlfahrtsstaaten, ed. Die Armutskonferenz,
12–28. Wien: Mandelbaum.
Lukes, Steven. 1973. Individualism. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Margalit, Avishai and Joseph Raz. 1990. Self-determination. Journal of Philosophy 87: 439–461.
Schaber, Peter. 2003. Menschenwürde als Recht, nicht erniedrigt zu werden. In Menschenwürde.
Annäherungen an einen Begrif, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 119–131. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Schofield, Malcolm. 2005. Ideology and philosophy in Aristotle’s theory of slavery. In Aristotle’s
politics. Critical essays, eds. Richard Kraut and Steven Skultety, 91–120. Lanham, MD:
Rowman and Littlefield.
Stafford Smith, Clive. 2007. Bad men: Guantanamo bay and the secret prisons. London: Orion.
Stoecker, Ralf, ed. 2003. Menschenwürde. Annäherungen an einen Begriff. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Stoecker, Ralf, 2004. Selbstachtung und Menschenwürde. Studia Philosophica 63: 107–119.
Thompson, Janna. 2002. Taking responsibility for the past. Reparation and historical justice.
Cambridge: Cambridge Polity.
Zimmerman, Frederick, ed. 2004. Basic documents about the treatment of detainees at
Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Ann Arbor, MI: Nimble Books.
Chapter 4
The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring
Symbolic Vulnerability

Hannes Kuch

Abstract Following the thought of G.W.F. Hegel, this article attempts to look at
“human dignity” as a particular form of vulnerability – a symbolic vulnerability,
which has its roots in a desire for recognition. My reflections follow two objectives,
the starting point for both of which is Hegel’s “struggle to death”. (1) What does
it mean to speak of “dignity” in terms of vulnerability? It means to look at human
dignity not as worth or as a strength, but rather as a specific fragility. For Hegel,
the longing for recognition implies a dependency on recognition. This dependency
may even go so far that human beings accept being insulted. Thus, a person may
be recognized so little that an act of humiliation is taken as an act of recognition.
From the viewpoint of an autonomy-perspective on human dignity, this openness
for humiliation might itself appear to be humiliating. This paradox is discussed by
contrasting two readings of Hegel: one which brings him closer to Kant, and one
which refers to Judith Butler’s account of recognition. (2) My second objective is to
point to the symbolic dimension of violations of human dignity. This “rituality” of
humiliation has its roots in the symbolic dimension of recognition. In recent social
theories, the “act of recognition” is spelled out in symbolic terms: To be recognized
is to be addressed by the other. This is the reason why not only acts of recognition
but also acts of misrecognition, and of humiliation, have a constitutive symbolic
dimension. We can indeed be humiliated by simple words. But even mere violence
can have a certain ritual dimension – and it is perhaps this very dimension that
constitutes its humiliating force.

4.1 Introduction

The photographs of Iraqi prisoners who were tortured by US-soldiers in the course
of the third war in Iraq were appalling in various ways. Not just because of the mal-
treatment and physical violence they showed, but also because of the humiliating

H. Kuch (B)
Department of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 37

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_4,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
38 H. Kuch

gestures and postures the victims had been forced to take on. The photographs
showed naked bodies piled up on one another, or prisoners being kept on a leash
like dogs. These humiliating postures were of central importance with regard to
what was going on in Abu Ghraib. They point to a “theatrical” dimension, to a
moment of staging within the ritual of humiliation. Of course, this does not mean
that the actions were “merely posed” as if they were not real or effective. On the
contrary, I think the treatment of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib was humiliating pre-
cisely to the extent that humiliating postures and gestures were involved. Moreover,
what was frightening was not only what the photographs depicted, but above all the
very fact that there were photographs at all. The photographs did not just show what
was going on, as if an arbitrary external observer just happened to have taken them,
on the contrary, they constituted a crucial part of the scenery. The perpetrators could
be seen looking into the camera, even smiling towards it. Maybe the camera was
even a spur to stage the humiliations (for more on this question, see Butler 2007).
And this spur must have been intense as the photographs were taken under the risk
of being used as evidence. Obviously, the importance of the photographs as part
of the humiliation offset the peril that these very photographs could become evi-
dence for the maltreatments. If the photographs were crucial for the humiliations in
Abu Ghraib, then it is because they brought in an audience that could see or wit-
ness the actions. In this sense, I think the photographs of Abu Ghraib point to a
symbolic dimension implied in the violation of human dignity: Such violations are
often exercised in rituals – that is to say, they are staged like a play in front of an
audience.
In what follows, I will try to explain why we should conceive dignity as a sym-
bolic vulnerability. We can indeed be humiliated by simple words. But even mere
violence can have a certain ritual dimension. This symbolic vulnerability has its
basis in the importance of recognition in gaining dignity. I will trace this idea of
a dependency on recognition back to its roots in Hegel’s “struggle to death”. In
so doing, I will use the concept of humiliation as a paradigmatic form of vio-
lation of human dignity (in such a way that it may even be an overall term for
various forms of violations of human dignity); and although humiliation is closely
related to the loss of recognition, we will see that not every loss of recognition is
humiliating.
However, before I proceed to explore the idea of a constitutive symbolic vul-
nerability (4.3), I would like to enquire into what it means to look at dignity as
vulnerability. We will see that this idea suggests that we consider human dignity not
so much as worth or as a form of strength but rather as a specific fragility. In order to
spell out the fabric of this vulnerability, I will contrast it with an approach that looks
at human dignity as worth. In fact, both perspectives can be traced back to Hegel.
While Hegel’s struggle to death can be read as a demonstration of the freedom of
human beings, it can, at the same time, be seen as a struggle for recognition. In this
latter approach, the struggle for recognition has its roots in an essential dependency
of humans on recognition (4.2).
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 39

4.2 Vulnerability

4.2.1 The Struggle to Death as a Demonstration of Autonomy

In the primordial scene of Hegel’s struggle to death, two subjects meet, and each
is willing to kill the other, thereby risking to be killed himself. The aggressiveness
of the encounter need not be thought of as a result of a striving for biological sur-
vival or a conflict about material goods, as someone like Thomas Hobbes might
suggest. For Hegel, the struggle to death is something like an existential demonstra-
tion of man’s ability to be free. In putting one’s own life at risk, one proves oneself
to be free of all natural constraints – even the most basic: one’s own physiologi-
cal life. In Hegel’s own words: “[. . .] from this perspective, it is only by putting
himself as well as others in danger of death that man demonstrates his capacity
for freedom” (Hegel et al. 2007 [1830]: 220). Of course, for Hegel, the impor-
tance of this scene of struggle lies not in the fact that it might be of empirical
relevance. For him, it is already significant that this struggle might happen at all.
What is of analytic interest is the fact that we can think of human beings as being
able to engage in that kind of struggle. Furthermore, the crucial issue for Hegel
is not so much the fact of putting one’s life at stake in struggling, but rather the
fact of being able to commit suicide. In his early writings, Hegel is more explicit
about this point: “To him as consciousness it appears that in this he must intend the
death of the other, although it is his own death that is at issue – suicide, in that he
exposes himself to danger” (Hegel 1983 [1805–1806]: 117; see also Kojève 1980:
247−248).
This scope of our autonomy is, according to Hegel, the reason why we recognize
the other as person. If the other, in the struggle to death, proves to be willing to risk
his own life, we acknowledge or recognize this other as an equal human being. To
some extent, Hegel comes close to Kant’s notion of respect here.1 For in a Kantian
approach, is freedom of the will: the capacity of an autonomous subject to make
rules or “legislative laws” that govern his or her actions the most basic human qual-
ity: “The will is therefore not merely subject to the law, but is so subject that it must
be considered as also making the law for itself and precisely on this account as first
of all subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as the author)” (Kant 1964
[1785]: 431). In Kant’s view, this is the basis of human dignity, and the source of
respect for other persons:

But the law-making which determines all value must for this reason have a dignity – that is,
an unconditioned and incomparable worth – for the appreciation of which, as necessarily
given by a rational being, the word ‘reverence’ [Achtung] is the only becoming expression.
Autonomy is therefore the ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational
nature. (Kant 1964 [1785]: 436)

1 In this, I am following a suggestion made by Ernst Tugendhat in “Self-consciousness and Self-

determination” (1986: 306).
40 H. Kuch

Autonomy, in this sense, is the reason for the worth of humanity, an incomparable
worth which demands respect. Respect for another subject is thus not related to his
or her merits; it is related to the most basic human ability, the ability to be free.
Hegel somewhat follows Kant here, yet he spells out this capacity for freedom in
more concrete, more radical forms. While Kant emphasizes that autonomy formally
means to act according to the laws which one has made for oneself, and therefore
being able to act detached from the laws of nature, Hegel pushes this idea to its
extreme when he states that in risking their own life human beings are able to act
on the basis of their free will even against one of the most basic laws of nature – the
drive for physiological self-preservation.
Of course, the heroic gesture of the Hegelian struggle to death might look rather
odd nowadays. But one can find certain radical cases of this “capacity for death”
even in modernity. In fact, there are extreme conditions such as those that were
found in Nazi concentration camps or in slavery, conditions under which human
beings may choose death instead of giving in to oppression. Referring to Hegel’s
master/slave-dialectics, Paul Gilroy takes the life of Frederick Douglass, a famous
nineteenth century abolitionist and former slave in the confederate plantation slav-
ery, as an example for the preference of the possibility of death to the condition of
slavery. Douglass risked his life in effectively resisting his master: “For him the slave
actively prefers the possibility of death to the continuing condition of inhumanity
on which plantation slavery depends” (Gilroy 1993: 63). Another example is Bruno
Bettelheim, a psychoanalytic theorist, who himself survived a concentration camp.
He writes:

But to survive as a man not a walking corpse, as a debased and degraded but still human
being, one had first and foremost to remain informed and aware of what made up one’s
personal point of no return, the point beyond which one would never, under any circum-
stances, give in to the oppressor, even if it meant risking and losing one’s life. (Bettelheim
1961: 157)

We can see that these extreme cases illuminate Hegel’s idea of a capacity for free-
dom which is revealed in risking one’s life. But what if someone is not courageous
enough, for whatever reasons, to risk his or her life? If the (potential) capacity for
freedom demands that one be recognized or respected, may it not in turn be possible
that the (actual) inability to prove this capacity could become a source of contempt
or abhorrence? An undertone of this contempt is obvious, for example, in the reflec-
tions on the notion of humiliation by Maury Silver and his colleagues. While they
refer positively to the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps who fought to live up
to their ideals and standards, they write about those who are not able to maintain
their agency: “This lack [of power; H.K.] does not make us evil, it may not be our
fault, but it makes us ugly, deformed [. . .]” (Silver et al. 1986: 279). One might even
say that a person who is so openly submissive that he or she accepts to be humil-
iated actually deserves this humiliation. Indeed, Hegel bluntly justified slavery in
this way: “Those who remain bondsmen suffer no absolute injustice; for he who has
not the courage to risk his life to win freedom, deserves to be a slave [. . .]” (Hegel
2007 [1830]: 161). The entire scope of the contempt against those who do not stand
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 41

up and risk their lives to prove their freedom finally becomes obvious if one reads
what SS-overseers of Nazi extermination camps said about their Jewish prisoners.
In fact, Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, compares Jewish prisoners with
lemmings:
They were so weak; they allowed everything to happen – to be done to them. They were
people with whom there was no common ground, no possibility of communication – that
is how contempt is born. I could never understand how they could just give in as they did.
(Franz Stangl, in Sereny 1977: 232–233)

Hegel, with his struggle to death as a demonstration of freedom, participates in a

perspective that runs the risk of holding those in contempt who are not able, for
whatever reasons, to resist. In this sense, this positive account of dignity (dignity
as worth) may help to induce the very opposite of that at which it actually aims,
resulting in contempt instead of respect. Indeed, praise for the “upright carriage”
[der aufrechte Gang] (Bloch 1987: 174) can tacitly entail contempt for the broken
human being.2
Yet there is a second reading of Hegel’s struggle to death. Although both readings
depart from this struggle, we will see that they are in some respects opposed to one
another.

4.2.2 Hegel’s Idea of Recognition

In this second reading, the struggle to death can be seen as a struggle for recog-
nition. The two opponents demonstrate that they put their social being above their
physiological being; the self reveals that under certain conditions it subordinates
everything to its desire to be recognized – even its mere survival. Hegel puts this
existential absoluteness in this way: “Self-Consciousness exists in and for itself
when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being
acknowledged [als ein Anerkanntes]” (Hegel 1977 [1807]: 111). The demand for
recognition might become so strong that I am willing to put my life at risk simply
for the sake of honor. Historically, this was, of course, the case in rituals of dueling,
which allowed a man to re-establish his honor.
According to Hegel, these struggles are based in the fact that identities can be
threatened or wounded by acts of misrecognition or disrespect. This is because
recognition is constitutive of social and personal identity (Honneth 1995). In this
context, for Hegel, to recognize [anerkennen] goes beyond the meaning of “identifi-
cation”, it means even more than “to acknowledge someone”; above all, it means “to
value” or “to respect” the status of a certain being. Moreover, in an even stronger
sense, it means “to esteem”, “to honor” or “to love someone” (Inwood 1992). In
this sense, we can refer to Alexandre Kojève: human beings love to be loved; they

2 Margalit clearly points to the peril of any notion of dignity. He writes that any trait with which
one tries to justify respect for human beings “[. . .] must not be of the sort that it can be abused –
namely, that it can provide a reason for abhorrence or disrespect” (Margalit 1996: 62).
42 H. Kuch

want to be wanted (Kojève 1980: 5–6). For Kojève, the desire for recognition is
essentially the desire to be desired. In Kojève’s view, animal desire is directed at an
object – for example, a certain food to satisfy the feeling of hunger. Human desire
in contrast is not only directed at another subject, but at another subject’s desire.
Hegel’s basic idea was that subjects can only relate to themselves through
the medium of recognition. This is why recognition is, under certain conditions,
demanded so radically. The self only comes into existence within the dynamics of
recognition. This idea of the constitution of the self through recognition has a long
history. Starting off with Hegel, it was elaborated in the direction of social psychol-
ogy by George Herbert Mead (1995 [1934]), whilst from a more psychoanalytic
perspective it was Jacques Lacan (2003 [1953]) who followed this Hegelian thought.
More recently, the theory of recognition has been renewed by Axel Honneth (1995)
and Charles Taylor (1994). The idea of the constitution of the self through the medi-
ation of recognition includes at least three facets: Firstly, the self-relation at stake
in the procedure of recognition is not epistemic and cognitive, but normative and
practical. Thus it is rather about a person saying, “I know that I am good in math-
ematics” than about someone saying, “I know that I am six feet tall” (Tugendhat
1986: 18–21). Secondly, if recognition makes up identity, identity presupposes a
social world. If one is to take a normative relation towards oneself, one has to
live in a normative context (Honneth 1995). In this sense, reflexivity presupposes
reflection: reflection not in the meaning of introspection, but the reflection that is
mediated by another person (Margalit 2001). Thirdly, due to the dependency on sig-
nificant others in recognition dynamics, the becoming self relates to the world above
all affectively. In the early stages of subject-formation, the infant initially takes the
world in as a social world where it emotionally invests in the other and those objects
which it takes as substitutes for him or her (this is Lacan’s reading of Freud’s game
Fort! Da!, see Lacan (2003 [1953]: 113)). It is only through this detour via the
social world that a cognitive, objectifying reference to the world becomes possible
(Honneth 2008: 40–44).
Within the horizon of recognition theory, we can conceive dignity preliminarily
as a fundamental aspect of identity. The relation to oneself, which makes up identity,
is, as we have seen, a normative relation. This normative dimension is grasped in
terms like “self-respect” or “self-worth”. Both of these terms refer to internal rela-
tions of a person to herself, but both terms also have an external dimension (Margalit
1996: 44–53). While self-worth is visibly embodied and displayed in a social con-
text as pride, self-respect is equally embodied and displayed socially and overtly,
albeit differently: as dignity (Margalit 1996: 51–53). While self-respect refers to an
internal relation of a person to herself, dignity is the external, “lived” embodiment
of self-respect.3 Respect for others is the necessary source of the possibility to gain

3 Although I am obviously following Margalit and his conception of self-respect to a certain extent
here, it is not at all clear how he understands the relation between recognition (or respect) and
self-respect. Margalit even seems to question the importance of recognition: “Why should other
people’s recognition be important to one’s self-respect? After all, we are not talking about a per-
son’s self-esteem, which must be validated through interaction with others. Self-respect, in contrast
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 43

a normative relation towards oneself, not just in the sense of a feeling of self-worth
but also in the sense of self-respect.
In being the productive force in the formation of the self, recognition has, on
this account, a “productive”, i.e., “constitutive”, dimension. In this sense, dignity, as
embodied self-respect, is not so much the ground for respecting persons but rather
its result.4 But if so, who is it, then, to whom we owe respect? If there isn’t any
antecedent trait (for example, autonomy) which demands respect, then we do not
know any more whom to recognize at all. Why shouldn’t we, for example, rec-
ognize certain animals that until now have been excluded from our framework of
recognition (say worms)? If we take a look at Hegel once more, we can read his
idea of a struggle for recognition as an answer to this question. The struggle for
recognition, then, is a practical conflict in which the scope of the sphere of rec-
ognizable beings is negotiated. Here it becomes obvious which beings need to be
recognized or respected. It is the struggle for recognition that shows us which beings
care about being respected or not. Obviously, in the future there may be beings other
than human beings that demand recognition (cyborgs, perhaps, one day). If some-
day we get in touch with these beings and experience that they are beings that need
to be respected, then, I assume this would lead to a widening of our usage of the
term “human” – even if these beings may not necessarily “look” like “us”. If our
frames of recognition were to change, we would restructure our human world and
“form” or “constitute” within our practices of recognition a new group of human
beings.5
The fundamental question, therefore, is how to refine our sensitivity to how dif-
ferent demands for recognition could become manifest. I think Hegel’s idea of a
struggle for recognition is too narrow an answer. I will later argue that a demand for
recognition may take extremely bizarre forms which would not at all fit into Hegel’s
aggressive pattern of struggling. Albeit in its bizarre manifestation, a certain behav-
ior may articulate a demand for recognition, and the crucial question is whether or

to self-esteem, is the honor a person grants herself solely on the basis of the awareness that she
is human” (Margalit 1996: 24). But later, his argument is, quite on the contrary, that self-respect
ultimately depends on social contexts because this context is necessary to make it possible for
someone to articulate a concept of the human which everyone needs in order to be able to see
himself as human. And Margalit coins this social context in terms of recognition: He states that the
“skeptical justification for respecting human beings is rooted in the fact that we all recognize one
another as part of humanity and for this reason and this reason alone we deserve respect” (Margalit
1996: 124, my emphasis).
4 In recognition theory, there is an ongoing debate between an “attributive” (or “productive”)
approach to recognition which argues that certain beings are formed or constituted (or at least
constituted as selves) in recognition dynamics, and a “receptive” (or “reproductive”) approach
which assumes that recognition is the acknowledging of an antecedent value or characteristic (see
Honneth 2007: 331–332).
5 Of course, we cannot satisfy all demands for recognition. There is a difference between the basic
demand for being recognized as equal being and demands for being recognized in one’s special
qualities and merits. While the former principle of recognition is (or should be) distributed equally
and universally, the latter is distributed differentially and unevenly (see Honneth 1995: 92).
44 H. Kuch

not we are able to see or recognize in this behavior a demand for recognition. I will
return to this question later.
Until now I have presented two different readings of Hegel’s struggle to death.
While from the autonomy-perspective, the freedom of the will of the person is of
central importance, the recognition-perspective looks on the struggle to death as a
struggle for recognition. The two readings think of the overcoming of the struggle –
both parties recognizing each other – in a different way: While in the first reading,
it is the autonomy of the other person that is respected, in the second reading, it
is the person as desiring being that is respected. The two differing accounts entail
different ideas of what humiliation is about. The autonomy-perspective looks at
dignity violations as restrictions or denials of other persons’ autonomy. My dignity
is violated when others treat me only as a means, and not as an end, because this is
a way of denying my autonomy. In contrast to this, recognition theory understands
humiliation as a radical loss of recognition that may be effected through practices
of exclusion.6

4.2.3 Longing for Humiliation

We have seen that Hegel’s primordial scene of the struggle to death can be read
as an answer to the question of which beings we do recognize or respect, or, at
least, to which we morally owe recognition. We respect (or we should respect)
those beings who prove themselves to depend on respect. The struggle to death
is one answer to the question of which beings really demand to be recognized. But
obviously it is too narrow to presume that the desire for recognition would only
or primarily manifest itself in a struggle to death. Perhaps Hegel in this respect
was too much caught up in the rituals and practices of his times (maybe having
honor duels in mind). Thus, instead of presupposing a heroic fearlessness – as in
putting one’s life actively at risk only for the sake of honor – one can also choose to
widen the framework of recognition. Then, more passive expressions of the desire

6 There are, however, cases that may look at first sight like examples of humiliations (in the sense
of a loss of recognition) but that turn out, after a closer look, to be examples of a loss of self-control
(i.e., as a restriction of autonomy). If we take a look at a racist insult, for example, we may assume
that the insulted person knows that the expression was a mere insult and that it is not true, but
nevertheless may feel humiliated – and this may be mainly because of the fact that he or she is not
able to meet the challenge and throw back another, equally humiliating insult. That is to say that
the insult as such may not be humiliating, but the inability to return the challenge actually is. “Our
humiliation consists, at least in part, in the particular sort of powerlessness that not answering the
challenge represents – weakness, cowardice, lack of wit etc.” (Silver et al. 1986: 273). In other
words: In this perspective, it would not be the loss of recognition that is humiliating but the loss of
autonomy. Yet I think this objection overestimates the dimension of autonomy here. The problem
in the example is not so much the loss of control but the specific content of what is said about the
insulted person. Of course, experiencing a loss of self-control is a bad thing, but this experience
would have been a lot less bad if the insult had been a mere personal insult against some individual
weak point.
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 45

for recognition come into focus. In fact, there are human beings who have pre-
ferred death to the possibility of being ashamed (Lynd 1958: 29). The shame of
being humiliated, of living in a state of non-recognition, can be so unbearable that
the ashamed person chooses death. This, too, is a version of Hegel’s idea of the
primacy of recognition over physiological life. But it would, indeed, be an impor-
tant modification of his account of recognition, as it implies a shift from heroism
to passivity. But there may be even more bizarre manifestations of the desire for
recognition.
It is Judith Butler’s idea that under certain circumstances the desire for recog-
nition may turn into a desire for humiliation. And this desire for humiliation may
appear itself – and that is a crucial, and even tragic, point – to be humiliating, con-
temptible, or undignified. To put it in other words: The trait on account of which
someone should be respected (that is, because she or he depends on being respected)
could turn into a reason to hold him or her in contempt. It is this radical inversion
of our longing for recognition that makes a deepening or widening of our sensitivity
for the vulnerability of others so necessary.
But how can that be? How can the desire for recognition turn into a desire to
be humiliated? Let us look at two narratives – one more historic, the other more
fictional. The first is a story which tells of the days when the Nazi concentration
camps were liberated by the allies. A little Jewish girl is found by soldiers; they
ask her for her name. She answers: “Jewish pig” [Judensau]. The second example
is taken from a crucial scene in the film “Happiness” (directed by Todd Solondz,
USA 1998). Billy’s father sexually abuses one of his son’s friends. As the offence is
revealed, Billy makes his father explain himself. But Billy does not directly accuse
his father of the abuse. Instead, he appears rather to reproach him for having raped
his friend and not him.
Both examples deal with exceptional situations, and while the latter is obviously
fictive, neither is the historic truth of the former certain. Moreover, both narratives
are about children, beings who are extremely dependent on others. Nevertheless, I
think both examples reveal something – even if they are purely fictional, even if
they depict extreme and exceptional situations. Indeed, both scenes reveal extreme
possibilities within the dynamics of recognition: that there can in some cases be
so little recognition between humans – the demand for recognition thus so great –
that even an act of humiliation is taken as an act of recognition. Under particular
circumstances, it could better to be “enthralled” than to have no social existence at
all (Butler 2004: 4–5). Something that may hurt us even more than insults is the
complete closure of communication, that is, social death in silence. In this sense,
humiliation is at the very least a minimal form of recognition – which may be still
more bearable than not to be recognized at all. In her reflections on hate speech,
Judith Butler points to that possibility:
There is no way to protect against that primary vulnerability and susceptibility to the call of
recognition that solicits existence, to that primary dependency on a language we never made
in order to acquire a tentative ontological status. Thus we sometimes cling to the terms that
pain us because, at a minimum, they offer us some form of social and discursive existence.
(Butler 1997a: 26)
46 H. Kuch

With this idea Butler radically transforms Hegel’s heroism. While the Hegelian
autonomous subject might say: “It is better to die than to be subjected to someone”,
Butler’s subject of recognition would say: “It is better to be subjected to someone
than to die” – and this death being not the physiological but the social death of the
subject (for her notion of “social death” see Butler 2000: 73–74).
The Hegelian struggle to death thus leads to two opposed accounts. As a demon-
stration of autonomy, one can say that the struggle reveals the dignity of human
beings – understood as their capacity for freedom or autonomy. As a struggle for
recognition, however, it leads to the idea of a dependency on recognition – a depen-
dency that renders us vulnerable to the insults or humiliations of others. And this
dependency on recognition may go so far that human beings accept their own sub-
jection. From the viewpoint of the first perspective – the autonomy-perspective –
this openness for subjection might itself appear to be humiliating. A person who
readily accepts an insult would demonstrate no self-respect or integrity. From the
autonomy-standpoint, the servility of the dependent subject may even result in con-
tempt. Such an attachment can appear to be utterly undignified. It is for this reason
that I am reluctant to say that the demand for recognition “is” or “constitutes” human
dignity. The dependency on recognition entails an attachment which can appear to
be humiliating as such – at least to some extent, however minor. The notion of dig-
nity can imply an idea of strength, and it is this idea of strength which could –
unintentionally – help to make us turn away from those who are overtly dependent
on others, susceptible to the gestures of others even if they are humiliating. Within
the horizon of recognition theory, this inability to resist, this susceptibility for sub-
jection can itself be brought up by our dependency on recognition – which is, in this
perspective, at the same time the reason why we are vulnerable to humiliation at all
in the first place.
Do I propose, then, to do away with the notion of dignity altogether? I am not
sure. Of course, at this point, one could argue that this focus on vulnerability only
makes it necessary to restate the concept of dignity in negative terms. In fact, there
are approaches which are “negative” in the sense that they take a certain “lack”
or “weakness” as the criterion which renders human beings dignified. Sometimes
this lack is spelled out in terms of “recognition” or “respect”: we are beings who
need the respect of others (Baumann 2003). Sometimes this lack is seen in the fact
that we are beings who need justifications (Forst 2005). Sometimes it is seen in
the fact that we are beings who can suffer humiliation (Schaber 2003). I doubt,
however, that our ordinary language can be extended in a way that the term “dig-
nity” designates a lack or a weakness at all. In a non-moral context, we speak of
a “dignitary” (Würdenträger) when we refer to priests or judges – that is, to social
positions of high rank and authority. Or we say: “He maintained his dignity despite
his great defeat” (in a football game, for example).7 In these and similar cases, the
term dignity signifies a certain greatness or (inner) strength; by no means a lack.

7 For these and similar, convincing examples of our ordinary usage of “dignity” see Roughley
(1996: 784) or Schaber (2003: 120).
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 47

However, there still is a possibility to rethink dignity as vulnerability (that is, as

lack). Perhaps it is necessary to underline the fact that certain beings are able to be
humiliated. In fact, Richard Rorty sees the most basic human essence in “our shared
ability to suffer humiliation” (Rorty 1989: 91, my emphasis). Of course, it seems
paradoxical to show a certain weakness or fragility to be an ability. But maybe this
is exactly the decisive conceptual move here. In this sense, the term vulnerability
would indeed designate an “ability”. Yet, it would definitively not refer to the posi-
tive capacities, abilities, and faculties, the attributes and qualities, which have been
at the centre of philosophical reflection on human nature for such a long time –
be this faculty or quality, this “pouvoir” or “avoir”, as Jacques Derrida called it,
reason, autonomy, or language (Derrida 2002). The negative approach to dignity
presented here would rather point to a dimension in which certain creatures are
more vulnerable than others – nevertheless, it would be a distinctive, that is, extraor-
dinary, characteristic. Symbolic vulnerability, though indicating a weakness, does
in fact comprise a sensitiveness which exceeds the sensitiveness of other creatures.
Perhaps, then, our picture of the moral notion of dignity should not refer to, say, the
solidity of an old tree (which stands there perfectly poised and self-contained) or the
sublime movement of a person (for instance an aristocratic lady) but rather to the
dignity of a gracefully delicate, wafer-thin porcelain vase – the fragility of which is
overtly visible. For, perhaps, it is precisely this openness to see fragility that would
allow room for the potential to recognize – and thereby respect – such gracefulness.

4.3 Symbolic Vulnerability

4.3.1 Speech, Gifts, and Recognition

Until now I have discussed the fabric of the specific human vulnerability which
renders us sensitive to the humiliations inflicted upon us by others. I have situated
this vulnerability within the context of the dependency of human beings on recog-
nition. Having dealt with vulnerability in this sense, I will now move on to enquire
whether, and if so in what sense, we should look at this vulnerability as symbolic
vulnerability.
In his “Decent Society,” Avishai Margalit aptly pointed to “the fact that human
beings are creatures capable of feeling pain and suffering not only as a result of
physically painful acts but also as a result of acts with symbolic meaning” (Margalit
1996: 84–85). For him, humiliations are cruelties – not in the sense of physical cru-
elties, but symbolic cruelties. In this context, he refers to the example of mimicking
a person’s stammer (Margalit 1996: 88) which for him is an act of humiliation, and
obviously one constituted by mere words. It is this idea brought by Margalit and
others that I want to explore in what follows.8 To point to the symbolic dimension

8 Although Margalit is one important philosopher amongst others who have introduced the idea of
a symbolic vulnerability, he does not really tell us why human beings are vulnerable in this specific
48 H. Kuch

of violations of human dignity does not mean that there would be an isolated class
of humiliating acts which are symbolic actions while other violations of human dig-
nity would be non-symbolic. Violations of human dignity are symbolic as such. Of
course, the term “symbolic” here does not mean “non-effective” or “non-serious”
(as we could use the term “symbolic” to mean, for example, the “token price” of
real estate when it is sold for nearly nothing). My thesis is that only those actions
which are to some extent symbolic actions violate human dignity. To be sure, vio-
lence – for example, under torture – inflicts physical pain, but if the violence is
meant to humiliate the victim, it has a symbolic dimension. The same is true of
poverty: Of course, poverty can lead to bad nutrition, or even to hunger. But the
humiliating dimension of poverty lies in its symbolic impact. As we will see, all
these actions and conditions humiliate insofar as they constitute a certain gesture of
exclusion.
This symbolic dimension of humiliation has its roots in the fabric of recognition.
In recent social theories, the “act of recognition” is spelled out in symbolic terms:
To be recognized is, in this view, to be addressed by the other. The primal scene of
this addressing is the act of being given a proper name. It is the proper name that
introduces us into the social and which locates us in a social context. The proper
name makes it possible to be addressed by others – not only now, but within the
duration of time. While “you” only refers to a concrete addressee here and now
(and to another addressee in another situation), the proper name makes our social
existence persisting (Butler 1997b: 101–103). In more general terms, one can look at
language not only as a means of transferring “information” or of making statements
with propositional content. Rather, it is about opening up social relations. Language,
or more precisely, the interplay between demand and answer, can be seen as an
exchange of gifts and thus as a ritual of recognition. To “give an answer” would
then literally mean the giving of a corporeal thing, a gift. This, for example, is
exactly what rituals of greeting are about: The “Hi, how are you doing?” is not so
much concerned with propositional content; it is just about opening up a relationship
between self and other, and in this it is a ritual of reciprocal recognition. The idea
of conceiving recognition as a symbolic act was most prominently introduced by
the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (who himself was deeply influenced by
Kojève’s famous lectures on Hegel’s “Phenomenology” in the 1930s at the École des
Hautes Etudes in Paris). According to Lacan, a baby’s crying for food indicates a
need for nourishment. But this need is exceeded by the human desire for recognition

sense. Margalit just gives a vague reference to the work of Ernst Cassirer (Margalit 1996: 85). Why
doesn’t he connect the question of symbolic vulnerability to his idea that the constitution of self-
respect depends on a normative social context (Margalit 1996: 124)? What is even more difficult is
the problem that Margalit is rather vague about the idea of humiliation as symbolic cruelty itself.
In fact, later on in his “Decent Society,” he seems to associate the impact of humiliations with
the threat to the physiological life of the affected person: “The existential threat implicit in the
humiliation must be taken seriously, but not the humiliation itself. The victim has no reason to
see any flaw in human value, but only a danger to his existence, or to his basic human condition”
(Margalit 1996: 123).
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 49

(Lacan 2003 [1958]: 317). The baby not only cries out for food, it also strives to be
nourished with care and tenderness. That is why a baby’s nourishment by its parents
is always both a donation of food and the giving of love. The baby’s need is directed
at the object, but the baby’s desire aims at the object as a gift: Food is thus a symbol
for the baby, a symbol of love. In turning into a symbol, the object de-materializes.
The symbol is, to put it in Lacanian terms, the death of the object (Lacan 2003
[1953]: 114).
Of course, at this point one might object that recognition in this view is “merely”
symbolic. This objection is important as there are indeed social practices in which
symbolic recognition functions as an ideological dispositive (this is discussed at
great length in Honneth 2007). Consider, for example, recent discourses in which
employees are increasingly addressed as entrepreneurs of their own labor-power
[Arbeitskraftunternehmer]. This interpellation addresses the employees as subjects
with greater autonomy, with a larger agency, with more hope for individual self-
realization. At the same time, one can clearly see that the working conditions
themselves have not been very much improved beyond renaming the status of the
employees. In fact, working conditions may even have worsened: Demands on
employees may have increased (in terms of working hours or unpaid overtime,
intellectual demands, or responsibilities) while the “material” conditions in terms
of payment, for example, may have been kept at the same level. In this sense, ideo-
logical, “merely” symbolic recognition can function as means to give esteem to the
addressees to make them accept “material” changes for the worse. For these reasons,
Axel Honneth concludes that “an act of recognition cannot consist in mere words or
symbolic expressions [. . .]” if it is not supposed to function ideologically (Honneth
2007: 329). Acts of recognition remain insufficient if “they do not go beyond the
merely symbolic plane to the level of material fulfillment” (Honneth 2007: 346).
This is certainly true. But that does not render recognition merely symbolic. On
the contrary, one ought to take into account the fact that “material fulfillments”
are part of the process of recognition and that, in this respect, they too count as
symbolic. The persons concerned take these fulfillments as a societal expression of
their esteem. In turn, the absence of material fulfillment is primarily experienced as
social disrespect, which means that it too is experienced as symbolic.9 In the end,
the objection does not contradict but, on the contrary, supports my argument: Even
material goods and conditions can turn into symbols of recognition; that is, they can
function as symbols.
But not only must we take into account the fact that goods and objects can turn
symbolic – the symbolic, too, has its own materiality. In the context of his reflections

9 Although Honneth’s argument aims at a different direction, he involuntarily supports my argument

when saying that “material fulfillments” should “lead to modes of behavior that give real expres-
sion to the actual value articulated in the original act” (Honneth 2007: 345, my emphasis). In his
discussion with Nancy Fraser, Honneth argues that the societal distribution of goods is not opposed
to the cultural sphere of recognition, but instead one part of it. In other words, the distribution of
goods is itself a medium of the social expression of esteem (Honneth 2003: 150–159).
50 H. Kuch

on recognition, Lacan clearly articulates this idea. While in the circulation of recog-
nition, the object becomes symbolic, the symbol at the same time turns, to some
degree, into a corporeal thing: “Speech is in fact a gift of language, and language
is not immaterial. It is a subtle body, but body it is” (Lacan 2003 [1953]: 95). The
corporeality of speech lies in the fact that the linguistic gift is not so much about
semantic content; for the recipient, the significance of an expression lies, to begin
with, in the event of being addressed at all.

4.3.2 The Rituality of Humiliation

If it is true that acts of respect or recognition have a constitutive symbolic dimension,
the same is true for acts of disrespect. Humiliations are always communicative acts;
they communicate the radical disrespect of an actor towards the addressee (see,
for example, Baumann 2003: 28). Of course, humiliating acts or conditions are not
always as such purely symbolic. Poverty and torture are only two examples in a
wide range of humiliating practices which are not at all merely symbolic. Yet, in
what follows, I want to explore the idea that humiliations always have at least a
symbolic dimension. And it is precisely the symbolic dimension of these “material”
practices or conditions which render them humiliating. Moreover, the symbolicity
of humiliation is not an additive or contingent supplement but rather a constitutive
element.
In order to gain a first impression of the symbolic practices of violating human
dignity, it is helpful to take a closer look at the notion of honor. Despite some funda-
mental differences, there are, as we have seen, important overlaps between dignity
and honor. While the modern notion of dignity points to the fundamental equality
of every human being, the notion of honor includes a hierarchical and asymmetric
relationship between those who “have” and those who do not have honor (Berger
1973, Margalit 1996: 41–43). But honor as well as dignity can be seen as constituted
by a symbolic sphere surrounding a person to which others have to pay attention in
their behavior and which can easily be threatened by the actions of others, namely
by their symbolic actions. Thus, an insult may be nothing more than a mere word;
however, it is, in its essence, an assault on honor (Berger 1973). In honor cultures,
your name can be “spotted”, for example, when you are insulted. The slur “dark-
ens” a person’s good name, leaving “stains” on his or her honor – and thus giving
rise to the cultural demand to “clear” it (Benedict 2005 [1946]: 145–176). Another
example is the importance of rituals in honor societies. For instance, the ritual of the
appropriate greeting is extremely important in these societies. In turn, the absence of
a response to one’s greeting is dishonoring. In the words of Hans-Georg Gadamer,
an unreturned greeting

[. . .] would be fatal for one’s consciousness of self. Think of the feeling of humiliation when
a greeting is not returned, be it because the other refuses to take cognizance of you – a dev-
astating defeat for your consciousness or self – or because he is not the person you thought
he was but someone else and hence does not recognize you [. . .] (Gadamer 1996: 159).
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 51

Besides obviously symbolic cases like that of the gauntlet (which is thrown to ini-
tiate an honor-duel), one can also look at rather intricate practices of dishonoring.
A slap in the face, for example, is not only dishonoring (even more so when you
are slapped with the back of the hand), it is also situated at the threshold to physical
violence. But no matter how slight a slap in the face might be in physical terms –
never can it be insignificant. This is because the slap does not mainly aim at the
body, it rather aims at a symbolic sphere: It hits the face, and thereby make’s one
“lose face”. While the slap in the face may be physically violent, the humiliating
dimension, its threat to the “face”, is purely symbolic.
Returning from the pre-modern concept of honor to modern concepts of dignity,
we can see that even here its violation can be effected by mere words. Racist dis-
crimination does not, of course, only function through discourses and words, but it
is significant that discriminating speech acts do play an important role (Graumann
1998). It is for this reason that the proper name has often been a target of humiliation
(see Chapter 10 by Herrmann, this volume).
But what about “material” violations of human dignity, like poverty or tor-
ture? Some people say that these cases do not concern questions of dignity, simply
because there are other factors at stake which weigh much more than dignity vio-
lations. The involuntary suffering of physical violence or the deprivation of vital
goods are such radical forms of social injustice which need not be criticized in
terms of dignity. Let us first take a look at the case of poverty. It is the very prob-
lem of relative poverty which raises questions of dignity and which makes clearer
the symbolic dimension of violations of human dignity. That is different with abso-
lute poverty. Of course, absolute poverty is closely connected to humiliation. For
example, when a person is forced to eat what others throw away (see, for example,
Margalit 1996: 228). Nevertheless, the problem of absolute poverty resides primar-
ily elsewhere, that is, in the material consequences of poverty: hunger, the danger
it presents to one’s life, its effects on one’s health. It would be too little to criticize
absolute poverty only as a violation of human dignity, because absolute poverty
concerns a dimension which is even more fundamental than human dignity – the
dimension of an existential viability.10 This is different with relative poverty. The
justification of a critique of relative poverty in terms of its “material” consequences
is obviously more difficult than is the case with regard to absolute poverty. This
is because it is possible that the relative poverty of a group may have increased
although its prosperity may have too. Nevertheless, relative poverty can be criti-
cized in terms of dignity, and this is exactly because of the symbolic dimension of

10 This example again sheds light on Hegel’s “struggle to death”. Of course, this struggle might
have suggested that humans always put their autonomy or their recognition above their physiologi-
cal life – or in other words: that recognition is more fundamental than life. Yet I think it only shows
that human beings are able to put their recognition above their life; but that neither means that they
always actually are willing to risk their life or to commit suicide, nor that they should do this, nor
that recognition as such is more fundamental than life. Besides, I have tacitly criticized Hegel and
his whole narrative of the struggle because of its heroic undertone, while I have, at the same time,
tried to save his idea of the importance of recognition
52 H. Kuch

humiliation. In recognition theory, the societal distribution of goods counts as an

expression of social esteem (see Chapter 12 by Müller and Neuhäuser, this volume).
To be relatively poor thus means to receive very little recognition. If this imbal-
ance in the general prosperity of a society is too strong (what exactly this means is
not relevant here), relative poverty can be humiliating. The symbolic dimension of
humiliation, in this case, lies not only in the fact that the socio-economic inequality
can be seen by the persons concerned as social misrecognition. It has also to do
with the relationality of relative poverty: A certain amount of goods is not as such
humiliating but only in reference to other amounts of goods.
Let us move on to another example of humiliation, which, at first sight, does not
look symbolic at all, that is, torture. Torture can roughly be understood as the act of
inflicting physical pain on someone, deliberately and systematically, against his or
her will, and as inflicting pain in a way that does not necessarily lead to the death
of the affected person. This is not to say that torture is a less extreme form of physi-
cal violence than murder. On the contrary, the endless extension of inflicting pain –
together with the concomitant aim to keep the victim alive and conscious – is defini-
tively one of the most extreme forms of physical violence. How, then, should there
be any symbolic dimension at all? And if there were, is it this dimension that con-
stitutes the humiliating impact of torture? Here again, just as in the case of absolute
poverty, the forced suffering of pain can be criticized as such without reference to
human dignity. But torture as a violation of dignity is humiliating exactly as a result
of its symbolic dimension. A whole variety of symbolic actions are part of the tor-
ture. For example, a typical aspect of torture is the demonstration of the instruments
of torture (Scarry 1985: 27). And even though torture, at least in modern societies,
has withdrawn into the cellars of power and is thus no longer a public spectacle (as
was the case in pre-modern times), it still has to some extent a “theatrical” dimen-
sion (Zirfas 2004). There is abundant evidence that even in modernity tormentors
find theatrical metaphors for the sites of torture. For example, the scene of torture is
called “cinema room” or “blue lit stage” (Scarry 1985: 28). The theatrical dimension
is also evident in the use of photographs in Abu Ghraib, as referred to at the begin-
ning of this paper. Furthermore, the postures, which the victims are often forced to
take on, play an important role. Kneeling down or taking the posture of a dog, for
example, are highly coded positions; they designate, above all, humiliation. Finally,
we can find further symbolic actions which are of crucial importance to torture, such
as the forced eating of feces, for example, with feces being one of the most abject
objects in human society.
Nevertheless, all these elements could be seen as merely additional and contin-
gent, sometimes accompanying the actual violence in torture, sometimes not. This
may be true, yet within the realm of torture, violence itself is symbolically charged
with meaning. This is because in most cases violence in torture is an end in itself.
Compared to the violence in a holdup, for example, it is often not a means to an
end (as in the case of the holdup, say, a means to steal someone’s money). Surely,
at first sight, torture appears to be about extorting a confession out of someone.
However, in most cases, it is not (Scarry 1985: 28). Either the tormentor already
knows what he finally comes to hear. Or the victim tells the tormentor anything, just
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 53

to have something to confess at all. Whatever information gleaned from a torture

victim may just as well be misleading, for the tormentor knows that the victim will
eventually say anything the tormentor might want to hear – just to make him end
his cruelty.11 Violence is thus no means to an end in torture. It is an end in itself.
Precisely this is the primary reason why violence in torture is always at the same
time symbolic. In assuming a symbolic meaning, the violence then stands for some-
thing. As a “spectacle of power” (Scarry 1985: 27), torture is thus not just about
inflicting pain, it is at the same time a demonstration of inflicting pain. The tormen-
tor acquires absolute power, while the victim may have no agency left at all – his
will broken, his integrity damaged, not even being able to commit suicide, this last
little bit of freedom human beings normally have, but instead reduced to begging the
tormentor to let him die, which he, the tormentor, refuses. The tormentor demon-
strates his absolute power, while the powerlessness of the victim is overtly exposed
(see also Chapter 8 by Maier, this volume). To be sure, one could argue that this
is the right track, though the argument, from a certain point on, is carried too far.
The humiliation, according to the objection, is just about losing one’s power, one’s
freedom. In torture, there is no agency left at all, and that is its humiliating core.
Yet this argument does not go far enough. Torture is not just about absolute power
and absolute powerlessness, it is about demonstrating absolute power and being
exposed in one’s powerlessness. This exposed powerlessness, on the one hand, and
the demonstrated power, on the other, is the humiliating truth of torture (Schick
1997). In this sense, torture has an essentially symbolic dimension. And this demon-
stration of powerlessness has to do with recognition, or, more specifically, with a
loss of recognition. To be exposed in one’s absolute powerlessness implies, pre-
cisely in its symbolic dimension, a radical loss of recognition. Autonomy, freedom,
or agency are of central importance in our cultural values, and their loss may be
a reason for far-reaching devaluation; that is, an extreme loss of recognition. Here
again, I follow Avishai Margalit who argues that the loss of self-control is more like
a sub-category of exclusion from the “human commonwealth” (Margalit 1996: 115).
If torture, then, is constitutively linked with symbolic, theatrical, or ritual elements
as well as with the question of recognition and its loss, where is the body left? To be
sure, if torture is about inflicting pain, then the body does indeed play a crucial role.
The body is the site of the violence of torture – not just in the sense that the body is
the target or object of violence, but also, and maybe even more importantly, in the
sense that the victim is reduced to being a mere bodily being, a being reduced to an
animal-like corporeality:
The purpose of torture is not only to make a person talk, but make him betray others. The
victim must turn himself by his screams and by his submission into a lower animal, in the
eyes of all and in his own eyes (Sartre 1958: 24).

In the course of torture, the victim loses more and more his reference to the world,
being thrown back to his own bodily existence. The victim thus gradually loses his
or her human voice (Scarry 1985: 35). At the end, he or she can but scream like

11 I am indebted to the helpful notes of Steffen Herrmann.

54 H. Kuch

an animal, or only just breath and stutter. This, again, is a dimension of the loss
of recognition which the victim suffers: to be excluded from humankind by being
reduced to a merely bodily being (Throta 1997: 29).
It is this rejection or exclusion that lies at the heart of humiliation. Exclusion
is one form of a deep loss of recognition. Surely, not every loss of recognition
is humiliating. An insult constitutes a “weak” form of loss of recognition which
threatens a person in her honor or prestige, but not yet in her dignity (Margalit
1996: 115–116). An important practical realization of strong forms of disrespect is
the practice of exclusion (see Chapter 10 by Herrmann, this volume). Exclusion,
in this view, refers to an essentially social process, as it is linked with recognition,
or, more precisely, with misrecognition. Of course, exclusion can be understood
literally, as spatial segregation, when we think of ghettos, for example. In the per-
spective of social exclusion, however, the process of exclusion is internally linked
with the problem of recognition. In this account, Axel Honneth understands exclu-
sion mainly in terms of legal non-recognition, in the sense that certain social groups
are denied basic equal rights (Honneth 1995: 131–139). But he also deals with more
daily and subtle forms of exclusion in the shape of social invisibility, for exam-
ple. For him, invisibility can be part of everyday racism and is experienced by the
concerned person as if others would behave towards him or her as if he or she
were physically absent: you are not greeted, for example, or you get the feeling that
others look through you (Honneth 2001). Avishai Margalit also deals with various
forms of exclusion, of which the most extreme form ends in the extermination of the
Jews in Nazi-Germany (Margalit and Motzkin 1996). A more widespread practice
of exclusion for him is discrimination against what he calls “encompassing groups”
(Margalit 1996: 135–143), that is, the humiliation of those groups which are inte-
gral for the identity of their members. Within recognition theory, it is Judith Butler
who, in her recent writings, works out the notion of “social death” (Butler 2000:
73–74). With this term she refers to a form of “non-intelligibility” to which certain
groups are subjected (Butler 2004: 146–147). To fall out of our established frames
of sexuality (in the case of gays and lesbians) or to fall out of our usual frames of
gender-identity (in the case of transgender-identities) is, for her, a position of non-
recognizability. All these various forms of exclusion are, in the recognition-account,
held as ways in which certain persons are humiliated, because excluding practices
can bring about a more or less severe loss of recognition.

References
Baumann, Peter. 2003. Menschenwürde und das Bedürfnis nach Respekt. In Menschenwürde.
Annäherung an einen Begriff, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 19–34. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Benedict, Ruth. 2005 [1946]. The chrysanthemum and the sword: Patterns of Japanese culture.
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Berger, Peter L. 1973. Excursus: On the obsolescence of the concept of honor. In The homeless
mind. Modernization and consciousness, ed. Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried
Kellner, 83–96. New York, NY: Random House.
Bettelheim, Bruno. 1961. The informed heart: Autonomy in a mass age. New York, NY: Free Press.
4 The Rituality of Humiliation: Exploring Symbolic Vulnerability 55

Bloch, Ernst. 1987. Natural law and human dignity. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Butler, Judith. 1997a. Excitable speech. A politics of the performative. New York, NY and London:
Routledge.
Butler, Judith. 1997b. The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Butler, Judith. 2000. Antigone’s claim: Kinship between life and death. New York, NY: Columbia
University Press.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso.
Butler, Judith. 2007. Torture and the ethics of photography. Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space 25(6): 951–966.
Derrida, Jacques. 2002. The animal that therefore I am (more to follow). Critical Inquiry 28(2):
369–418.
Forst, Rainer. 2005. Die Würde des Menschen und das Recht auf Rechtfertigung. Deutsche
Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53(4): 589–596.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1996. Hegel’s dialectic of self-consciousness. In Hegel’s dialectic of
desire and recognition, ed. John O’Neil, 149–168. Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The black Atlantic. Modernity and double consciousness. London: Verso.
Graumann, Carl F. 1998. Verbal discrimination: A neglected chapter in the social psychology of
aggression. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 28: 41–61.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1977 [1807]. Phenomenology of spirit. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 1983 [1805–1806]. Hegel and the human spirit: A translation of
the Jena lectures on the philosophy of spirit (1805-6) with commentary. Detroit, MI: Wayne
State University Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. 2007 [1830]. Hegel’s philosophy of mind. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Honneth, Axel. 1995. The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Honneth, Axel. 2001. Invisibility: On the epistemology of “recognition”. Supplement to the
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 75(1): 111–126.
Honneth, Axel. 2003. Redistribution as recognition. In Redistribution or recognition? A political-
philosophical exchange, eds. Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth, 110–197. London: Verso.
Honneth, Axel. 2007. Recognition as ideology. In Power and recognition. Axel Honneth and
the tradition of critical social theory, eds. Bert van den Brink and David Owen, 323–347.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Honneth, Axel. 2008. Reification. A new look at an old idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Inwood, Michael. 1992. Recognition and acknowledgement. In A Hegel dictionary, ed. Michael
Inwood, 245–247. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kant, Immanuel. 1964 [1785]. The groundwork of the metaphysic of morals. New York, NY:
Harper.
Kojève, Alexandre. 1980. Introduction to the reading of Hegel: Lectures on the phenomenology of
spirit. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
Lacan, Jacques. 2003 [1953]. The function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis. In
Écrits. A selection, 33–125, London and New York, NY: Routledge.
Lacan, Jacques. 2003 [1958]. The signification of the phallus. In Écrits. A selection, 311–322.
London and New York, NY: Routledge.
Lynd, Helen Merrell. 1958. On shame and the search for identity. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace
& Co.
Margalit, Avishai and Gabriel Motzkin. 1996. The uniqueness of holocaust. Philosophy & Public
Affairs 25(1): 65–83.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Margalit, Avishai. 2001. Recognizing the brother and the other. The Aristotelian Society.
Supplementary Volume 75(1): 127–139.
56 H. Kuch

Mead, George H. 1995 [1934]. Mind, self, and society: From the standpoint of a social
behaviourist. Chicago, IL: University Press of Chicago.
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University
Press.
Roughley, Neil. 1996. Würde. In Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie, eds. Jürgen
Mittelstraß et al., vol. 4, 784–787, Stuttgart: Metzler.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1958. Preface. In The question, ed. Henri Alleg, 11–28. London: John Calder.
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Schaber, Peter. 2003. Menschenwürde als Recht, nicht erniedrigt zu werden. In Menschenwürde.
Annäherung an einen Begriff, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 119–131. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Schick, Frederic. 1997. On humiliation. Social Research 64(1): 131–146.
Sereny, Gitta. 1977. Into that darkness: An examination of conscience. London: Pan.
Silver, Maury et al. 1986. Humiliation: Feeling, social control and the construction of identity.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 16(3): 269–283.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. The politics of recognition. In Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of
recognition, 25–73. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Throta, Trutz von. 1997. Zur Soziologie der Gewalt. In Soziologie der Gewalt, ed. Trutz von Throta,
9–56. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Tugendhat, Ernst. 1986. Self-consciousness and self-determination. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Zirfas, Jörg. 2004. Rituale der Grausamkeit. Performative Praktiken der Folter. In Die Kultur des
Rituals: Inszenierungen, Praktiken, Symbole, ed. Christoph Wulf and Jörg Zirfas, 129–146.
München: Fink.
Chapter 5
Instrumentalization: What Does It Mean to Use
a Person?

Paulus Kaufmann

Abstract In Kant’s moral theory we find a close connection between the concept
of human dignity and the prohibition to use people merely as means. My chapter
follows Kant in tracing this connection. But in contrast to Kant, for whom the pro-
hibition to use people covers the whole range of perfect duties, I present an account
of using people that seems to be closer to our common sense understanding in that
it only covers a limited range of such duties. I will argue that, nevertheless, we need
the concept of human dignity to explain why it is at least prima facie wrong to use
people merely as means. The peculiar work that the concept of human dignity fulfills
in explaining the wrongness of these acts does not consist in making them wrong
directly. The concept of human dignity is rather necessary to explain how certain
other properties can make acts wrong. By applying the concept of human dignity
to the case of using people, we not only become able to explain the wrongness of
using, but we also see that the concept of human dignity does play an important role
in moral philosophy as a whole.

5.1 The Role of Dignity in Moral Theory

In this paper, I deal with three questions: First, I will ask what role the concept of
dignity can play in moral theory. Second, I will consider the question of what it
means to use a person. And thirdly, I will examine how the concept of dignity and
the concept of using people are connected. I will present one conception of dignity,
and I will argue that we need this conception of dignity to understand the intuitions
behind the idea that it is wrong to use other people merely as means.
What role can the concept of dignity play in moral theory? There is, of course,
more than one possible answer to this question. The word “dignity” has many dif-
ferent aspects, and moral philosophers when using this word differ significantly in
which of these aspects they stress. One therefore finds a great variety of conceptions

P. Kaufmann (B)
Centre for Ethics, University of Zurich, Switzerland
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 57

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_5,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
58 P. Kaufmann

of dignity in philosophical literature. And one also finds a great variety of roles the
concept of dignity is meant to play in different moral theories. I will not examine all,
or even the most important, of these different roles of dignity in my paper. Instead,
I wish to focus on one role that seems particularly important to me. This role can be
easily shown by a scheme that seems to capture one understanding of dignity, the
understanding we refer to when we say that some entities have dignity.1
According to this scheme, a thing has dignity if it has certain properties and these
properties lead to the thing having a higher status than other things. This status
requires a special kind of behavior towards it. An account of dignity in the relevant
sense has then three elements: a class of things, a class of properties, and a class
of implicit or explicit rules of behavior that define the special status of the things
in question. An account of dignity may thus be characterized by three questions:
(1) Who has dignity? (2) What properties underlie dignity? and (3) What behavior
fits with dignity?
Here are some examples: Sometimes we speak about the dignity of certain social
positions, as, for example, the dignity of a judge. We could then answer the three
questions by saying that judges have dignity because of their role in society and that
this dignity demands that we, for example, stand up when the judge enters the court
room.
In another sense, we might say that someone has dignity if he tends to react in
a certain way to social or natural adversities. In such cases, we sometimes say that
the person in question has the virtue of dignity. In this account of dignity, the three
questions are answered in the following way: First, it is all the people with a certain
character who have dignity. Second, this dignity is due to the disposition to react
to adversities with the right balance between submission and resistance. And third,
this dignity requires of us esteem and emulation.2
And a last example: Some people speaking about human dignity3 mean to say
that all members of the human species have dignity just because they belong to this
species, and that this dignity requires the compliance with certain rules such as the
strict prohibition of killing and the duty to help.
These examples illustrate a common feature of all accounts of dignity that fit with
the scheme I have presented: Dignity gives us reasons to act. Or more precisely:
Dignity is due to certain properties, and these properties give us reasons to treat
the bearer of these properties in a certain way. The relevant properties may give
us reason, for example, to stand up when a judge enters the room or not to kill a
human embryo. But these practical reasons are reasons of a particular kind. They
are not reasons to bring something about, but they are reasons to respect the bearer
of certain properties. While the fact that something is pleasant, for example, might

1 Different conceptions of dignity may for example be drawn from expressions such as “to live
under undignified circumstances” or “to be bereft of one’s dignity.” In the following, I will not
address these conceptions and their relation with the conception I am presenting.
2 For the definition of dignity as a virtue, see Beyleveld and Brownsword (2001: 58–60).
3 There are of course other accounts of human dignity that are less speciesist than this one.
5 Instrumentalization: What Does It Mean to Use a Person? 59

give us a reason to bring it about, the properties that underlie dignity do not give us
a reason of this kind. This distinction between two kinds of reasons is, of course,
Kant’s, who distinguishes between ends to bring about and ends to be respected.4
It is not at all easy to say exactly what it means to respect an end or the bearer of
certain properties, and I will not try to give a comprehensive answer to this question
here. Yet it seems to be intuitively plausible to say that if there are reasons to respect
something, these reasons put at least certain constraints on our behavior such as the
constraint not to destroy or hinder the property in question.5
What role is assigned to dignity within this scheme? According to the scheme, the
fact that someone possesses dignity does not provide an actor directly with reasons
to treat him in any way. The reasons for a certain treatment are the properties that
underlie his dignity. It is not the judge’s dignity that gives us a reason to stand up
when he enters the court room. Rather it is the fact that he plays a certain role for
society that makes this behavior necessary. What then is the role of the concept of
dignity here? To explain this role it will be helpful to call to mind that it is not
immediately evident that the possession of certain properties by some person or
other being might give reasons for action. If we think about properties that give us
reasons for action, we naturally think of properties of the act itself or of the states
the act may bring about. But the property in question is no property of any act
at all. Neither is it a state that anyone wishes to bring about. It is a property that
exists independently of the wishes and deeds of the actor. How can such a property
provide reasons for action? What I claim in this paper is that it is the role of dignity to
explain how this is possible. I will claim that certain properties can provide reasons
for action because they bestow dignity on the bearer of these properties. The bearer
then has a different status, so that he may not be treated in certain ways, although
it is legitimate to treat other things in these ways that do not possess the relevant
properties.
Thus, the central idea behind the conception of dignity I am presenting here is the
idea of properties bestowing status. This idea is certainly rather vague, but instead
of giving a definition, I want to give an example of how dignity can explain the
existence of certain constraints on behavior by making use of the idea of bestowing
status.
Before I proceed to the second question, the question of what it means to merely
use a person, let me stress one preliminary point: The constraint not to use other
people merely as means is just one constraint among others. It is not only wrong
to use people merely as means but also to insult, neglect or humiliate them. On
my reading, to respect dignity means to comply with the constraints with regard
to the bearer of certain properties. One thing that follows from this understanding

4 See Kant (1902: IV.437): “[. . .] so wird der Zweck hier nicht als ein zu bewirkender, sondern
selbstständiger Zweck, mithin nur negativ, gedacht werden müssen, d.i. dem niemals zuwider
gehandelt [. . .] werden muss.”
5 Kant expresses a similar idea when he says that a being with dignity “limits all choice” (“[. . .]
mithin sofern alle Willkür einschränkt”) (Kant 1902: IV.428). The close relation between respect
for persons and constraints on our behavior is also stressed by Stephen Darwall (1977, 2004).
60 P. Kaufmann

of respecting dignity is that the non-observance of a constraint cannot be offset by

bringing that property about in another person or nourishing an already existent
property. Another way of saying this would be that no person may be used in order
to improve overall respect for others. According to this understanding of dignity,
the particular constraint on using persons follows from the meaning of constraints
in general, but it does not follow that all particular constraints can be expressed
by saying that people shall not be used. It seems clear to me that we do violate
constraints due to the dignity of persons if we neglect, insult or humiliate them.
But we do not thereby use them.6 Let me now explain which cases of violating
constraints are, in my account, also cases of using people.

5.2 Using People

I propose to clarify our common sense understanding of the expression “to use a per-
son” by comparing it with our use of the expression “to use a tool.” Unsurprisingly,
both expressions have many features in common. According to my analysis, in order
to say that somebody uses a person or a tool, three conditions have to be fulfilled:
First, I only use a tool if I do something with the tool. If I only look at a hammer
or talk about it, I do not thereby use it. Similarly, I only use a person if I interact
with that person. This condition should be understood to imply that an act of mine
has some foreseeable effect on that other person.
Second, in our interaction we pursue a goal that is not directed towards a state of
the tool itself. That is, we do not use a knife if we sharpen it because the sharpness
we are aiming at is a state of the knife itself. Similarly, A does not use a person
B if in interacting with him she is finally aiming at a state that is supposed to be
good or even at a state that is supposed to be bad for B. Consider the following two
examples:
Christmas: In December, Ron and Jill are doing some shopping. Jill gets enthusiastic about
a scarf but does not buy it. Half an hour later Ron pretends that he forgot something, but, in
fact, he goes back to the shop and buys the scarf as a Christmas present for Jill.
Insult: A young man on a bicycle drives in the middle of the road thereby preventing a car
from overtaking. When the car finally manages to pass the bicycle, the car driver opens the
window and shouts derogatory words to the cyclist.

It seems clear to me that in none of these situations we would speak of someone

using another person. In Christmas, Ron tricks Jill to realize one of his goals. But
as his goal is to make Jill happy, we would not say that Ron uses Jill. In Insult,
the car driver wants to offend the cyclist but he does not use him. The reason for
our hesitation to speak of using in this case seems to be due to the fact that the
driver’s act is directed against the cyclist. These two points may be taken together

6 Here I disagree with Robert Nozick, for example, who seems to suggest that we use a person
whenever we violate a constraint that the properties of this person impose on us (Nozick 1974:
31–32).
5 Instrumentalization: What Does It Mean to Use a Person? 61

by claiming that for A to use B, A must pursue a goal that does not essentially
refer to B.7
Third, we only use a tool if we interact with it because we believe it to be useful
for our purposes. We do not use a hammer, for example, if we take it out of the tool
box to have more space to look for the screwdriver. In this case, the hammer is not
useful to us but an obstacle to pursuing our goal. Similarly, A only uses a person B
if A believes that B can contribute to his goal. B’s presence or participation must
play a role in A’s plan towards his ends,8 as the following examples may illustrate:
Pollution: The chemistry company Chisso introduces industrial waste polluted with mercury
into the open sea close to the city of Minamata, Japan. Approximately 10,000 people are
severely harmed.
Assassin: Trevis wants to kill the president. He stands in the crowd and shoots at the open
car of the president. He aims badly and would have missed the president if the driver would
have continued to drive at the same speed. But the driver suddenly slows down and the
bullet hits the president.

Chisso interacts with the people of Minamata and pursues a goal that does not refer
to these people. Yet it would have been a lot easier for Chisso to realize its goal
without these people. Thus Chisso did not use them. In Assassin, the driver’s par-
ticipation is necessary for the success of Trevis’ project. Yet Trevis does not use the
driver as the driver’s behavior was not part of his plan.
To summarize these results I would say that A uses B if and only if A interacts
with B because he believes that B’s presence or participation can contribute to the
realization of his goal but that this goal does not essentially refer to B.
These three conditions tell us what it means to use a person, but they certainly
do not already name a property that makes acts wrong. There are many cases where
using a person – in the sense just defined – is morally innocent: The conditions I
mentioned are, for example, fulfilled when I climb on a friend’s back to pick an
apple or when I take a taxi to get to work. In both cases, I interact with another
person believing that this person’s presence or participation can help me to realize
a goal that does not point to this person. But in such cases I am usually not acting
wrongly. So it is still necessary to draw the line between morally permissible and
impermissible cases of using people. Many authors including Kant mark this dis-
tinction between permissible and forbidden use by calling the latter a “mere use.”9
This wording is warranted by ordinary language where we use expressions such
as, “You were just using me.” What then distinguishes using a person from just or
merely using her?
To answer this question it is helpful to notice that climbing on a friend’s back is
not always morally innocent, as it seems at first glance. If we judge this case to be
morally innocent, we do so because we presuppose the friend’s consent. If I climb

7 A goal essentially refers to a person if it cannot be spelled out without linguistically referring in
any way to the person in question, be it by using proper names or definite descriptions.
8 Quinn (1989: 343, 348–349) and Scanlon (2008: 106) refer to a similar condition.
9 See, for example, Parfit (forthcoming, Chapter 8). On Kant see Paton (1948: 165), Ross (1969:
49) or Timmermann (2007: 96).
62 P. Kaufmann

on a friend’s back without his consent, almost all of us would say that I do interact
with him in a morally impermissible way. Thus it seems that the person I use must
give his consent that we have an interaction at all and must agree about what kind
of interaction we have.
The morally required consent can be expressed in diverse manners. In many
cases, consent is given verbally, of course, but in suitable situations a nod, a kiss
or even staying silent can be acts of morally transformative consent (Wertheimer
2003: 152–153). Besides, in some cases it is not necessary to actively ask for con-
sent. If Peter wants to climb on Paul’s back to pick an apple, and if both friends
know each other very well and have many times undertaken similar actions, then we
will not require Peter to explicitly ask for Paul’s consent. In any case, Peter must
believe that Paul agrees to the interaction and its conditions and he must be justified
in this belief.10 Sometimes this justification might be grounded in profound knowl-
edge of the other and many similar common experiences, but in most cases we can
only be justified in believing that the other is consenting if we explicitly ask him.
On my interpretation of the expression “to merely use a person” there are thus
two elements that define its content: The context of using and the condition of jus-
tified belief about the consent of the person used. Even if this account of merely
using someone seems to capture many of our intuitions and provides a rather clear-
cut concept, it is still not obvious what is wrong about merely using another person.
Let us therefore move on to my third question and ask how the concept of mere use
and the concept of dignity are connected.

5.3 Using People as a Violation of Dignity

In the first section of this chapter, I claimed that one role dignity fulfils is to explain
the existence of certain constraints on our behavior. In the following section, I spec-
ified one particular constraint, namely the prohibition not to use people merely as
means. Now, how does dignity fulfill its role with regard to this particular constraint?
How does it explain the existence of the constraint on merely using people?
Let me note first that the word “explain” might give rise to exorbitant expecta-
tions. I certainly cannot give an ultimate justification for the constraint in question,
nor can I convince inveterate skeptics about dignity. But what the concept of dignity,
as I understand it, can achieve is to structure an answer to the question of what is
wrong about merely using people.
So far I have characterized dignity by a scheme according to which a thing
has dignity if it has properties that bestow a status on its bearer, where this sta-
tus imposes certain constraints on how to treat him. What are the relevant properties
in the case of the constraint on merely using people? This becomes clearer if we
take note of a feature of the expression “to use a person” that I did not mention

10 With “justification” I do not mean moral but only epistemic justification. A similar idea is
expressed by Kerstein (2009).
5 Instrumentalization: What Does It Mean to Use a Person? 63

before: Compared to the talk of using tools or even animals, it does not sound good
to talk about using persons. We feel uneasy when we say “I’m using you,” and
in general we try to avoid this expression. Where does this hesitation come from?
According to my analysis, it is conceptually true that when I use a tool or a per-
son I am pursuing an end that is not essentially related to the thing that I use. Now
what is questionable about using persons seems to be the fact that in using a person
for my ends I am using a being that is capable of pursuing ends itself. A hammer
as well as a taxi driver can help me in realizing some of my goals. However, in
contrast to the hammer, the taxi driver also pursues a set of ends and continuously
decides how to realize them and how to weigh them against each other. Thus, when
I make him serve one of my ends, I may bar him from pursuing his ends. Thereby,
I somehow put myself above him and treat him as a tool. This seems to evoke the
above-mentioned negative moral responses towards such interactions. The property
that is impeded by merely using a person is thus the capacity to set and follow ends.
If merely using someone is a violation of dignity, in my sense, this property must
bestow a special status on its bearer and thereby impose constraints on how to treat
her. To understand the mere use of a person as a violation of dignity, we therefore
have to show that the capacity to set and follow ends really bestows status and
thereby imposes constraints. To show this, I want to consider what would follow if
we suppose that it does not.
It would, of course, not follow that we have no conceptual means to prohibit most
of the acts that are in fact prohibited by the constraint on merely using people as I
understand it. It would not even follow that our moral theory would have no place
for the peculiarity of the capacity to set and follow ends. Instead of referring to the
idea of bestowing status, one might simply say, for example, that this capacity is
valuable in itself and should therefore never be impeded or destroyed. By saying
this we would not presuppose that the capacity to set and follow ends bestows a
special status on its bearer, thereby imposing constraints on how to treat him. If we
do so, we arrive at a constraint that is significantly different from our constraint and,
as I would like to show, one that does not capture its intuitive plausibility. So I want
to show that we need the idea of dignity to explain the existence of the prohibition
of merely using people, a constraint I suppose to have intuitive appeal.
So what prohibition would follow if we say instead that the capacity to set and
follow ends is valuable in itself?11 It is my impression that the resulting prohibition
would face some major obstacles. First of all, such an approach would have to con-
front the question of what would be so valuable about setting and following ends.
The value of this capacity seems to be reducible to the value it has for its bearer or
for anybody else. The claim of an intrinsic value thus needs an extra justification that
seems hard to provide. Even if we accept the special value of this capacity, we con-
front an even bigger problem: We would have to explain why we cannot set off the

11 There might of course be other proposals than the one I am presenting: namely, the proposal to
obtain a similar prohibition by presupposing the capacity to set and follow ends to be valuable in
itself. I here assume that any proposal that does not refer to this capacity at all would be even less
capable of capturing our intuitions with regard to the constraint on merely using people.
64 P. Kaufmann

impeding of this property in one person by nourishing it in another? If the property

is valuable in itself,12 it seems plausible to demand the bringing about of as much of
this property as possible. If we concede this, then it becomes clear that the resulting
prohibition would have nothing to do with the prohibition of merely using people.
It would follow that it might be legitimate to set off the impeding of the valuable
property in one person by nourishing it in another. But that clearly contradicts one
of the features of the prohibition of merely using people. The prohibition of mere
use specifically forbids the use of one person for the sake of others. A prohibition
that dispenses with the idea of bestowing status therefore seems to be incapable of
expressing the intuitions behind the prohibition of merely using people.
Let me further clarify this argument by pointing to the difference between the
intrinsic value of a property and the status, or value, of a person or other object.
Properties are abstract objects that are instantiated in particular things. They can
be instantiated to different degrees, and they can be instantiated in any number of
objects. Particular objects cannot be instantiated and so it seems less plausible to
conclude from their intrinsic value that their number should be multiplied. Now
the idea of dignity implies that it is the bearer who has a special status and not
the property in question. We thus need the idea of dignity to explain why certain
constraints on our behavior cannot be offset by maximizing the implementations of
certain valuable properties.
So how can we explain the peculiar wrongness of using people if we include the
idea of properties bestowing status on their bearer, thereby imposing constraints on
their treatment, i.e. how can we explain the peculiar wrongness of using people if
we do make use of the concept of dignity?
To answer this question, let us look at what our constraint on using people actu-
ally demands of a potential user. It demands of any potential user to seek the consent
of the person she is going to use. The important point about consent is that the neg-
ative connotations that the talk of “using a person” arouse, as previously suggested,
completely vanish if the used person freely and fully consents to the interaction in
question. Recall the taxi driver. In general it is perfectly innocent to use him to get to
the desired destination. The taxi driver does not want to go where he drives me, but
as I pay him, and as the conditions of the interaction are transparent, the driver can
choose the interaction as a means to his own ends. To go where I want to go becomes
his end too and our interaction becomes morally innocent. Due to the act of consent,
the used person is not a tool anymore but an end-pursuing person as much as I am.
It is sometimes said that the peculiar work of consent consists in its transforming
the normative relations between people (Archard 1998: 3–4). With regard to the
case of using, we can thus say that it transforms a person-tool relationship into a
co-operative one.
This consideration now helps us to explain why we have to add the idea of
bestowing status to explain the wrongness of merely using people: The constraint

12 The same consideration does not apply to the claim that some particular beings are valuable in
themselves.
5 Instrumentalization: What Does It Mean to Use a Person? 65

on merely using people demands that we seek the consent of the person used. As
we have just seen, consent transforms a person-tool relationship into co-operation.
The constraint therefore demands of us that we treat the used person as a person and
not as a tool, i.e. it demands that we recognize the peculiar status of the other. To
demand the consent of another person thus already presupposes the idea of status.
Someone whose consent counts is of a higher status than other things and should
not be treated in certain ways.
The idea of consent shows that what is wrong about merely using a person is
not only that it impedes some of her properties. The wrongness of merely using
someone is in impeding properties that bestow a special status upon the bearer. By
so acting, one makes a person into a tool. To describe the wrongness of merely
using someone, we therefore need not only the concept of valuable properties but
equally the idea that properties bestow a special status on their bearer, i.e. we need
the concept of dignity.

References
Archard, David. 1998. Sexual consent. Oxford: Westview.
Beyleveld, Deryck and Roger Brownsword. 2001. Human dignity in bioethics and biolaw. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Darwall, Stephen. 1977. Two Kinds of Respect. Ethics 88: 36–49.
Darwall, Stephen. 2004. Respect and the second-person standpoint. Proceedings and Addresses of
the American Philosophical Association 78: 43–59.
Kant, Immanuel. 1902. Gesammelte Schriften. Berlin: Königlich-Preussische Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin.
Kerstein, Samuel. 2009. Treating others merely as means. Utilitas 21: 163–180.
Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Parfit, Derek. forthcoming. On what matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paton, Herbert James. 1948. The categorical imperative. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press.
Quinn, Warren. 1989. Actions, intentions, and consequences: The doctrine of double effect.
Philosophy and Public Affairs 18: 334–351.
Ross, William David. 1969. Kant’s ethical theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
Scanlon, Thomas. 2008. Moral dimensions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Timmermann, Jens. 2007. Kant’s groundworks of the metaphysics of morals. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wertheimer, Alan. 2003. Consent to sexual relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 6
Degradation: A Human Rights
Law Perspective

Elaine Webster

Abstract This chapter focuses on a number of common questions relating to the

concept of degradation, against the backdrop of that concept as it has developed in
the jurisprudence of the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically in rela-
tion to the prohibition of degrading treatment within Article 3. The prohibition of
torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is commonly understood,
and is expressed in case-law, as having an intimate connection with the concept of
human dignity, the language of which underpins the modern human rights regime.
The basic structure of the Article 3 understanding of degradation is outlined, along-
side examples of its practical application, in order to highlight significant conceptual
relationships. Questions concerning the significance of the individual emotion of
degradation, the relevance of autonomy in understanding degradation, and the rele-
vance of the idea of social dignity can be illuminated by a contextualized discussion
of the jurisprudence. It is suggested in this respect that the scope of what can be
understood as degradation is not limited primarily by the victim’s emotional experi-
ence, that the jurisprudence draws our attention to one particular facet of autonomy,
and that the essence of the concept of degradation is helpfully captured in the idea
of abuse of equal rank.

6.1 Introduction
Human rights law provides an example of the conceptual interaction between
degradation and human dignity, embodied in the interpretation and application
of the prohibition of degrading treatment, one form of harm within the prohibi-
tion of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This chapter
will draw upon the jurisprudence that has been developed in this respect by the
European Court of Human Rights (hereafter “the ECtHR” or “the Court”) in the

E. Webster (B)
Centre for the Study of Human Rights Law, University of Strathclyde, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 67

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_6,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
68 E. Webster

context of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which

incorporates this prohibition.1 This context will be used as a resource in reflect-
ing upon questions that are deemed to be significant for an understanding of the
concept of degradation. The premise is that degradation encapsulates a violation
of human dignity, as is indeed visible in the ECHR context. It is assumed that
degradation expresses a particular form of violation of human dignity. A particular
substantive content of the concept of degradation is identifiable via the degrading
treatment jurisprudence of the ECtHR. The Court’s case-law suggests the contours
of the wrong that is deemed to merit the label of degradation. This can provide valu-
able insight since our common sense understanding of degradation is vague, and
our ability to coherently identify its occurrence is precarious. A simple and familiar
example will suffice as an illustration: that of the woman who is on the receiving
end of male attention of a sexual nature, be it a whistle or a “friendly tap” and
accompanying comments. A series of intriguing questions come into view, to which
our common sense understanding of degradation provides only ambiguous answers:
Is she degraded by this? And/or is it something else? Could it involve more than
one form of violation of human dignity? Where are the overlaps? Or is it just plain
unpleasant, without being remotely close to degradation? What does degradation
actually look like in concrete terms? What do we understand to be the characteris-
tics of degradation? A central question relates to the significance of the individual
experience of degradation: is it not the case that what I, as a woman, find degrading,
you, as a woman, might find mildly irritating, or even gratifying? This alludes to the
question of when degradation can be said to exist: If you feel degraded, does this
imply that you have been degraded? If you do not feel degraded, does this imply that
you have not been degraded? Is the context important? Does it matter, for example,
if the woman is young? Religious? Vulnerable? Could it be argued not only that
this is degrading for a particular woman but that such a situation is always degrad-
ing for any woman? Does the idea of autonomy in some form, whose restriction is
often associated with a violation of dignity, have any relevance here at all? A dif-
ferent question concerns the term degradation itself and its link to human dignity
in the human rights context: is the idea of grade important; of rank in the sense of
social dignity? We see allusions to the idea of rank in dictionary meanings of the
term degrading: “To reduce from a higher to a lower rank, to depose from a position
of honour or estimation.”2 Yet there may be a seeming contradiction here from a
human rights perspective in that the idea of rank tends to denote not equality of sta-
tus amongst human beings but differentiated status, whereas it is clearly expressed
in the foundational instruments of international human rights law that human dignity
has a dimension in which it is equal amongst all human beings. This raises a ques-
tion concerning the relevance of the idea of rank in understanding degradation and

1 Some reference will also be made to the former European Commission of Human Rights, although
examples will primarily be drawn from the legally binding decisions of the Court.
2 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press (all dictionary
references in the present chapter refer to this edition unless otherwise stated).
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 69

brings us full circle to re-engage with the concept of human dignity. The reflections
that follow can shed light on all of these questions, from the very specific to the
more general.
The principal criteria for motivating the discussion by these particular questions
is, firstly, that they often form the basis of challenges to arguments on the scope of
application of the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment. It is commonly
objected that degradation means different things to different people, that whether
degradation has taken place depends entirely on individual perceptions of the expe-
rience, which will differ according to each individual’s particular sensibilities. The
degrading treatment jurisprudence under the ECHR says something interesting in
response to such questions and allows us to address such objections. Secondly, an
attempt to articulate answers to these questions will assist in gaining a better under-
standing of the core conceptual meaning of degradation. This is valuable if we are
to understand as fully as possible the conceptualization of degradation as a violation
of human dignity.
This analysis, therefore, takes place within the particular situated context of
supranational human rights law. Indeed, this is seen as the very value of the exercise.
The pronouncements of the ECtHR are not, of course, philosophical texts, and the
intention is not to suggest that the substance of the concept of degradation beyond
the legal human rights sphere is, or should be, wholly or exhaustively the same as
the concept as it is construed in the context of the ECHR. But the ECHR is a valu-
able site of analysis from which insight can be drawn into degradation as a moral
concept. The judgments of the Court are testament to the practical interpretation and
use of the concept of degradation within a strong and established system of bind-
ing human rights protection that encompasses 47 states of the Council of Europe.
It has been noted that the ECHR is a leader of the wider international approach
to the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
(Evans and Morgan 1998: 74). There is a wealth of jurisprudence that has engaged
with practical individual and inter-state complaints in light of the Convention rights,
and in light of the principles and purposes underlying the Convention. The Court
operates at the interface of interpretation and application of a right whose purpose
has been declared by the Court as one of protecting human dignity. This example
of practical application of the moral concept of degradation within international
human rights discourse, in light of the influential nature of the Court’s interpreta-
tion and the wide geographical scope of the Court’s jurisdiction, is an informative
resource.3
In providing insight from the case-law into the above series of questions, the
ECHR approach to the concept of degradation will be outlined (including relation-
ships and principles that have been established in the case-law) and examples will

3 See the work of Peter Cane in the context of the concept of responsibility, which is illuminative
in this respect. Cane discusses the particular value of common law approaches to responsibility,
deriving from the uniqueness of the institutional legal setting, for understanding responsibility
beyond law as a complex moral concept (Cane 2002: 9–28). I would like to thank my colleague
Simon Halliday for drawing the work of Cane to my attention.
70 E. Webster

be given of situations in which degradation has been identified. Three key ideas that
emerge from the jurisprudence will be highlighted and drawn upon: firstly, the value
of a distinction between feeling and being degraded; secondly, the relevance of the
concept of autonomy in one particular dimension; and thirdly, the sense in which the
notion of rank is a significant conceptual tool when tied to the idea of equal, rather
than social, dignity. The intention is to demonstrate that the ECHR interpretation
can contribute valuable insight into our understanding of degradation as a violation
of human dignity.

6.2 Degradation in the Jurisprudence of the European

Court of Human Rights

The ECtHR uses the term “degrading treatment” rather than degradation. For the
purpose of exploring the concept of degradation from a human rights law perspec-
tive, however, “degrading” can be seen as its equivalent. A number of authors in
the human rights field have indeed elided the two terms.4 The significance of the
term “treatment” is linked to the possible sources of degradation within the Article
3 context and is tied to the question of the obligations and responsibility of the state
in a vertical system of international human rights protection – points that need not
concern us presently. Degradation is unquestionably the conceptual core of the right
not to be subjected to degrading treatment protected by Article 3.
The ECtHR, in the process of interpreting and applying the prohibition of degrad-
ing treatment, approaches the idea of degradation through the lens of a number of
conceptual points of reference that are repeated, individually or in conjunction with
one another, in its judgments. The ECtHR relies upon a characterization of degra-
dation that has remained largely constant since the 1970s. The principal measure of
degradation amongst these was established in the inter-state case of Ireland v. United
Kingdom, in which a number of interrogation techniques used by UK security forces
in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s were found to be degrading:
[They] were also degrading since they were such as to arouse in their victims feelings
of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing them and possibly
breaking their physical or moral resistance.5

Although this is the primary approach to degradation, an earlier formulation

was introduced in 1969 by the Court’s former sister organization, the European

4 This is visible, for example, in an article on degrading treatment entitled “The Limits of
Degradation and Respect” (Lawson and Mukherjee 2004) and in an article entitled “Punishment,
Dignity and Degradation” (Duff 2005). See also Susan Millns’ reference to dignity and degradation
as two sides of the same coin (Millns 2002).
5 Ireland v. United Kingdom, 18 January 1978, Series A, no. 25, para. 167.
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 71

Commission of Human Rights, and continues to be invoked by the Court: degra-

dation as involving the victim being driven to act against her will or conscience.6
A further element that is used to characterize degradation is the suffering by an
individual of contempt or lack of respect for her personality.7 The Court looks for
the existence of one or more of these points of reference in order to determine
whether the event or situation being complained of might entail degradation within
the bounds of Article 3. It does not go beyond these statements to explicitly stipulate
the substance of humiliation (although this particular concept has been elaborated
upon through the development of certain principles), being driven to act against
will or conscience, etc. The Court’s focus is on the practical application of the
right.8 Nevertheless, when one looks holistically at the jurisprudence and on this
basis works towards deeper accounts of the concepts relied upon, the conceptual
foundations of the right are apparent.
Some interesting observations can be made: the most evident concerns the inclu-
sion of the prohibition of degrading treatment alongside the prohibition of torture;
both are clearly seen to be closely related. It is clear from the jurisprudence that
Article 3 as a whole is interpreted as being directed towards protection of dignity (as
will be evident in the citation from Tyrer v. United Kingdom below). It is also inter-
esting to note that degrading treatment is seen to be a different form of harm than
inhuman treatment (captured in the concept of dehumanization?); both are related –
both are side-by-side within the same prohibition – but often treated as distinct.9
It is notable that humiliation is explicitly associated with degradation and has in
fact been selected as part of the definition of degradation. Given that humiliation
might be seen as a separate, self-standing violation of human dignity, it is intrigu-
ing to note this relationship. These points form the foundations of how degradation
is understood and delineated in the ECHR forum. Much is left open and unarticu-
lated, but the relevance of particular concepts within the conceptual framework of
degradation is visible, as is a basic view of the relationships between these concepts.

6 Greek Case, Commission Report of 5 November 1969, Yearbook of the European Convention
on Human Rights XII (1969), Chapter IV, section A(2), p. 186; Keenan v. United Kingdom, no.
27229/95, ECHR 2001-III.
7 Abdulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v. United Kingdom, 28 May 1985, Series A, no. 94, para. 91.
8 This is unsurprising; such elaboration is not to be expected given that the Court is primarily
concerned, now that the principles are firmly established, with the concrete application of the law
to very particular facts in concrete complaints before it. Martha Nussbaum makes this point in
relation to a jury deciding upon a case involving emotions, where a more general exploration of
the emotional concepts involved is not an immediate concern (Nussbaum 2004: 67–68).
9 Applicants have often argued, and the ECtHR has arrived at, conclusions of inhuman and degrad-
ing treatment (for example, in Ireland v. UK). However, a distinction between “inhuman” and
“degrading” is evident where the ECtHR classifies treatment or punishment specifically as one
form or the other (see, for example, Yankov v. Bulgaria, no. 39084/97, ECHR 2003-VII (degrad-
ing treatment) and Bilgin v. Turkey, no. 23819/94, 16 November 2000 (inhuman treatment)), and
it is also visible in the different conceptual points of reference that have been established by the
ECtHR.
72 E. Webster

Furthermore, since this forum revolves around application, we also gain a picture of
how these ideas and relationships translate into practice.

6.3 What Does Degradation Look Like?

The question of how degradation is played out in practice could be viewed as one
of the simpler ones on the above list – is there not a sense in which we all know
degradation when we see it? But then what do we respond when asked to give
a practical example of degradation? The articulation of an example necessitates
engagement with a myriad of questions, beginning with the question of what kind
of harm degradation encapsulates and how this is judged in relation to oneself, but
also to others, and so on. Nevertheless, it is difficult to relinquish the idea that one
could identify a degrading situation if one were presented with it. The case-law
in which a finding of degrading treatment or punishment has been reached pro-
vides ready-made examples of degradation that have been identified in the Article 3
context.10
A first example of degradation in practical form concerns detention conditions,
which have been a common cause for concern. Such cases tend to involve com-
plaints about a combination of factors that, taken together, are degrading: including,
for example, poor and/or non-private sanitary facilities, vermin or insects in deten-
tion cells, overcrowding, and lack of movement.11 The use of unwarranted physical
force by state agents has been found to be degrading, even where the victim suffered
no serious injury.12 The manner of conducting a search of an individual in detention
was also found to have inflicted degradation:
Obliging the applicant to strip naked in the presence of a woman, and then touching his
sexual organs and food with bare hands showed a clear lack of respect for the applicant, and
diminished in effect his human dignity.13

A lack of respect for an individual’s well-being as a result of a failure to provide

adequate medical care is a further example.14 In the late 1970s, in the Tyrer case,

10 The case-law research on which this chapter is based focuses primarily on outcomes of degrading
treatment, rather than punishment, in cases before the Court. Judgments of degrading treatment
are more common than those on punishment, notably since treatment appears to be the broader
of the two terms and capable of also encompassing punishment. This is suggested by Nowak in
the context of the equivalent provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(Nowak 2005: 159; Jayawickrama 2002: 303). Where helpful insight is provided, however, specific
punishment cases will also be cited. For present purposes, it is not significant whether degradation
takes the form of treatment or punishment; what is significant is the understanding of the degrading
nature of the treatment or punishment.
11 E.g. Kalashnikov v. Russia, no. 47095/99, ECHR 2002-VI, para. 97–102; Peers v. Greece, no.
28525/95, ECHR 2001-III, para. 72–75.
12 Barbu Anghelescu v.Romania, no. 46430/99, 05 October 2004, para. 55–60.
13 Valasinas v. Lithuania, no. 44558/98, ECHR 2001-VIII, para. 117.
14 Nevmerzhitsky v. Ukraine, no. 54825/00, ECHR 2005-II. para. 100–106.
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 73

the Court for the first time held that corporal punishment of a child, also taking into
consideration the anguish of anticipating the punishment, was degrading; the Court
found that the punishment:
[. . .] whereby [the applicant] was treated as an object in the power of the authorities –
constituted an assault on precisely that which it is one of the main purposes of Article 3
[. . .] to protect, namely a person’s dignity and physical integrity.15

A further example is a case involving a detainee whose hair was forcibly shaved:
A particular characteristic of the treatment complained of, the forced shaving off of a pris-
oner’s hair, is that it consists in a forced change of the person’s appearance by the removal
of his hair. The person undergoing that treatment is very likely to experience a feeling of
inferiority as his physical appearance is changed against his will.
Furthermore, for at least a certain period of time a prisoner whose hair has been shaved
off carries a mark of the treatment he has undergone. The mark is immediately visible to
others [. . .]. The person concerned is very likely to feel hurt in his dignity by the fact that
he carries a visible physical mark.16

It is interesting and significant to highlight the detail and scope of such situations
that have been held to entail degradation; they bring the practical manifestation of
degradation into view. In addition to such cases where the Court has agreed that
degradation had occurred, there are, of course, the many cases that have argued this
unsuccessfully. In some it has been accepted that a situation might involve degra-
dation but not in the circumstances of that particular case, as with discrimination,
notably.17 In others, the Court has not accepted that the harm complained of was
serious enough to be recognized as degrading treatment18 ; for example, in a case
concerning living conditions caused by a waste treatment plant in close proximity,
the Court found that the conditions for the family must have been “very difficult”
but were not degrading.19 It should be noted that the Court’s decisions are based
on the circumstances of the particular case at hand; taken into account are the dura-
tion of the treatment and the effects on the individual. The age, sex, and state of
health of the individual may also be relevant factors.20 The case-law effectuates a
differentiation between that which can be called degrading and that which is simply
“unpleasant.”21 The examples that do result in a finding of degrading treatment or
punishment reflect the substance of the concept of degradation as understood by the
ECtHR.

15 Tyrer v. United Kingdom, judgment of 25 April 1978, Series A, no. 26.

16 Yankov v. Bulgaria, para. 112–113.
17 Smith and Grady v. United Kingdom, no. 33985/96; 33986/96, ECHR 1999-VI, para. 121. See
also the comments of the European Commission of Human Rights in East African Asians v. United
Kingdom, Commission Report of 14 December 1973, Decisions and Reports 31, para. 207.
18 The “minimum level of severity” is a standard requirement that is referred to systematically in
Article 3 case-law; see Ireland v. United Kingdom, para. 162.
19 López Ostra v. Spain, judgment of 09 December 1994, Series A, no. 303-C, para. 60.
20 Ireland v. United Kingdom, para. 162.
21 Guzzardi v. Italy, judgment of 06 November 1980, Series A, no. 39, para. 107.
74 E. Webster

In such cases, a relationship between degradation and human dignity is visible.

Degradation is portrayed as a conceptual opposite of human dignity:
[The treatment] in the Court’s view, showed a lack of respect for the applicant’s human dig-
nity [. . .] the Court is of the view that in the present case such behaviour which humiliated
and debased the applicant, amounted to degrading treatment contrary to Article 3.22

And the right is interpreted as aiming to protect human dignity; for example: “[. . .]
treatment [. . .] may be incompatible with the standards imposed by Article 3 in
the protection of fundamental human dignity [. . .].”23 The way in which the Court
understands dignity is not clearly articulated, but a consistent concern becomes visi-
ble through a piecing together of such insights from the case-law. Certain conditions
are simply viewed as unacceptable and improper for a human being (including, for
example, poor sanitary conditions).24 The Court admonishes a lack of respect for the
person, including for a person’s physical and mental health.25 The Court has criti-
cized the treatment of a person as an object.26 (Part of) a consistent picture emerges
of an understanding of dignity and its violation in a very basic, fundamental sense.
The objective of this chapter is to reflect on the concept of degradation drawing
upon European human rights jurisprudence, rather than to focus on the ECtHR’s
understanding of dignity, but it is important to explicitly recognize that, underlying
these examples of degradation and indeed all aspects of the Court’s characterization
of degradation, there is some understanding of human dignity. Ronald Dworkin’s
account of adjudication highlights that interaction with such moral concepts is an
inherent feature of the process of interpretation and application (Dworkin 1977).
Very conveniently taking the example of the concept of dignity, Dworkin states that
his imaginary judge Hercules indeed relies upon his own understanding of dignity in
interpretation. This point, which highlights judicial engagement with the concept of
dignity, is linked to the relationship between the personal experience of degradation
and the Court’s judgment as to whether degradation has occurred.

6.4 The Significance of Feeling Degraded

Questions related to the significance of the individual experience of degradation
are pivotal, yet they are not straightforward, and the conclusions potentially entail
even less straightforward implications. Insight into this dimension of the concept
of degradation emerges via the concept of humiliation in the case-law27 (given that

22 Iwanczuk v. Poland, no. 25196/94, 15 November 2001, para. 59.

23 Keenan v. UK, no. 27229/95, ECHR 2001-III, para. 113.
24 Price v. United Kingdom, no. 33394/96, ECHR 2001-VII.
25 Peers v. Greece, no. 28524/95, ECHR 2001-V; Valasinas v. Lithuania, no. 44558/98, ECHR
2001-VIII.
26 Tyrer v. United Kingdom.
27 Humiliation is coupled in the standard characterization with debasement. The latter appears to act
primarily as reinforcement. Principally, it provides a strong link to the concept of degradation in its
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 75

degradation, within the ECtHR’s framework, can be identified on the basis of an

individual having suffered humiliation). The significance of the individual experi-
ence in the ECHR approach emerges specifically through a discussion of a principle
with which humiliation has been linked in the case-law: that it is sufficient that an
individual is humiliated in his/her own eyes.28
This principle (like the concept of humiliation itself) is not explicitly clarified
or explained in the jurisprudence, but rather is substantiated through its applica-
tion. In exploring humiliation29 and this related principle, a particularly significant
point emerges from a range of humiliation literature – that humiliation is recog-
nized as an emotion or feeling, but also as a state or social fact (Silver et al. 1986:
273, Miller 1993: 146, Waldron 1995: 1794). The distinction between emotion and
social fact entails that a person can feel humiliated without being humiliated as
a social fact, and vice versa (Silver at al. 1986). Recognition of this dual aspect
of humiliation is indispensable. Both facets of this distinction are reflected in the
principle that it is sufficient that an individual is humiliated in his/her own eyes,
and also in the degradation case-law more generally. It is a valuable distinction
that suitably allows us to acknowledge the subjective experience of degrada-
tion but at the same time accommodates a dimension of degradation that is not
victim-subjective.
This principle established by the Court can be seen to reflect this emotion/social
fact distinction. In the statement that it is sufficient that an individual is humiliated
in his/her own eyes even if not in the eyes of others, “is” should be read as imply-
ing “feels”; an individual can feel humiliated even if no other person witnesses the
humiliation. The reference to the “eyes of others” is a reference to the (far from irrel-
evant but not crucial) presence of witnesses to the humiliation (Silver et al. 1986:
278–279). “It is sufficient” refers to the sufficiency of feeling humiliated; it does
not refer to the sufficiency of the existence of humiliation. We know this because
in subsequent cases the Court has repeated this point combined with a conclusion
that the applicant was not humiliated.30 It can be inferred not only that humiliation
can be emotionally experienced even without other individuals witnessing it but also
that the existence of humiliation, as far as the judgment of the Court is concerned,
is not accepted only on the basis of an emotional experience of humiliation. The
latter point is significant because it moves towards articulating the respective place

visible sharing of the “de” preposition, highlighting the “down from”, “off” dimension of the con-
cept. Debasement is found in one dictionary defined simply as degradation (The Chambers English
Dictionary. Cambridge: Chambers). Humiliation instead emerges as the core concept within this
coupling.
28 Tyrer v. United Kingdom, para. 32
29 On the concept of humiliation, see Chapters 3 by Neuhäuser and Chapter 4 by Kuch (this
volume).
30 Campbell and Cosans v. United Kingdom, judgment of 25 February 1982, Series A, no. 48, para.
28–30.
76 E. Webster

and importance of what might be called subjective versus objective evaluations of

humiliation, which then feeds into an understanding of degradation.31
Since degradation is understood to be characterized by humiliation, this sug-
gests that degradation is identified, via humiliation, on the basis of more than an
internally-felt emotion, as something whose existence is not dependent upon the
individual’s actual experience. For the Court to be able to identify a state of humil-
iation and degradation, an appreciation of the felt experience seems implicit, but at
the same time, precedence is given to the Court’s evaluation of whether the appli-
cant had, to use Margalit’s expression, “sound reasons” for feeling humiliated or
degraded (Margalit 1996: 9), i.e., whether the applicant was in social fact placed in
a state of humiliation or degradation.
This allows us to respond to that common challenge relating to the implica-
tions of the idea of degradation within Article 3 – the sentiment that individuals
experience situations in different ways and that it is therefore impossible to label
a particular situation as degrading, that the labeling must surely depend on one’s
felt experience. We can recall the questions raised in our introductory example: Is it
significant or indeed problematic for judging the existence of degradation that I feel
humiliated by something whereas you experience the same thing positively? Would
we say that I have been humiliated and, as can follow from the Court’s framework,
degraded, and you have not? Such divergent experiences are accommodated in light
of the emotion/state distinction. On this basis the answer would be negative, since
the existence of a state of humiliation (and so degradation) depends primarily on the
Court’s evaluation, that is, on the Court’s evaluation of the social fact, as shall be
discussed further below. The conclusion can be reached that this same experience,
which I might find merely irritating and you somewhat gratifying, is degrading nev-
ertheless. We might then ask: Is it degrading for the woman to be subjected to such
treatment in the example above? We might consider the particular circumstances,
as indeed is the practice of the ECtHR: for example, what age was the woman?
Perhaps we would be more likely to view it negatively if there was a substantial age
difference between the parties. Where was the comment made? Would it be viewed
as less “acceptable” in the workplace than in a bar?
Or perhaps differences in circumstances will not change our conclusion. In this
sense, the question is taken one step further to ask whether a situation can be labeled
as always degrading, regardless of the particular individual circumstances. A num-
ber of interesting, and likely controversial, situations could be considered in this

31 Furthermore, the emotion/social fact distinction helps to explain the logic of a related principle
that is found in the Court’s case-law: that humiliation does not need to have been intentionally
inflicted; see T. v. United Kingdom, no. 24724/94, 16 December 1999, para. 69. The emotion/social
fact distinction contributes a justification for this position, simply in that the distinction makes
possible the independence of the emotion and the social fact: The Court reserves to itself the
ability to identify a state of humiliation that is not wholly dependent upon perceptions of either
the “humiliator” or the victim. In the case of Farbtuhs v. Latvia, the Court reached a finding of
degrading treatment despite both the Court and the applicant acknowledging that there had been
no intention to humiliate; Farbtuhs v. Latvia, no. 4672/02, 02 December 2004, para. 58.
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 77

respect. Prostitution is one example. Is this something that is always, in its essence,
degrading? It goes without saying that different people will give different answers
to this question (likely centered on whether the individual concerned experiences it
as degrading or not, which illustrates precisely the present point). The ECtHR has
in fact labeled certain situations as always degrading “in principle.” The case of
Yankov v. Bulgaria can be cited again as an apt example:
The Court thus considers that the forced shaving off of detainees’ hair is in principle an
act which may have the effect of diminishing their human dignity or may arouse in them
feelings of inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing them. (para. 114)

This suggests that an individual will be accepted, “in principle”, as having “sound
reasons” for feeling degraded by such an act.
Although there is the possibility of different opinions on the answer to such a
question in the judicial forum, the Court’s is the legally authoritative interpretation.
A question then arises: How are those socially-constructed standards, against which
the existence of a social fact is evaluated, identified and used? The identification
of social standards and deductions as to social facts can be illuminated by recog-
nizing the interpretive process of the judges as engaging with what Dworkin refers
to as community morality (Dworkin 1977) (or with Rawls’ similar idea of pub-
lic reason (Rawls 1993)).32 Community morality comprises moral traditions and
political convictions of the community (Dworkin 1977: 125–126). The substance
of this morality is, as Dworkin argues, identified by the judge on the basis of his
own judgment (distinguishing reliance on principles of community morality from
reliance on the judge’s personal political convictions (Dworkin 1977: 123–130)).33
This links the substance of the idea of dignity relied upon with the idea of a network
of social norms, in relation to which the existence of degradation of the individual
can be judged. Again, Margalit’s idea of having sound reasons in the context of
humiliation is reflected here (Margalit 1996: 9). In engaging with social norms, the
Court would ask whether the individual had suffered a situation that could soundly
(reasonably) be seen as degrading. It is also reflected in Nussbaum’s discussion of
how the law deals with emotions, which highlights the link between what is rea-
sonable in law and the idea of social standards; the idea of the “standard norms” of
that person’s society, and the influence of this on judgments as to reasonableness
(Nussbaum 2004: 33; see also 39).
The significant point is the idea that degradation, on the basis of its association
with humiliation, can be coherently understood to have a significant emotional com-
ponent but can be judged to occur independently of the individual’s felt experience.
In the context of applications before the ECtHR, the individual(s) in question can be

32 In Rawls’ discussion of public reason, see note 23 on differences and similarities to Dworkin’s
political morality (Rawls 1993: 236–237). See also Dworkin (2006: 251–254) for a brief
discussion.
33 This view of adjudication embeds the possibility of judges arriving at different decisions on the
basis of their own readings of the community morality (Dworkin 1977: 128). For further discussion,
see Dworkin (2003: 67–111).
78 E. Webster

presumed to have experienced the situation negatively since an application has been
made to the Court. The Court is the recognized authoritative body to judge whether
degradation has or has not occurred for the purpose of Article 3.

6.5 Degradation as Restriction of Autonomy?

The concept of autonomy, which appears in a number of guises in a number of fields,
is often perceived as significant in relation to dignity. Gerald Dworkin, in discussing
the broad usage of the concept, notes various substantive understandings, including
liberty and freedom of the will, and the association of the idea with, for example,
self-assertion and the absence of external causation, amongst others. Dworkin sum-
marizes the functions of autonomy as moral, political, and social ideal (Dworkin
1988: 6–7, 10–11). Raz additionally refers to personal autonomy and to conditions
for personal autonomy (Raz 1986: 204). It is not the present objective, nor would it
be possible, to provide an in-depth exploration of the concept of autonomy in all its
guises, but it is nevertheless important in reflecting upon a conceptual understanding
of degradation to question whether autonomy is a relevant concept.
Amongst the Court’s conceptual points of reference in relation to degradation, the
idea of being driven to act against one’s will or conscience stands out as a possible
source of insight; it immediately invokes associations with the basic idea of self-
rule. It is an intriguing inclusion under the umbrella of degradation. Jurisprudential
references are, however, scant. As a component of degradation, this has generated
little discussion or elaboration. Unlike with humiliation, there are no established
principles to begin from, and so there is less to engage with in this respect. However,
one significant reference is identifiable, from which important considerations can be
seen to emerge. This is a reference made by the European Commission of Human
Rights in the Ireland case cited above, concerning ill-treatment of internees by UK
security forces:
The will to resist or to give in cannot, under such conditions, be formed with any degree of
independence. Those most firmly resistant might give in at an early stage when subjected to
this sophisticated method to break or even eliminate the will.34

Although brief, this allusion by the Commission might in fact be seen as partic-
ularly indicative – in its reference to independence of will. When viewed in the
context of wider literature on the meaning and use of autonomy, the centrality of
independence of will is most apparent in relation to one facet of autonomy that
has been articulated. That is the latter of those mentioned above: the idea of condi-
tions for autonomy. This facet of autonomy is presented as the basic core of the idea,
which accords with the very basic, fundamental way in which the ECtHR appears to
understand dignity to be violated (it is helpful also not to lose sight of the immediate
context, which is that of the prohibition of torture).

34 Ireland v. United Kingdom, Commission Report of 25 January 1976, Decisions and Reports
31, 402.
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 79

Raz describes conditions for autonomy as the capacity that is required for the
realization of personal autonomy. It is alternatively expressed as, on the one hand,
being an agent with a capacity for personal autonomy and, on the other hand, as
leading an autonomous life (Raz 1986: 154). A similar idea is embodied in Berlin’s
notion of positive freedom. In the following passage, positive freedom – being one’s
“own master” – is strikingly tied to the idea of independence as well as to will and
conscience:

I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s, acts of will. I wish to be a
subject, not an object; to be moved by reasons, conscious purposes, which are my own, not
by causes which affect me, as it were, from outside. I wish to be somebody, not nobody; a
doer – deciding, not being decided for, self-directed and not acted upon by external nature or
by other men as if I were a thing, or an animal, or a slave incapable of playing a human role,
that is, of conceiving goals and policies of my own and realizing them [. . .]. I wish, above
all, to be conscious of myself as a thinking, willing, active being, bearing responsibility for
my choices and able to explain them by references to my own ideas and purposes. I feel
free to the degree that I believe this to be true, and enslaved to the degree that I am made to
realize that it is not. (Berlin 1969: 131)

The simple fact of the inclusion of the condemnation of being driven to act
against one’s will or conscience in the characterization of degradation, and the
Commission’s reference to the idea of independence, support the relevance of
restriction of autonomy as capable of engendering degradation. Furthermore, the
primary relevance of autonomy is arguably found in this one particular facet of
autonomy – the basic capacity for autonomy, or what is memorably captured in
Berlin’s description of positive freedom. Much more should indeed be said on this
purported relationship35 ; the intention has simply been to pose the question and to
suggest that this is a form of autonomy that is arguably at the heart of the idea of
being driven to act against one’s will or conscience in degrading treatment jurispru-
dence. But regardless of the details, the most significant point is to suggest not that
autonomy is indeed relevant in some sense but that it might only be seen as relevant
in a very particular sense. It is important in applying the label of degradation to con-
sider the demarcation of this concept, which involves consideration of the sense of
restriction of autonomy it should appropriately be used to encompass.

35 As noted above, the concept of autonomy is commonly viewed as relevant to understanding

human dignity. Also common is a concern with the implications of a dependent link between
dignity and autonomy – if dignity is violated by restriction of autonomy, what are the implica-
tions of this for those who are designated as lacking autonomy? This is an important question,
yet one that is hindered by a lack of precision in how the terms are employed. The implications
of such an objection depend upon what is understood by autonomy (including when, why, and
by whom certain human beings are labeled as non-autonomous in some sense), upon how dignity
itself is understood, and upon how the nature of the link between autonomy and dignity is viewed.
Nevertheless, it can be noted in the context of the above example that there is no necessary impli-
cation that violations of dignity in the form of degradation are always characterized by restriction
of the capacity for autonomy.
80 E. Webster

6.6 Degradation and Social Dignity

Etymologically, degradation is constructed on the idea of “grade” and “gradation”.
It is often associated with social standing or reputation. On the basis that degradation
expresses a violation of human dignity, this raises the further question of whether
degradation might be concerned with a conception of social dignity,36 with ranking
on the basis of social position? From a human rights perspective, this would be a
strange proposition. The seminal Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes
in its first substantive Article that, “All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights.” This equality of dignity is a cornerstone of the human rights
regime; it is quite simply incompatible with the idea of dignity as conferred on the
basis of merit or social position.
The content of degrading treatment case-law indicates that dignity in this social
sense is not the concern of degradation in the human rights law sphere. As stated
above, a theme is apparent in this case-law in terms of what is viewed as reprehen-
sible and as signifying degradation in the eyes of the ECtHR. This does not involve
damage to reputation or standing acquired on the basis of merit due to one’s position
in societal affairs. The Court’s understanding of degradation appears to be defined
by the violation of something basic and fundamental, by treating a human person
in a way that is considered inappropriate for a person to be treated. Cases such as
those outlined above concerning detention conditions provide a good illustration of
this point: In stipulating that certain conditions are “objectively unacceptable,”37
this suggests that degradation can result when the person in question is not treated
in a way that is befitting of persons. The case-law seems to proceed on the basis
that there is something special about human persons – although, as is characteris-
tic of international human rights law generally, the nature of that special quality is
not made explicit (McCrudden 2008: 675–678). It is significant, nevertheless, that
social dignity is given no audience.
For example, in the Commission’s report in the East African Asians case, the
definition of degrading treatment offered by the applicants was considered and
rejected: It was argued that treatment could be degrading if it lowered the victim in
“rank, position, reputation or character” (the definition found in the Oxford English
Dictionary), which might suggest a sense of social dignity. The response of the
Commission is indicative: The Commission was of the opinion that this general
definition could be a useful starting point but stressed that the purpose of the prohi-
bition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment was to “prevent
interferences with the dignity of man of a particularly serious nature” and suggested
that the definition offered must be narrowed to take account of this.38 In a later
report, the Commission again mentioned lowering of rank, position, reputation, or

36 Attributed on the basis of social position or role; see Pollmann (Chapter 17, this volume) for a
brief summary of the origins of this conception.
37 Peers v. Greece, para. 75.
38 East African Asians, Commission Report, para. 189.
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 81

character, stipulating that this must be of such a degree as to interfere with human
dignity. It also referred to the question of whether contempt or lack of respect had
been shown for the applicant’s personality.39 In the judgment in this case, the Court
did not adopt the notion of lowering of rank, position, reputation, or character, but
instead relied upon the notion of adverse effect on the applicant’s personality.40
Contempt or lack of respect for the applicant’s personality in the context of
the prohibition of degrading treatment is arguably best understood as expressing
concern for the entity of the person. The government in the case of Raninen v.
Finland denied that the treatment complained of showed contempt for “the appli-
cant as a person.”41 On the term “personality”, Gordon W. Allport writes that the
wide range of meanings of “persona” and “personality” are situated on a contin-
uum of references to the external and internal self, referring to this combination as
the “outstanding characteristic” of the term (Allport 1937: 29). The relevant sense of
personality in relation to degradation can be seen to sit halfway along this continuum
as something that captures the essence of the person and its external display. If this
reading is correct, it demonstrates that, in preferring the idea of contempt for person-
ality over rank, position, reputation, or character, the ECtHR rejects the relevance
of social dignity in understanding degradation in favor of a sense of equal dignity
that demands that human persons, as persons, are treated with a certain degree of
respect.
In relation to rank, position, reputation, or character, however, the Commission’s
statements suggest that this is potentially relevant – but only if it is tied to human
dignity. Waldron has recently, and convincingly, reinvigorated the notion of rank in
relation to understanding human dignity.42 This discussion of the idea of rank and
its relevance in a human rights context is illuminative, since it raises the possibil-
ity of maintaining a meaningful link between dignity and the idea of rank (Waldron
2007). Waldron’s invocation of the notion of rank is helpful, firstly, in understanding
the form of violation of dignity that the concept of degradation can be seen to encap-
sulate. It can indeed be seen to maintain the idea of “grade” and lowering of rank.
Alongside those dictionary meanings that refer explicitly to rank, others contain ref-
erence to the idea of lowering: “To lower in estimation, to bring into dishonour or
contempt”; “To lower in character or quality: to debase.” This is echoed in what is
in fact the most common domain of invocation of the term degradation: in relation
to environmental harm; to the degradation of land or natural resources. It is used to
express deterioration of something valuable. This idea of lowering can be seen to
capture precisely the key feature of the idea of degradation.

39 An indicator of degradation that had in the meantime been established by the Court.
40 Raninen v. Finland, no. 20972/92, Commission Report of 24 October 1996, para. 50-52; Raninen
v. Finland, no. 20972/92, 16 December 1997, Reports 1997-VIII, para. 55.
41 Raninen v. Finland, para. 54 (emphasis added).
42 Waldron has also recently engaged, in what is a rare discussion, with the idea of degradation; see
Waldron (2008).
82 E. Webster

Secondly, Waldron’s approach to the term rank is useful in that it presents a tie
between the idea of rank and use of the concept of dignity in the human rights con-
text (see Chapter 2 by Stoecker, this volume). In a rich discussion, which highlights
notably the contribution to the idea of equal high rank amongst human beings given
by Gregory Vlastos, Waldron concludes that dignity can be associated with the idea
of rank, but: “[. . .] specifically with a sort of universalization, for all humans, of
privileges that have historically been associated with particular ranks of nobility”
(Waldron 2007: 233). The suggestion, therefore, is that although the idea of rank
was indeed the core notion behind ideas of social dignity and status differentiation,
the meaning of dignity itself has now evolved. In its now prominent form, where
the core of dignity is seen as equality, the idea of rank nevertheless remains rel-
evant to understanding the essence of what is captured in the evolved use of the
term “dignity”. Whereas degradation previously involved a person being brought
down in social status, degradation against a backdrop of equal dignity involves a
person being brought down from one’s equal status as a human being. This can be
summarized in the idea of abuse of equal high rank – a description that arguably
encapsulates the essence of the concept of degradation.

6.7 Conclusion
This chapter has aimed to briefly reflect on a number of related questions deemed to
be interesting from the perspective of deepening conceptual understanding of, and
stimulating further debate on, the concept of degradation as it expresses a violation
of human dignity. It has done so by considering one very particular, but influen-
tial, instance of the use of the concept. There are undoubtedly other questions that
could and will be posed, and degrading treatment jurisprudence also contains further
avenues for exploration.
The jurisprudence can be interpreted as supporting the identification of degra-
dation, via humiliation, independently of the individual emotional experience, as
supporting the relevance of a particular facet of autonomy within the meaning of
degradation, and as supporting the idea of degradation as abuse of equal rank. The
Court should not be seen to rely upon an isolated understanding of human dignity.
Dworkin’s approach is again helpful here: Hercules relies upon his own under-
standing of dignity in interpretation, constituted by being part of the community
in which he operates, or by “collecting” an understanding of dignity “from its life”
in “political rhetoric and debates of the time” (Dworkin 1977: 127).
The understanding of degradation that is found in the Court’s jurisprudence is, of
course, open to criticism. It is undeniable, however, that it has considerable practi-
cal weight. And to enrich our understanding of the concept of degradation alongside
human dignity, human rights law presents itself as a relevant and intriguing forum
for analysis. The fundamental insight from the degrading treatment jurisprudence
of the ECtHR lies in the characterization of degradation in terms of particular
conceptual relationships between degradation, humiliation, autonomy, and rank.
6 Degradation: A Human Rights Law Perspective 83

The nature of these relationships is a constituent of the substantive contours of

degradation itself. At the core of this exercise is the contention that considering the
way in which the term degradation is employed and discussing how it, and related
terms, should be demarcated – in terms of the substance that they are understood to
embody – contributes to conceptual clarity. And crucially, this facilitates meaningful
debate.

References
Abdulaziz, Cabales and Balkandali v. United Kingdom, judgment of 28 May 1985, Series A, no. 94.
Barbu Anghelescu v. Romania, no. 46430/99, 05 October 2004.
Bilgin v. Turkey, no. 23819/94, 16 November 2000.
Campbell and Cosans v. United Kingdom, judgment of 25 February 1982, Series A, no. 48.
East African Asians v. United Kingdom, Commission Report of 14 December 1973, Decisions and
Reports 31.
Farbtuhs v. Latvia, no. 4672/02, 02 December 2004.
Greek Case, Commission Report, 5 November 1969, Yearbook of the European Convention on
Human Rights XII (1969), Chapter IV, Section A(2).
Ireland v. United Kingdom. Commission Report of 25 January 1976, Decisions and Reports 31.
Ireland v. United Kingdom, judgment of 18 January 1978, Series A, no. 25.
Iwanczuk v. Poland, no. 25196/94, 15 November 2001.
Kalashnikov v. Russia, no. 47095/99, ECHR 2002-VI.
Keenan v. United Kingdom, no. 27229/95, ECHR 2001-III.
López Ostra v. Spain, judgment of 09 December 1994, Series A, no. 303-C.
Nevmerzhitsky v. Ukraine, no. 54825/00, 05 April 2005.
Peers v. Greece, no. 28525/95, ECHR 2001-III.
Raninen v. Finland, no. 20972/92, Commission Report of 24 October 1996.
Raninen v. Finland, no. 20972/92, 16 December 1997, Reports 1997-VIII.
Smith and Grady v. United Kingdom, no. 33985/96; 33986/96, ECHR 1999-VI.
T. v. United Kingdom, no. 24724/94, 16 December 1999.
Tyrer v. United Kingdom, judgment of 25 April 1978, Series A, no. 26.
Valasinas v. Lithuania, no. 44558/98, ECHR 2001-VIII.
Yankov v. Bulgaria, no. 39084/97, 11 December 2003.
Allport, Gordon W. 1937. Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York, NY: Henry Holt
and Company.
Berlin, Isaiah. 1969. Four essays on liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cane, Peter. 2002. Responsibility in law and morality. Oxford: Hart.
Duff, R. Anthony. 2005. Punishment, dignity and degradation. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
25(1): 141–155.
Dworkin, Gerald. 1988. The theory and practice of autonomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1977. Taking rights seriously. London: Duckworth.
Dworkin, Ronald. 2003. The secular papacy. In Judges in contemporary democracy: An interna-
tional conversation, eds. Robert Badinter and Stephen G. Breyer, 67–111. New York, NY: NYU
Press.
Dworkin, Ronald. 2006. Justice in robes. Cambridge: The Belknap Press.
Evans, Malcolm and Rod Morgan. 1998. Preventing torture: A study of the European conven-
tion for the prevention of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Jayawickrama, Nihal. 2002. The judicial application of human rights law: National, regional and
international jurisprudence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
84 E. Webster

Lawson, Anna and Amrita Mukherjee. 2004. Slopping out in Scotland: The limits of degradation
and respect. European Human Rights Law Review 6: 645–659.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
McCrudden, Christopher. 2008. Human dignity and judicial interpretation of human rights. In
European Journal of International Law 19(4): 655–724.
Miller, William Ian. 1993. Humiliation – And other essays on honor, social discomfort and
violence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Millns, Susan. 2002. Death, dignity and discrimination: The case of Pretty v. United Kingdom.
German Law Journal 3(10). http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=197. Accessed
19 May 2009.
Nowak, Manfred. 2005. U.N. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – CCPR Commentary, 2nd
edition. Kehl: NP Engel.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2004. Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame and the law. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Rawls, John. 1993. Political liberalism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Raz, Joseph. 1986. The morality of freedom. Oxford: Clarendon.
Silver, Maury et al. 1986. Humiliation: Feeling, social control and construction of identity. Journal
for the Theory of Social Behaviour 16(3): 269–283.
Waldron, Jeremy. 1995. On humiliation. Michigan Law Review 93(6): 1787–1804.
Waldron, Jeremy. 2007. Dignity and rank. European Journal of Sociology 48(2): 201–237.
Waldron, Jeremy. 2008. Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment: The words themselves.
New York University public law and legal theory research paper series. Working paper 08-36.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1278604. Accessed 15 May 2009.
Chapter 7
Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body
as (In)Human

Sophie Oliver

Abstract Dehumanization – the designation of the unlivable, the unintelligible, the

ungrievable inhuman – is that almost unimaginable process by which human beings
are rendered so radically other that their lives count for nothing. In this chapter, the
author considers how victims, perpetrators and bystanders of atrocity come to per-
ceive the loss of humanity and, in particular, the extent to which this (mis)perception
is linked both physically and discursively to the figure of the human body. Paying
attention to the concrete corporeality of dehumanization as it is described in testi-
monial texts, the author suggests that to think of “human dignity” as an abstract and
disembodied quality becomes problematic in its failure to recognize the embodied,
lived experience of suffering human beings. By focusing on testimonial accounts of
dehumanizing atrocity, this chapter points to the significance of our role as receivers
of testimony, also potentially guilty of dehumanizing perception, and emphasizes
the possibility within the testimonial encounter both to repeat and to resist the logic
of dehumanization and the unmaking, self-destroying power of bodily pain.

7.1 Introduction
It is customary when seeking to understand the somewhat elusive concept of “dehu-
manization” to refer in the first instance to that which it works against, in other
words, to begin by defining what we understand as human. Standard definitions of
dehumanization define the concept in terms of a negation of such positive “human”
qualities as individuality, autonomy, personality, civility, and dignity. While this
approach may provide us with relative conceptual clarity, it can lead one to pay
too little attention to what I shall call the “lived experience” of dehumaniza-
tion. Attending to the concrete corporeality of dehumanization as it is described
in personal narratives of atrocity, and offering in this way a phenomenology of
dehumanizing atrocities, this chapter seeks to present a more holistic view of

S. Oliver (B)
University of Konstanz, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 85

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_7,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
86 S. Oliver

dehumanization, while at the same time reflecting upon our understanding of what it
means to be human or inhuman. If testimonial accounts of dehumanizing processes
such as genocide, torture, and rape warfare demonstrate anything, it is the precar-
iousness of such abstractly formulated concepts as human dignity. By embodying,
and thus demystifying the concept of human dignity, it is argued, we may begin to
think new ways to resist the logic of dehumanization.
Drawing on a range of theory and testimony, then, I hope to demonstrate just
how closely the physical and discursive violation of the flesh is bound up in the
minds of victims and perpetrators with processes of dehumanization and subjective
destitution. If the link between sub-humanity and embodiment is so intricately made
in the perception of victims and perpetrators, I will later go on to ask, to what extent
are bystanders’ perceptions also colored by negative symbolisms of the body in
everyday dehumanization? The first section of the chapter is dedicated to presenting
an overview of the theory of dehumanization as moral exclusion, while thinking also
about the reasons why and methods by which individuals and groups are excluded
from the human community: this demonstrates the perspective of the perpetrator.
As the chapter progresses, the methods and processes of moral exclusion will be
examined more closely and with reference to the lived experience of dehumanization
as it has been described in testimonial texts; this should provide the reader with a
better understanding of the meaning of dehumanization from the perspective of its
victims, and not merely that of its theorists. The final section of the chapter will
consider dehumanization from the perspective of the bystander or observer, pointing
to the significance of our role as receivers of testimony, also potentially guilty of
dehumanizing perception, and emphasizing the possibility within the testimonial
encounter both to repeat and to resist the logic of dehumanization and the unmaking,
self-destroying power of bodily pain.

7.1.1 A Truly Vicious Circle: Dehumanization

as Moral Exclusion
At various periods in history and in different societies, groups and individuals have been
treated inhumanly by other humans: slaves by their masters, natives by colonialists, blacks
by whites, Jews by Nazis, women by men, children by adults, the physically disabled by
those who are not, homosexuals by heterosexuals, political dissidents by political authori-
ties, and one ethnic or religious group by another [. . .]. Who is and who is not entitled to fair
outcomes and fair treatment by inclusion or lack of inclusion in one’s moral community?
(Deutsch 2000: 49–50)

Let us begin with some general clarifications. The term “dehumanization” refers
in the most basic terms to the denial, in part or whole, of the humanity of a per-
son or group of persons. It is possible to think of degrees of dehumanization; we
might speak of extreme or “mild” forms of dehumanization, the former occurring in
instances of, for example, genocide and torture, and the latter in the everyday struc-
tures of social, political and economic marginalization, where ambiguities about
what might constitute inhuman or dehumanizing treatment are most likely to arise.
7 Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human 87

There will be times when the threshold for that which we consider a violation of our
humanity is historically and culturally dependent. Is it, for example, dehumanizing
to deny a particular race or gender the right to vote, as was the case not so long ago
in Europe and is still the case within some other cultures today? Is it dehumaniz-
ing to deny the very old and very sick autonomy of choice regarding their care or
the time and manner of their death? The limits of dehumanizing behavior are often
controversial. And yet, even as it is possible to speak of degrees of dehumanization,
a general principle is constant: to perceive of or treat someone as less human, not
fully human, or subhuman is an act of dehumanization, just as is the total denial of
the humanity of an individual or group in genocide or torture. For what these have
in common is their foundation in attitudes of exclusion, of which the psychological
processes are alike, no matter the severity of the consequences.
Herbert C. Kelman (1973) explains dehumanization as a violation of the two
qualities that he suggests we must accord to a person in order to perceive him as
fully human: identity and community. To accord a person identity, he writes, “is to
perceive him as an individual, independent and distinguishable from others, capa-
ble of making choices” (Kelman 1973: 48). This identity (which we might also
call agency) is, as we shall see later, among the most affectively devastating losses
suffered by victims of dehumanization. But let us focus for now on the loss of com-
munity, which is also at the crux of what dehumanization means in effect. Kelman’s
concept of community imagines humanity as “an interconnected network of indi-
viduals who care for each other, who recognize each other’s individuality and who
respect each other’s rights” (Kelman 1973: 48). To be dehumanized is to be excluded
from this community. It is to be perceived by the “in-group” as outside the moral
kinship or scope of justice, and thus as a legitimate target for more active oppres-
sions and exclusions. This, claims Kelman, is what makes sanctioned massacres and
mass human atrocities possible. By excluding a person or persons from our moral
community, it becomes possible to act inhumanly towards them, or else to allow
harm to be done to them by others, without invoking any sense of moral inhibition
or self-reproach. Psychological studies have demonstrated the extent to which per-
ceiving others as less human than ourselves increases the opportunities for moral
disengagement or indifference (Bandura et al. 1975, 1996). Susan Opotow explains
further:
We perceive those outside [our scope of justice] as nonentities, undeserving, or expendable.
Harm that befalls them does not prompt the concern, remorse, or outrage that occurs when
those inside the scope of justice are harmed. (Opotow 1995: 347–348)

Morton Deutsch (2000) outlines a number of social and psychological conditions

that may serve to propagate excluding attitudes. Moral exclusion of particular
groups, he suggests, is often a means of providing a scapegoat upon whom to place
the responsibility for economic hardship or political strife. The excluded group may
be perceived as a threat (thus during the Rwandan genocide it was claimed that
Hutus should kill their Tutsi neighbors in pre-emptive self-defense), or as inferior
in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, or class, and thus persecuted because of a fear
of contamination, or because of a perceived deviance from normalized standards of
88 S. Oliver

appearance or behavior. Moral exclusion and dehumanization may also represent a

form of displacement or projection: in psychological terms, the projection of dis-
approved aspects of the self onto others, through whom the unwanted elements
are attacked or expelled (Deutsch 2000: 51). In his essay “Dehumanisation: An
Integrative Review,” psychologist Nick Haslam points to this phenomenon of plac-
ing onto the other that which cannot be accepted in the self; negative and excluding
attitudes towards others, he suggests, are a means of confirming in our imagina-
tion our own humanity, contrasted with the perceived inhumanity of those seen as
exhibiting “undesired” attributes, such as the “animality” of embodiment:

Disgust enables us to avoid evidence of our animality, so representing others as animal-like

may elicit the emotion. Contempt, a kindred emotion, plays a similar role, locating the other
as below the self or in-group. (Haslam 2006: 258)

As William Gamson points out in his analysis of the politics of exclusion, the
“other-creating process” is not limited to its extreme manifestations, but rather it
has “certain tendencies and sub-processes that apply across the whole continuum
[of exclusion]” (Gamson 1995: 17). Klaus Günther concurs, drawing our attention
to dehumanization in the undramatic episodes of the day-to-day: in our attitudes
towards certain criminals, or towards asylum seekers, or towards whomever the
media chooses to present as “non-members of the community of human beings”
(Günther 1999). While such systematic exclusion is in most cases a gradual pro-
cess by which “over time, harms and dissimilarities eclipse benefits and similarities,
gradually moving marginal groups outside the scope of justice” (Opotow 1995:
365), it is possible to identify active strategies of dehumanization, such as labeling,
which occur not only in extreme cases but also in the everyday. As Kelman notes,
the “traditions, the habits, the images and the vocabularies for dehumanization are
already well established through everyday prejudice and labeling, and can thus be
drawn upon when groups are selected for massacre” (Kelman 1973: 50). Haslam
identifies two “metaphors of inhumanity” which often form part of active dehuman-
ization processes: animalistic metaphor and mechanistic metaphor. These, in turn,
correspond to two conceptual models of the human: “unique human” and “human
nature”. Animalistic metaphor, Haslam suggests, is a process of dehumanization
whereby people perceived to be lacking in uniquely human characteristics such as
rationality, civility, refinement, and moral sensibility are “seen implicitly or explic-
itly to be animal-like” (Haslam 2006: 257). Thus during the genocide in Rwanda
the ethnic category of “Tutsi” was replaced in the discourse of the perpetrators with
the signifier “cockroach”, and survivors of Nazi persecution recall the daily insults
of which they were the target: “blöde Schweine!”, “blöde Hunde!” (“stupid pigs!”,
“stupid dogs!”). Images of prisoners at Abu Graib being lead naked on a leash, or
of medical experiments in concentration camps, or of slaves held in cages, all serve
as examples of the use of physical metaphor in dehumanizing practices: by treating
the bodies of their victims as if they were animals, perpetrators reinforce the belief
in their non-humanity. For Haslam, animalizing dehumanization – the denial and
destruction of a person’s sense of rationality, autonomy, and moral self – is a highly
7 Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human 89

embodied process, not only in the victim’s experience but also in the emotional and
psychological perceptions of the perpetrators:
Being divested of [uniquely human] characteristics is a source of shame for the target – often
with a prominent bodily component, as in the nakedness of the Abu Graib prisoners [. . .].
Disgust and revulsion feature prominently in images of animalistically dehumanized others:
Represented as apes with bestial appetites or filthy vermin who contaminate or corrupt, they
are often viscerally despised. (Haslam 2006: 258, my emphasis)

Haslam’s second term, “human nature”, is associated with qualities such as emo-
tional responsiveness, interpersonal warmth, individuality, and agency, and cor-
responds to mechanistic dehumanization or objectification, whereby people are
perceived as “object- or automaton-like” (Haslam 2006: 258). Again, the figure
of the slave or the concentration camp victim serves to illustrate this metaphor in
action: deprived of autonomous agency and choice, existing as an object of forced
labor, as the Foucauldian “docile” body, these individuals are perceived by others
and at times by themselves as mere machines, marching “like automatons” with “no
words of defiance, not even a look of judgment” by which to assert their agency
(Levi 1987: 156).
Dehumanization as moral exclusion functions in a circular, self-reflexive motion
by which the perceived in/sub-humanity of the victim(s) is both the effect of and
the justification for acts of humiliation, degradation and instrumentalization. The
abject status of those degraded by exclusion serves in turn to justify the violence
enacted upon them within a vicious circle characterized by what Opotow has called
a “bidirectional causal relationship” (Opotow 1995: 350). As Kelman puts it: the
process of dehumanization feeds upon itself (Kelman 1973: 50). Thus, as Primo
Levi describes in his book “The Drowned and the Saved,” former SS Officer and
Commandant of Solibor and Treblinka concentration camps Franz Stangl explains
the reason for the dehumanizing cruelties of Nazi persecutions:
“Considering that you were going to kill them all . . . what was the point of the humiliation,
the cruelties?” the writer asks Stangl, imprisoned for life in the Dusseldorf gaol, and he
replies: “To condition those who were to be the material executors of the operations. To
make it possible for them to do what they were doing.” In other words: before dying the
victim must be degraded, so that the murderer will be less burdened by guilt. This is an
explanation not devoid of logic but which shouts to heaven: it is the sole usefulness of
useless violence. (Levi 1989: 100–101)1

Dehumanization, then, is the process by which human beings are rendered so rad-
ically other that it becomes possible for their persecutors to commit murder on a
mass scale, and for bystanders to stand by without objection or remorse. For this all
the humiliations, defamations, starvations, degradations: the provision of a “false
motive” (Scarry 1985) to the perpetrators of genocide, torture, and other gross
atrocities. Like Agamben’s “Homo Sacer,” the dehumanized, the misrecognised,
is one who can be killed with impunity because, already in exile from the moral
community, his life counts for nothing (Agamben 1998: 71–115).

1 The interview cited by Levi appears in Gitta Sereny’s “In Quelle Tenebre” (Sereny 1975).
90 S. Oliver

7.1.2 The Lived Experience of Dehumanization

or This Is Not My Body: Autonomy, Identity, and Dignity
I’m not human anymore. I have no name and even less soul. I’m a thing, not even a dog
that gets stroked or a goat that gets protected and then eaten with gusto. I’m a vagina. I’m a
hole. (Courtemanche 2003: 244)

This statement made by Gentille, the female protagonist of Gil Courtemanche’s

novel “A Sunday by the Pool in Kigali,” provides readers with a sense of what
dehumanization might mean for its victims. For this young Rwandan woman, dehu-
manization means the loss of identity and spirit. I have no name and even less soul. It
is the loss of agency and recognition. I’m a thing, not even a dog that gets stroked. It
is the loss of physical health, strength and beauty, and with that the presentiment of
total dissolution. As Gentille comments later in the novel: I’m a body that’s decom-
posing. It is also the loss of autonomy and voice: Rather than tell her own story,
Gentille recites the narrative imposed upon her body by the authors of the crime
to which she has fallen victim. Gentille’s semi-fictional story recalls countless tes-
timonial narratives of dehumanization in which victims are all too often reduced,
through acts of physical and discursive or symbolic violence, to the status of objec-
tified, fragmented, and abject bodies emptied of “human” subjectivity. What I would
like to demonstrate by a reading of testimonial texts is the extent to which violations
of human dignity and autonomy are so often inextricably linked to violations – both
literal and symbolic – of corporeal integrity, which in turn impacts upon other core
concepts such as identity, voice, and recognition. As Courtemanche most crucially
portrays here, for its victims dehumanization involves a fragmentation of the self
and of the body: In Gentille’s own eyes, she is no longer whole, no more a unified
person; she is a vagina, a body part; she is a hole, an absence. The génocidaires
have not only made her into an object, they have also violated her sense of integrity,
and the image of her decomposing, falling apart body-in-pieces mirrors that of her
fragmented subjectivity.
Perhaps one of the best-known survivor writers to testify to the horror of the
Nazi concentration camps is the Italian born chemist Primo Levi. In February 1944,
Levi was deported and interned at Auschwitz, where he remained until the camp
was liberated 11 months later. Levi’s testimonial writing is so remarkable because,
as Judith Kelly notes, it “concentrates upon the moment, the particular episode, the
instant that epitomizes for him the nature of the concentration camp experience,
the dehumanization of his state” (Kelly 2000: 6). One such moment takes place on
the prisoners’ arrival at the camp and demonstrates the devastating effect that the
loss of personal and physical autonomy can exert upon victims. Having been taken
from their homes and separated from their families and their possessions, Levi and
his fellow prisoners are ordered to strip naked before their heads are shaved and
their bodies “disinfected”. For Levi, this violation of the prisoners’ intimate, phys-
ical being instills in them the first knowledge that they have reached “the bottom”
of human experience. The imposed ritual of physical transformation represents for
Levi a kind of theft or expropriation of all that belongs to the prisoners, including
7 Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human 91

their own corporeality. As in slavery, the deportees are denied autonomy over their
own bodies and deprived of their sense of self-ownership, reinforced by a loss of
voice and lack of recognition from the guards: “they will not listen [. . .] they will
not understand” (Levi 1987: 33). Dehumanization in the camps begins here and is
forever marked by the loss of autonomy symbolized by acts of physical control. For
Heinz Wollmann, survivor of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, the initiation con-
stituted both a physical and a symbolic humiliation, and, combined with months or
even years of starvation, disease, forced labor, and other horrors, it came to deprive
victims of their personality, reducing them to a state of mute infancy, powerless to
alter or even lament their situation. His testimony demonstrates how even appar-
ently minor violations of physical integrity – the shaving of the head – can be felt as
humiliating and dehumanizing because of what they come to represent, namely, the
loss of personal and public autonomy:
Then something I personally found really demeaning happened, they took away our per-
sonality. I was shaved completely bald, and I cried like a baby and just as naked, I
was nothing anymore. At least babies can scream and kick. (Wollmann, Sachsenhausen
Memorial Museum Audio Tour)

In these accounts of the lived experience of atrocity, in which both animalistic and
mechanistic dehumanization are discerned, the victims’ sense of individuality and
self is jeopardized by forced acts of corporeal control and humiliation, indicating
the extent to which corporeal integrity is connected with the concepts of autonomy,
identity, and dignity upon which theories of modern subjectivity are based. For the
torture victim, too, dehumanization is a process enacted on and through the body of
the victim – a body that suffers, starves, and trembles in stark contrast to the strength
and power of the torturer’s body. For the victim of torture, physical pain and degra-
dation carry with them intense psychological effect. As in the concentration camp,
dehumanization of torture victims is to a large degree achieved through the denial
of autonomy and the objectification of victims, but also, as Elaine Scarry describes
in her enduring study “The Body in Pain,” through the alienation of those victims
from their own bodies. According to Scarry, physical pain is in itself a weapon of
exclusion. A vital aspect of the loss of physical and psychical integrity in dehuman-
ization processes lies in “the unseen sense of self-betrayal in pain.” In moments of
extreme physical suffering and humiliation, Scarry explains, the body comes to be
felt more and more as the source of suffering, as an “active agent” of pain:
The ceaseless, self-announcing signal of the body in pain [. . .] contains not only the feeling
“my body hurts,” but the feeling “my body hurts me.” (Scarry 1985: 47)

In such instances, the victim’s sense of self becomes fragmented: The persecuted
body becomes persecutory, alien, other. The body, once a source of pleasure,
becomes the source of torment, something to be feared, avoided, fled from. All good
in the body, all solidarity in the flesh, is transformed into betrayal, and the prisoner
is left in a paradoxical predicament, both detached from and consumed by his body,
which “is made a weapon against him, made to betray him on behalf of the enemy,
made to be the enemy” (Scarry 1985: 48).
92 S. Oliver

A further dehumanizing effect of physical pain, Scarry suggests, lies in its lan-
guage destroying capacity. Intense physical suffering is an unshareable and thus
isolating experience, cutting its victims off from all forms of worldly extension
including this most fundamental symbol of human community. Intense pain is inex-
pressible; resisting objectification in language, it cannot be spoken. Argentinean
survivor Jacobo Timerman describes the pain of torture as “a pain without points of
reference, revelatory symbols, or clues to serve as indicators” (Timerman 2002: 32).
As Scarry writes:
Physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an
immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human being
makes before language is learned. (Scarry 1985: 4)

An episode from Alicia Partnoy’s testimonial “The Little School” illustrates

Scarry’s observation. A survivor of torture under the Argentine military dictator-
ship, Partnoy recalls listening to another woman’s desperate cries from within the
prison. The effects of pain, fear, and humiliation upon this woman are so devastating
that she appears disconnected from her own humanity, a condition communicated
in her broken and distorted speech:
But when they come for me . . . to kill me next time . . . No, please don’t come . . . I’m not
an animal . . . don’t make me believe I’m an animal . . . but that’s not my scream . . . That’s
an animal’s scream . . . Leave my body in peace. (Partnoy 1988: 96)

If in psychoanalytic theory the birth of the subject coincides with the birth of lan-
guage, then, here, linguistic paralysis is simultaneous with subjective destitution.
Alienation from language, Scarry argues, is devastating for the victims, depriving
them of the “final source of self-extension” (Scarry 1985: 33). In being refused
access to the speech community and to the possibility of interlocution except with
the torturer/interrogator, the torture victim – like the deportee – is denied the pos-
sibility of narrating his or her own life story. The act of confession represents the
culmination of this loss and constitutes, in this sense, a moment of tragic resigna-
tion and self-abandonment in the victim; confession is “a way of saying, yes, all
is almost gone, there is almost nothing left now, even this voice, the sounds I am
making, no longer form my words but the words of another” (Scarry 1985: 33).
The destruction of language is linked to other “world-destroying” tactics evi-
dent in dehumanizing practices, in particular the use of symbolism and metaphor.
Traditionally comforting or nurturing objects are “unmade” or transformed into
agents of pain, with apparently benign names and expressions such as the “subma-
rine” or “tea party for two” used to indicate even the most brutal acts of torture.2 This
corruption of everyday speech further unmakes the civilizing function of language,
closing yet more rapidly the prisoner’s space and means for worldly self-extension.
The “circle of negation” produced by “the designation of an intensely painful form
of bodily contortion with a word usually reserved for an instance of civilization”

2 The “submarine”, for example, refers to the torture method during which the prisoner is immersed
to the point of drowning in water that is often dirtied with feces.
7 Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human 93

ends in a black hole of denial in which the humanity of the victim appears to be
irretrievably lost:

[T]here is no human being in excruciating pain; that’s only a telephone; there is no tele-
phone; that is merely a means of destroying a human being who is not a human being, who
is only a telephone, who is not a telephone but a means of destroying a telephone. (Scarry
1985: 44)

This in turn enacts what Scarry calls the “double negation of humanity” – a denial
both of the specific humanity of the victim and of the collective human present in
the objects and language of civilization. The denial of voice, through the appar-
ent reduction of the victim to the status of suffering body, devoid of metaphysical
“human” characteristics, can be read both as a cause and an effect of the losses
of dignity, autonomy, and identity – concepts which are themselves brought into
question through their violation.

7.1.3 Perceptions of the (In)Human Body:

Recognition as Resistance
Dehumanization, I suggest, is first and foremost a problem of (mis)perception. In
order to murder, rape, and torture their victims, perpetrators must perceive those vic-
tims as sub- or inhuman, as outside the scope of moral responsibility. The violences
enacted upon the body and person of the victim reinforce this (mis)perception in the
perpetrator’s mind, while all too often leading the victim him or herself to feel as
if they were no longer part of the human community. The role of the bystander,
who we have not yet discussed, also figures in this dynamic of perception. Let
us try to think about this with the aid of the well-known visual trope: the atroc-
ity triangle. In one corner of the triangle, the victim, to whom wrongs are done;
in another corner, the perpetrator, who does harm to the victim; and in the third
corner, the bystander or observer, who sees or knows what is happening. The role
of each is crucial to the logic of dehumanization, for if all three perceive the vic-
tim as somehow in- or subhuman, then any possibility of an alternative narrative is
excluded. The bystander is thus a decisive actor in the resistance of dehumaniza-
tion, and the way in which he or she receives images or testimony of atrocity is a
vital ethical concern; as Stanley Cohen has pointed out, the corners of the triangle
are not fixed and the boundary between observer and perpetrator of dehumaniza-
tion is often a fluid one (Cohen 2000: 14). The failure of the bystander, witness,
or receiver of testimony to acknowledge the victim’s experience, to listen to her
story, and to recognize as human the traumatized body of atrocity is itself a reit-
eration of the logic of dehumanization encountered in magnified form in torture:
Voice, recognition, and worldly self-extension are obscured behind the totality of
the body in pain. Conversely, the observer’s recognition of the victim as a mem-
ber of the human community can provide the basis for a resistance or rejection of
dehumanization: As in the brief moments of communication and solidarity between
prisoners in the clandestine prison or the concentration camp, it offers victims (and
94 S. Oliver

survivors) a corridor to identity, language, and voice. In this light, failing to wit-
ness the body in pain as integral to the subjective and psychological experience of
suffering works to allow for oppression and the abuse of power, not only in the
torture chamber, as Scarry describes, but also in the dehumanizing perceptions of
the everyday. If dehumanization is an embodied process, then recognition must also
take into account the corporeal aspects of human (and inhuman) experience. How
to give voice to the traumatized body is a question wracked with complications and
controversy. Any attempt to “lift the interior facts of bodily sentience out of the
inarticulate pre-language of ‘cries and whispers’ into the realm of shared objectifi-
cation” (Scarry 1985: 11) will depend upon the prefigured perceptions of that body’s
interlocutor(s). Let us consider then what the roots of our prefigured perceptions of
the body may be.
In dominant modern philosophical discourse, the body has figured as an abject
entity, secondary or even irrelevant to the construction of a human subject that is
posited as rational, autonomous, and largely disembodied. Thus, it is claimed, his-
torically oppressed groups such as women, slaves, non-white, and disabled people
have been categorized in dominant discourse as “too fully embodied” and some-
how less than human, uncivilized or irrational. One of the major contributions
of feminist scholarship has been to highlight (and contest), firstly, the ways in
which “woman” has been culturally and politically designated as less than fully
human and, secondly, the extent to which this dehumanization depends upon neg-
ative discourses of the body, as well as philosophical constructions of the human
subject as disembodied. Feminist theorist Elisabeth Grosz makes the connection
clear:

Patriarchal oppression [. . .] justifies itself, at least in part, by connecting women much more
closely than men to the body [. . .]. [W]omen are somehow more biological, more corporeal,
more natural than men. The coding of femininity with corporeality in effect leaves men free
to inhabit what they (falsely) believe is a purely conceptual order. (Grosz 1994: 14)

The feminist argument draws attention to mind/body dualism as the basis upon
which modern notions of human subjectivity have been built. The construction of
embodied female otherness, it is suggested, is precisely that which allows man to
regard himself – the universal “self” – as a stable, thinking being. Such binaristic
devaluing of the body, of course, has implications not only for women, but for var-
ious groups and individuals historically and culturally associated with symbols of
abject embodiment. This includes victims of dehumanizing atrocity, whose trauma-
tized bodies, in their failure to conform to the norm of the stable, bounded subject,
threaten to disrupt the ontological and epistemological matrices to the margins of
which they have been so violently thrust. This presents as a fundamental paradox in
human rights discourse, for while any practical endeavor of human rights to protect
human beings will nearly always, in some form, work to protect the bodies of human
beings, in discursive terms the “subject” of human rights is almost always articu-
lated as disembodied – the universal declaration stating the human condition in the
most abstract terms as “equal in rights and dignity” and “endowed with reason and
7 Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human 95

conscience,” but without a single reference to corporeality. Our moral relation to the
suffering other is thus rarely, if ever, phrased in terms of embodied inter-subjectivity.
And yet what is ethics if it is not embodied? However hard it tries, ethical theory
cannot sustain itself purely in the realm of the metaphysical; it must always return
in the end to the lived experience of human beings. In the same way, any attempt
to resist dehumanization, whether materially or conceptually, must recognize the
embodiment of the human subject. Holocaust survivor Robert Antelme draws atten-
tion in his testimony to the impossibility of resisting dehumanization simply by
“re-humanizing” victims of atrocity – re-attributing to them abstract qualities such
as autonomy, personality or dignity. For Antelme, the only viable resistance to dehu-
manization is to alter our understanding of the human, since “to locate humanity in
positive qualities or capacities is to repeat the logic of the camps, by excluding
from this humanity those stripped of such qualities or capacities” (qtd. in Crowley
2003: 10).
Human dignity is a particularly significant concept in this regard. Highly abstract,
it has taken on an almost mystical nature within modern moral discourse. A key
ideological concept in what Elie Wiesel has called the secular religion of human
rights, human dignity is difficult to define, seeming somehow to encapsulate any
number of moral and ontological propositions, from Kant’s categorical imperative
to the ideals of liberal autonomy and moral agency. Rarely is it expressed in relation
to embodied subjectivity, however. Posited as an innate or universal human qual-
ity, dignity has been shown through historical experience to be a fragile ideal. To
return to our atrocity triangle: if victim, perpetrator, and bystander each perceive
an absence or loss of human dignity in the victim, does it still exist? Of course,
we would like to answer yes. And yet, we can and do perceive or treat people as
if it were absent. The violations of human dignity already described in this volume
exist on a continuum with dehumanization; if I degrade, humiliate, or instrumental-
ize another person, I am also to some extent denying or belittling their status as a
human being. While an individual violation of human dignity is always also poten-
tially dehumanizing, purposive acts of dehumanization enact a double negation of
human dignity, both in the particular and in the universal: The very possibility of
dehumanization threatens to destabilize the ideal of human dignity as we currently
understand it. But what happens when we think dignity as embodied? We may speak
about the dignity of the body, which is violated through acts of torture, humiliation,
or coercion, as illustrated in the testimonials discussed. From here we may establish
the imperative to recognize the position of the body within processes and narratives
of dehumanization. To truly think dignity as embodied, however, implies more than
this: it involves a re-imagining of the human so as to include within its category
that which was hitherto excluded. It involves bearing witness to the body as part of
human as well as inhuman experience, thereby refusing to accept bodily suffering
and abjection as dehumanizing. If dignity is embodied, then it is inclusive of plea-
sure and suffering, beauty and disease, strength and vulnerability, life and death.
If dignity is embodied then it is local as well as universal; always situated, it can-
not be understood as distinct from the individual who carries it, and any defense
96 S. Oliver

of dignity must acknowledge and recognize the specificity of its circumstance. To

respect the embodied dignity of a human being, therefore, is first and foremost an
act of recognition: to recognize as human every aspect of their experience, however
abject and foreign it may seem, to acknowledge the specificity of their person, and
by doing so to affirm the place of the other alongside the self within the human
community.

7.2 Conclusion
As this necessarily limited reading of a vast resource of testimonial and theoreti-
cal texts should help us to understand, dehumanization – whether enacted through
processes of active or indirect exclusion, metaphorical objectification, or physical
violence – depends to some extent upon experiences and/or perceptions of the body
and embodiment. Metaphors of inhumanity are, as we have seen, frequently con-
structed in relation to the corporeal status of the targets of dehumanizing processes.
The concentration camp victim is reduced through violences and humiliations to the
status of an empty body or walking corpse; the torture victim is alienated from lan-
guage as well as from her own body as a result of intense unshareable pain. This state
of embodied suffering is perceived as confirmation of that which perpetrators claim
as vindication for the injustices: It is “proof” of their victim’s inhumanity. And yet,
if dehumanization depends upon our perceptions of what it is to be human, then we
may all play a role in resisting – or at the very least not repeating – its logic of exclu-
sion. This requires a rethinking of the human that demystifies and embodies those
abstract concepts that can be denied in our perception, including human dignity. As
Giorgio Agamben writes in “Remnants of Auschwitz,” the Muselmann’s destitution
from such positive “human” qualities as “dignity” must be seen not as proof of the
victims’ inhumanity, but as evidence of the inadequacy of ethical concepts of the
human:

If there is a zone of the human in which these concepts make no sense, then they are not
genuine ethical concepts, for no ethics can claim to exclude a part of humanity, no matter
how unpleasant or difficult that humanity is to see. (Agamben 2002: 64)

Thinking dignity as embodied calls for a politics or ethics of witnessing that

acknowledges and listens to the lived experience of those who have been excluded
and dehumanized both past and present; it calls for us all, as bystanders and specta-
tors of suffering, to attend to the concrete and individual humanity of the one who
suffers and to reclaim, through recognition, their status as member of the human
community. To be human, as those who have suffered the effects of dehumaniza-
tion will testify, is first and foremost to be included within the community of human
beings, to be recognized and accepted as part of this community and thus deserving
of its protection. This recognition must occur on the concrete as well as the meta-
physical level; our own humanity – always embodied, always situated, and at times
suffering – depends upon it.
7 Dehumanization: Perceiving the Body as (In)Human 97

References
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2002. Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive. New York, NY:
Zone Books.
Bandura, Albert, Bill Underwood, and Michael E. Fromson. 1975. Disinhibition of aggression
through diffusion of responsibility and dehumanisation of victims. Journal of Research in
Personality 9: 253–269.
Bandura, Albert et al. 1996. Mechanisms of Moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71(2): 364–374.
Cohen, Stanley. 2000. States of denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. Cambridge: Polity.
Courtemanche, Gil. 2003. A Sunday by the pool in kigali. Edinburgh: Canongate.
Crowley, Martin. 2003. Robert Antelme: Humanity, community, testimony. Oxford: Legenda.
Deutsch, Morton. 2000. Justice and conflict. In The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and
practice, eds. Morton Deutsch and Peter T. Coleman, 43–68. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Gamson, William A. 1995. Hiroshima, the holocaust and the politics of exclusion: 1994
Presidential address. American Sociological Review 60: 1–20.
Grosz, Elizabeth A. 1994. Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Günther, Klaus. 1999. The Legacies of injustice and fear: A european approach to human rights
and their effects on political culture. In The EU and human rights, eds. Philip Alston, Mara R.
Bustelo, and James Heenan, 117–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haslam, Nick. 2006. Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and social psychology
review 10(3): 252–264.
Homer, Frederic D. 2001. Primo Levi and the politics of survival. Columbia, MI: University of
Missouri Press.
Kelly, Judith. 2000. Primo Levi: Recording and reconstruction in the testimonial literature. Market
Harborough: Troubador in association with Hull Italian Texts.
Kelman, Herbert C. 1973. Violence without moral restraint: Reflections on the dehumanization of
victims and victimizers. Journal of Social Issues 29(4): 25–61.
Levi, Primo. 1987. If this is a man. London: Abacus.
Levi, Primo. 1989. The drowned and the saved. London: Abacus.
Opotow, Susan. 1995. Drawing the line: Social categorizations, moral exclusion and the scope of
justice. In Conflict, cooperation and justice: Essays inspired by the work of Morton Deutsch,
eds. Barbara Benedic Bunker and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, 347–369. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.
Partnoy, Alicia. 1988. The little school: Tales of disappearance and survival in Argentina. London:
Virago.
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.
Scarry, Elaine 2002. The difficulty of imagining other persons. In The handbook of interethnic
coexistence, ed. Eugene Weiner, 40–62. New York, NY: Continuum.
Sereny, Gitta. 1975. In Quelle Tenebre. Milan: Adelphi.
Timerman, Jacobo. 2002. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number. Madison, WI: University
of Wisconsin Press.
Wollmann, Heinz. Survivor testimony, Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen Audio Tour.
 Part II
Practices of Violating Human Dignity
Chapter 8
Torture
How Denying Moral Standing Violates
Human Dignity

Andreas Maier

Abstract In this chapter I try to elucidate the concept of human dignity by taking
a closer look at the features of a paradigmatic torture situation. After identifying
the salient aspects of torture, I discuss various accounts for the moral wrongness
of such acts and argue that what makes torture a violation of human dignity is the
perverted moral relationship between torturer and victim. This idea is subsequently
being substantiated and defended against important objections. In the final part of
the chapter I give a (qualified) defense of the methodology employed in the previous
sections.

8.1 Introduction

In a survey conducted by the BBC,1 respondents in 25 countries were asked which

of the following positions came closer to their own views about torture: Should
clear rules against torture be maintained because “any use of torture is immoral
and will weaken international human rights standards against torture” or do ter-
rorists “pose such an extreme threat that governments should now be allowed
to use some degree of torture if it may gain information that saves innocent
lives?”
The results were somewhat disillusioning: Almost one-third of the respondents
declared to support torture in cases where this may be an inevitable means to avert
terrorist threats and, thereby, set themselves in opposition to the prevailing view in

A. Maier (B)
Centre for Ethics, University of Zurich, Switzerland
e-mail: [email protected]
1 For the complete results see BBC/Globescan/PIPA (2006); in a more recent survey conducted
by WorldPublicOpinion, 35% of the respondents opted for exceptions to the prohibition to torture
in cases where innocent lives are at risk, and 9% held that the government should be able to use
torture in general (Kull et al. 2008).

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 101

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_8,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
102 A. Maier

international law which prohibits torture under any circumstances whatsoever.2 As

disturbing as these results may seem, they are in perfect accordance with the better
part of philosophical theorizing about torture. There seems to be a wide consen-
sus that although torture is a horrible thing there are realistic (or even real-world)
scenarios which can be used to establish exceptions to the moral prohibition to tor-
ture.3 In the following discussion, I will try to show that despite the possibility and,
admittedly, intuitive force of such scenarios, torture can never be morally justified –
whatever the circumstances may be.
One very common way of substantiating such an absolutist position is the idea
that torture constitutes a violation of the victim’s dignity.4 But as sensible as such
a contention might look at first sight, it is, at second glance, far from clear what
calling torture a violation of human dignity exactly means. This is due to the fact
that human dignity is, despite its intuitive appeal, a highly contested concept and,
moreover, subject to serious philosophical criticism (Frankena 1986, Macklin 2003,
Pinker 2008).
In what follows, I will sidestep this debate for the most part and completely
ignore the profound critique of the concept of human dignity. This will result in
a somewhat unorthodox approach (which might look like an attempt to discuss a
highly controversial issue with an unclear concept): Instead of first arguing for a
conception of dignity and then employing it to criticize the practice of torture, I will
simply take for granted the assumption that torture is a violation of human dignity
and subsequently take a closer look at the reasons why torture is a serious moral
wrong. The underlying idea is that a grasp of the very reasons for the wrongness of
torture will improve our understanding of the concept of human dignity.5
I will proceed as follows: I will start with a look at the practice of torture and
identify the central elements of a paradigmatic torture situation (Section 8.2). To
maintain an absolutist position towards torture, it has to be shown that the reasons
for the moral wrongness of this practice hold good under all conceivable condi-
tions. My corresponding argument comes in three steps: Firstly, I will discuss other
approaches and try to show that they fall short of identifying the specific moral
wrong inflicted on the victims of torture. Secondly, I argue that the reasons for the
moral wrongness of torture can be found in the asymmetric structure of the rela-
tionship between torturer and victim; this relational account will subsequently be

2 See, for e.g., the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment Art.2(2): “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of
war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked
as a justification of torture.”
3 Amongst many others: Dershowitz (2002), Miller (2005), Žižek (2002: 103–104); for a thorough
and critical discussion of such scenarios see Brecher (2007).
4 Cf., for e.g., the aforementioned Convention against Torture which bases the protection from
torture in the “inherent dignity of the human person.”
5 This is in accordance with Ernst Bloch’s insight that the meaning of human dignity becomes most
visible when we look at violations of human dignity (Bloch 1961).
8 Torture 103

substantiated and defended (Section 8.4). Finally, I will show that the reasons iden-
tified by the relational account do not admit of exceptions and therefore support an
absolutist position towards torture (Section 8.5). In the last section, I will briefly
discuss the limits of my methodological approach adopted in the previous parts and
thereby qualify the scope of my results (Section 8.6).

8.2 What Is Torture?

Finding a definition of torture is a notoriously difficult task. This is due to vari-
ous reasons. On the one hand, there is a wide variety of practices coming under
the heading of “torture”: Severe beatings, putting persons into stress positions,
extended sleep or food deprivation, the use of special devices like the rack or
thumbscrews, performing mock executions, or prolonged exposition to noise, and
many more count as torture. It is not clear at first sight what might be the com-
mon element(s) in these acts. On the other hand, it is hard to draw a clear line
between torture and related practices like degrading treatment, harsh punishment
or coercion. The need for a clear distinction of these practices becomes evident,
for instance, in the dispute about the Bush administration’s attempt (manifested
in the infamous Bybee-Memo) to explore the limits on how far it could go in
aggressively interrogating suspected terrorists without having to call such treatment
“torture”.6
These problems, which have received due attention in recent discussions on tor-
ture,7 can safely be ignored in what follows. Since I am not concerned so much with
the practice of torture per se but with torture as a violation of dignity, I will simply
sidestep the problem of marginal, ambiguous or unclear cases and instead focus on
the features of a paradigmatic torture situation. This should be sufficient to identify
the main elements of a typical act of torture we would most likely describe as a
violation of human dignity.
I take it that the following report of the torturing of Bangladeshi journalist
Tasneem Khalil8 is paradigmatic in this regard and therefore a suitable starting point
for my investigation:
At around 1 a.m. on the morning of May 11, 2007, 26-year old critical Bangladeshi journal-
ist Tasneem Khalil is blindfolded, hand-cuffed and taken away from his apartment by a joint
military and police task-force; on his enquiry, Khalil is given neither reasons nor a legal
warrant for his arrest. After the arrival at what looks like a military camp, a doctor checks
Khalil’s state-of-health. Then he is taken to a room, still blindfolded and hand-cuffed.

6 For a thorough discussion see the contributions in Greenberg (2006); another prominent example
is the European Court of Human Right’s decision in Ireland vs Great Britain that the treatment of
a prisoner who was interrogated while standing blindfolded in a stress position and, additionally,
deprived of food, water and sleep was a case of “maltreatment”, but not “torture”.
7 Cf., amongst others, Sussman (2005:1–3) and Miller (2008).
8 As reported in Human Rights Watch (2008); italics represent my synopsis.
104 A. Maier

A voice suddenly yelled, “[expletive deleted, A.M.]! Where is salam?” I then said, “Salam-
alekum,” which in Arabic means “peace be upon you.” The man screamed, “Louder!”
I cried out “salam” once again [. . .]. Then he told me to sit down and not to raise my
hands off the table at any point. [. . .] Then another voice asked me to give examples of my
recent reports. I could not remember anything at that moment. And then the second voice
said, “[expletive deleted, A.M.], you have only reported on negative things. And you have
[expletive deleted, A.M.] Bangladesh by your bloody anti-state reports [. . .].”

Someone started punching the side and back of my head. I started crying out in pain. Then
someone cried out an order, “Bring in salt and nails!”

[. . .] They asked me what things I had reported for The Daily Star. I said I had reported
on human rights issues [. . .]. Suddenly people on both sides of me started brutally beat-
ing me with batons on the lower back, just below and next to my kidneys. The pain was
excruciating. In that instant I assessed my situation. I could be a tough guy and get more of
this, or I could cooperate. I quickly decided that it was time to cooperate with these people
and do my best to dodge more beatings. I said I was sorry for whatever I had done. [. . .]. I
started begging for mercy. The beating continued for some time. Then another person said,
“We will think about giving you a chance, but you have to do as we say.” He said I had
to write a confession [. . .], saying what they wanted me to say. Then I had to beg for his
mercy. [. . .] They instructed some junior level staff to give me a pen and paper and take my
statement after they had left. They also instructed them not to allow me to go to the toilet or
eat anything.

Although he is willing to do everything his tormentors demand, Khalil is interrogated,

shouted at, and severely beaten for a total of 22 h, without knowing if he will get away
with his life.

Perhaps the most salient feature in the report above is the severe physical suffering
Khalil is subjected to: He is repeatedly beaten with batons and bare fists, on his
kidneys, on his back, and on his head. This infliction of pain is obviously goal-
oriented: On the one hand, it is used as a form of punishment for the critical articles
Khalil has written in the past (“you have only reported on negative things”), and,
on the other, it is a means to enforce a “confession” (“We will think about giving
you a chance, but you have to do as we say”). On a more speculative basis, we
can assume that another purpose is to terrorize Khalil into renouncing his critical
attitude towards the state.
Furthermore, there are various aspects in Khalil’s torture that contribute to his
suffering without being targeted at his body. The fear for his life and the anticipation
of what his torturers might do next add another dimension of suffering over and
above mere physical pain; this kind of suffering, which is due to the sequential
character of acts of torture, is usually characterized as mental suffering.9

9 The significance of mental suffering in torture situations is already noticed by Beccaria in his
“Essay on Crimes and Punishment,” (1995: Chapter. XVI). Expanding the concept of torture
toward psychological effects is, also beyond Khalil’s case, very plausible since many modern tor-
ture methods, like mock executions or extended solitary confinement, put emphasis on the infliction
of mental, not physical, harm. For a denial of the necessity of mental suffering as a sui generis
element of torture see Davis (2005).
8 Torture 105

The sequential character of torture brings in an important structural element of

torture, namely, the victim’s inability to influence the course of events.10 This is
significant in two respects: First of all, Khalil cannot react to what happens presently
and guard himself against the beatings; his torturers can do whatever they want
without having to fear any kind of resistance. And, secondly, there is no chance
for the victim to have an impact on future events: The fact that Khalil is compliant
and willing to fulfill the demands of his tormentors has no bearing on the course
of events in any way – the torture nevertheless continues for another 22 h. To sum
up, Khalil’s fate is completely in the grip of other persons: While he is not even
able to exercise basic defensive reactions, his torturers can determine every detail
of the situation unhindered. Expressive of this disparity of power are the forced
demonstrations of respect (“Where is salam?”) and the torturers’ denial to disclose
the legal basis of their actions, on the one hand, and the insults Khalil has to face,
on the other.
The fact that his powerlessness is constitutive for the kind of situation Khalil finds
himself in points to an important difference between torture and other situations
where a person is subjected to violence: While in the latter cases violence against
the victim is used as a means to create a setting where the aggressor is in full control
of the situation, in cases of torture the victim already finds himself in a situation
where another person has the absolute power to determine what happens without
the slightest possibility to evade or resist the situation.
In the last paragraphs, various salient elements present in the depiction of Khalil’s
torture have been identified. The first, and most obvious, aspect concerns the act-
level: Torture situations consist of the sequential infliction of physical and mental
suffering on the victims. Additionally, since pain is inflicted for a purpose which
is determined by the torturers, there are conditions referring to the attitude of the
torturer. In Khalil’s case we identified various goals which might have been pursued,
namely, to get a confession or to punish him; this observation points to a more
general point, since whatever specific goal the torturer might pursue, it is a goal he
himself determined against the will of the victim. So, on a very general level we
can say that the main intention of the torturer is to enforce his will on the victim.
And, finally, there are contextual conditions specifying the setting in which torture
acts take place. These conditions fix the unequal distribution of power and thereby
ensure that the torturers can act unrestrictedly.
With act-level, attitudinal, and contextual elements put together, we get the
following definition of torture:
Torture is the sequential infliction of physical and/or mental suffering on a person P1 by
another person P2 (or other persons P2–Pn) [act-level conditions] with the intention to
enforce P2’s (or P2–Pn’s) will(s) on P1 [attitudinal conditions] performed in a social setting
in which P2 (or P2–Pn) can fully determine everything that happens while P1 is completely
helpless and fully exposed to P2 (or P2–Pn) [contextual conditions]

10 Since at the present stage of the argument I am solely concerned with a description of torture,
this is not meant in an evaluative sense.
106 A. Maier

In the next section, I will consider what is specifically morally wrong with acts
fitting this description.

8.3 What Makes Torture Wrong?

Cases of torture, like Tasneem Khalil’s, are obviously morally wrong in almost every
respect. In what follows, the focus will be on reasons why torture as a practice
is morally wrong, not reasons for the wrongness of elements of particular acts of
torture. These reasons do not necessarily have to coincide: While it might be correct
to maintain that Khalil’s torture was morally wrong because he was insulted and
verbally humiliated, this might not be the reason for the wrongness of another torture
case where symbolic humiliation does not play a central role. What are needed are
reasons why cases of torture qua cases of torture are morally wrong, and the analysis
of Khalil’s case in the last section made evident what elements of a typical torture
situation might provide such reasons.
In the following, I will discuss three accounts for the moral wrongness of torture:
first, William Twining’s idea that torture is morally wrong since the rights of the
victim are violated; second, David Sussman’s influential account according to which
torture is morally wrong since the will of the victim is turned against the victim
herself; and, finally, Henry Shue’s idea that torture is wrong since the victim is
completely exposed to the torturer. As I will argue, although each account identifies
important reasons why torture is morally wrong, they all fail to grasp the specific
moral wrong torture constitutes.

8.3.1 Twining’s Account

William Twining’s account for the moral wrongness of torture focuses on the qual-
ity of the acts carried out. The central idea is that the conditions for torture are
independent of the mental attitudes of the participants and that the reasons for the
moral wrongness of torture can only be found on the act-level, not on the attitudinal
or contextual levels. Accordingly, Twining holds that what makes torture wrong is
solely the fact that practices comprising torture restrain certain capabilities of the
victim.
The starting point of Twining’s argument is the thought that we do not have to
refer to the mental attitudes of the participants in a torture situation to label such
a situation a form of dehumanizing treatment.11 Twining suggests that thinking
otherwise would amount to a confusion of conceptual questions and questions of
blameworthiness: Although knowledge about the intention of the torturer might be

11 Although Twining at first grants that the intention to inflict pain is a necessary condition for
torture, he (somewhat paradoxically) later argues for the insignificance of this feature (Twining
1978: 154).
8 Torture 107

necessary to determine if he is morally or legally responsible for his act, the pur-
suit of a specific goal is not part of the concept and, a fortiori, of the reasons for
the wrongness of torture.12 Twining supports this position with an analogy: When
we look at other forms of dehumanizing treatment, say putting a person in a “bad
jail,” it would seem inadequate to make the question whether he has suffered inhu-
man treatment dependent on the intention of the judge who sentenced him, since “if
the results were due to [. . .] lack of resources (for example, inadequate heating in
a particularly harsh winter) has he not suffered inhuman treatment?” Accordingly,
“words like inhuman and degrading, and, more important, the kinds of concern that
lie behind them, refer directly to the situation, and the rights, of the victim [. . .]”
(Twining 1978: 155).13
Twining’s main point seems to be that the moral wrongness of torture as a form
of inhuman treatment is in no way dependent on the intention of another person:
That the victim suffers morally wrong treatment does not presuppose that there is
someone deliberately wronging the victim but is due to features of the situation.
This makes clear that the concept of right employed in the quotation above is non-
relational: If the violation of the victim’s rights is independent of the acts of other
persons, these rights must be grounded in relation-independent properties, like, for
example, basic human needs or capabilities.14
Accepting this account will have two important consequences: Firstly, the decou-
pling of the concept of torture from references to the intentions of the participants
allows for acts of “accidental torture” where someone is being tortured without any-
body intending to do so; secondly, and relatedly, in Twining’s eyes it does not make
a difference if the inhuman and degrading conditions a person finds herself in were
intentionally brought about by other agents or are, for instance, simply the effect
of some natural disaster. Thus, Twining denies the significance of the attitudinal
conditions elaborated in the discussion of Khalil’s case above.
But this misses an important point about the nature of torture, namely that tor-
ture is something persons do to persons: There seems to be an essential difference
between someone’s losing a fingernail because his hand was hit by a brick and
someone’s fingernails being torn out to force him to disclose information.15
To transform this intuition into an argument, it has to be shown in a first step
that an agent’s having an intention can, contra Twining, be a necessary conceptual

12 Twining (1978: 156): “It may well be the case that in legal and other contexts the term torture
will be confined to situations where direct intention to inflict pain is attributable to the front-line
torturer; but an adequate theory of torture and related phenomena must confront the conceptual,
moral, legal and other practical problems of attributing responsibility to persons higher up the
hierarchy.”
13 My emphasis.
14 For a discussion of non-relational approaches to human rights cf. Powers and Faden (2008:
47–49).
15 Though I won’t argue this point, relation-dependence seems to be an essential feature of the
moral wrongness of other forms of inhuman treatment as well.
108 A. Maier

condition and not significant with respect to blameworthiness only. This can eas-
ily be seen when we think about, for example, the practice of lying: Since lying
is defined as an act of intentionally deceiving another person about what the liar
believes to be true, there simply cannot be an act of lying without the agent pursu-
ing the goal to deceive another person; for this reason, Twining’s point cannot be
a general truth. The case of lying is relevant in another respect as well: While it is
true that the specific content of the liar’s intention is not germane to the definition
of the concept of lying, there is one intention all liars share, namely the intention
to deceive. The same holds true for torture: While the torturer’s specific intention
is certainly not a necessary condition for his act’s being a case of torture,16 every
act of torture is characterized by the torturer’s intention to break the victim’s will.
In other words, whatever the purpose of breaking the victim’s will might be, the
prime purpose of torture is the breaking of the victim’s will.17 And this seems to be
an element that accounts for the special moral quality of torture over and above the
mere restriction of capabilities or non-fulfillment of basic human needs grounded in
certain properties.
These shortcomings in Twining’s analysis show that for an adequate account of
the moral wrongness of torture reference to the violation of non-relational rights –
which is without any doubt an important element – is not sufficient. While it is cer-
tainly true that in acts of torture victims cannot exercise their wills, the significance
of the fact that there is a second person using the will of the victim for her own pur-
poses cannot be underestimated; this insight is the starting point of David Sussman’s
approach.

8.3.2 Sussman’s Account

According to Sussman, what makes torture essentially morally wrong is the fact that
the victim’s autonomy is used against itself and the tortured person, thereby, forced
to play an active role in his own suffering. This entails that the victim is, despite his
complete submission to the will of the torturer, made an accomplice in the torturer’s
efforts:

[. . .] Torture forces its victim into the position of colluding against himself through his own
affects and emotions, so that he experiences himself as simultaneously powerless and yet
actively complicit in his own violation. So construed, torture turns out to be not just an
extreme form of cruelty, but the pre-eminent instance of a kind of forced self-betrayal [. . .]
(Sussman 2005: 4).

16 Thisis what Twining’s bureaucracy-example shows (Twining 1978: 156).

17 Specific purposes, by means of which various types of torture can be distinguished, include the
obtaining of intelligence (interrogation torture); the punishment or the intimidation of the victim
(punishment/terroristic torture); or, simply, the sadistic gratification of the torturer (an element
present, at least as a side-effect, in most torture cases).
8 Torture 109

Sussman’s argument has obvious merits: If the tortured person is made an instru-
ment of her own violation and insofar forced to become an accomplice of the
torturer, it is utterly clear what makes torture morally wrong: It is not only the fact
that the torturer does not respect the victim’s autonomy but the victim’s autonomy is
being turned against herself and it is, at least in part, her own doing that constitutes
her suffering.18
With this criterion it is possible to explain what makes torture especially morally
objectionable: Torture does not just amount to an infringement of the victim’s auton-
omy but to an utilization of the victim’s autonomy against herself.19 The victim of
torture is forced to use her own rational agency for means pre-determined by the
torturer and thus experiences the act as “something I do to myself, as a kind of
self-betrayal worked through my body and feelings” (Sussman 2005: 21).
But as plausible as this may seem, this account has various disadvantages. To
begin with, it seems to be tailored for one special kind of torture, namely interro-
gation torture. The aim of interrogation torture is to extract intelligence from the
victim that she is not willing to give voluntarily and, therefore, to make the victim
do something she would not do without being tortured. The success of this form
of torture is dependent on finding a balance between impairing the victim’s auton-
omy and leaving her enough autonomy to be able to do what her torturer wants (for
example, giving information or a confession); if the torturer administers too much
suffering, the victim cannot give what the torturer wants; if he administers too little
torture, the victim may not be willing to give it. In this sense, Sussman’s claim that
the victim’s autonomy is used against itself is correct in such cases.
But as a general analysis of the wrongness of torture Sussman’s account is insuf-
ficient for the following reasons: On the one hand, it is too wide. This becomes clear
if we look at non-torturing ways of extracting intelligence from a person without her
cooperation; in these cases where interrogation experts gain information with non-
coercive methods, the interviewee’s autonomy is turned against itself in very much
the same way, though without violent means. This shows that Sussman’s account
cannot capture the distinct moral wrong that torture constitutes.
On the other hand, and this is the more serious problem, Sussman’s account is too
narrow, since it does not capture other forms of torture where the torturer does not
have to be considerate of allowing the victim a residue of autonomy. For exam-
ple, Tasneem Khalil’s case seems in some respects to be what is usually called
“terroristic torture”, aiming at the intimidation of the victim and others; in such
cases the torturer does not have to be considerate of the victim’s autonomy, since
in this kind of torture no direct response is aimed at. The same holds true for cases
solely aimed at the sadistic gratification of the torturer. If this is correct, Sussman’s
account, though plausible for interrogation torture, does not apply to torture per se.

18 Sussman (2005: 30): “[Torture] is not just an assault on the victim’s autonomy, but also a
perversion of it [. . .].”
19 This is an element emphasized by Elaine Scarry whose account Sussman uses as an important
empirical source (Scarry 1985).
110 A. Maier

This is due to the fact that Sussman treats the act-level and contextual conditions
as two sides of the same coin20 and thereby misses the special normative signifi-
cance of the asymmetric relationship between torturer and victim: It is the very fact
that torturer and victim are placed in a social context where the former is in a posi-
tion of absolute power and the latter is without any power which allows the torturer
to employ whatever means he thinks necessary to reach whatever end he pursues
with the act of torture.
Put like this, the perversion of the victim’s autonomy is not the specific wrong-
making feature of torture but only one possible expression of the asymmetric
relationship between torturer and victim. Accordingly, an adequate and encom-
passing account of the wrongness of torture has to take serious the structure of the
relationship between the participants. Such an approach is advanced by Henry Shue.

8.3.3 Shue’s Account

In trying to find specific reasons for the moral wrongness of torture, Henry Shue
starts with the structure of a typical torture situation. Accordingly, the focus is not
so much on what the torturer does to the victim but what kind of situation allows
the torturer to do what he does. Shue holds that what makes torture morally wrong
is the fact that the victim is put in a situation where he is completely exposed to
the torturer; accordingly, “[torture] is a cruel assault upon the defenseless” (Shue
1978: 130).
By concentrating on the victim’s helplessness, Shue performs a change of per-
spective which allows him to take the contextual conditions of torture into account.
According to Shue, an understanding of the specific wrong torture constitutes can
only be gained by understanding the helplessness of the victim. But what exactly
does “helplessness” mean in this context? This becomes clear when we focus on
Shue’s argument for cases meeting the definition of torture without being morally
wrong. In such cases, Shue holds, “[t]he victim of torture must have available an act
of compliance which, if performed, will end the torture” (Shue 1978: 131). Since
the availability of an act of compliance shows, according to Shue, that the victim
can freely choose a path that will lead to an end of the torture act, we cannot say any
more that the victim is helplessly exposed to the torturer; hence, in such cases torture
would not be morally wrong. The cases Shue has in mind are cases of interrogation
torture where it is up to the victim to disclose the wanted information.21
This line of argument elucidates the meaning of “helplessness” in the context
of Shue’s argument: Only in cases where victims do not have means to interfere in

20 Sussman (2005: 30): “[Torture] is not just an assault on or violation of the victim’s autonomy, but
also a perversion of it, a kind of systematic mockery of the basic moral relations that an individual
bears both to others and to herself.”
21 It is important to note that, if Shue’s argument is correct, it would not be necessary that we
already know that the victim is in possession of the information; it would (in analogy to cases of
self-defense) be enough if the torturer would be justified in believing that this is the case.
8 Torture 111

the sequence of events they are “helpless” in Shue’s sense and, hence, such acts of
torture morally wrong. This can, without residue, be expressed in terms of a viola-
tion of the victim’s autonomy: What makes morally wrong cases of torture morally
wrong is the fact that the victim is deprived of the ability to actively interfere in
the course of events, for example, by disclosing the wanted information and thereby
bringing the torture to an end. So, what at first glance looked like an account of the
moral wrongness of torture based on the contextual conditions of this practice is just
a variant of accounts based on act/attitudinal-level conditions.
But this comes as no surprise, since, in his search for wrong-making proper-
ties, Shue is solely focusing on the position of the victim in a torture situation
and, therefore, misses what is peculiar about the whole relationship between tor-
turer and victim. Once we give up this limited perspective, Shue’s argument for
exceptions loses whatever initial plausibility it might have had, since, when we
take into view the whole relationship between torturer and victim, it becomes clear
that the victim’s ability to end the torture does not just “exist”. This ability must
be granted by another person, namely the torturer. This means that the kind of
autonomy Shue talks about is just sham autonomy, since, even if the victim is
willing to do what the torturer wants, it is still the torturer who is in the posi-
tion to determine what happens. This is exactly what happened in Khalil’s case
where, despite his willingness to do what his torturers wanted, the decision to
end the torture nonetheless remained in their power (and Khalil was tortured for
almost another day). Once it is seen that the possibility of ending the torture is
not “floating free” but inextricably tied to the torturer, it loses its force as a reason
for justifying cases of torture but turns out to be a reason why torture is morally
wrong.
If these considerations are taken seriously they point in the direction of an
approach which takes into account not only the position of the victim but the
relationship between torturer and victim as a whole.

8.4 The Moral Wrongness of Torture – A Relational Account

In the context of my discussion of other approaches in the previous section, I have
suggested that the specific reason for the moral wrongness of torture lies in the
asymmetric structure of the relationship between torturer and victim. This line of
argument presupposes that we can make sense of the idea of a basic moral rela-
tionship which can be employed as a normative standard, against which we can
judge practices like torture. To give this idea more substance we have to specify
what it means exactly to stand in a moral relationship and what moral demands are
grounded in our standing in moral relations. Thus, firstly, more has to be said about
what constitutes the basic moral relationship and how it is distinguished from other
forms of relationships; and, secondly, it has to be shown which moral norms we can
justify with reference to our standing in basic moral relationships with each other
and how these are violated through practices like torture.
112 A. Maier

It is an undeniable fact that some moral norms are generated through the rela-
tionships we stand in22 . Friendship-relations, for example, are mainly constituted
by mutual (normative) expectations of the participating persons, such as the expec-
tation that our friends are willing to give help and support when we need them,
and so on. These expectations, which are directed only at those persons we stand in
the respective relation to, provide a normative standard relative to which an agent’s
act can be evaluated and, where appropriate, judged as constituting a violation of
the friendship-norms. The important (and trivial) point is that such an evaluation
presupposes an existing friendship-relation: Only when an agent A is friends with
another person B can she aptly be criticized for violating the norms of friendship
with respect to B. So, in the case of special relationships like friendships, it is an
obvious fact that the participants have certain mutual obligations solely in virtue
of standing in the respective relation to each other. But why should we think that
there is, in analogy to the case of friendship, a general reciprocal relationship per-
sons stand in qua being persons? What surplus value does a theory of morality have
when it incorporates the idea of (some) norms grounded in a moral relationship
between all persons?
As Joel Feinberg has pointed out,23 our moral practice does not solely consist
of impersonal norms that moral agents have to follow, but there is an irreducible
intersubjective dimension with respect to the duties we have towards other persons:
There is an important difference between, on the one hand, thinking that I am not
allowed to hurt you because this would violate a demand of morality and, on the
other, thinking that you as a fellow moral being can demand from me that I refrain
from hurting you.24 This means that if we want to do justice to the intuition that
within the moral sphere we are confronted with other human beings and not only
with abstract rules we have to follow, we have to provide conceptual room for the
moral consideration we owe our fellow moral beings.
As the example above made clear, the moral consideration we owe other moral
beings should not be confused with mere compliance with the moral norms in play
but amounts to giving these others a special standing in our deliberations about what
we should do: Treating you as a fellow moral being means to view me as owing
you a justification25 for what I do concerning you; or, vice versa, to give you the
moral consideration I owe you means to view you as being entitled to demand a

22 The following paragraphs have benefitted enormously from Scanlon’s account of moral relation-
ships (Scanlon 2008: Chapter 4); the account I propose in this section is modeled very closely to
recognition based theories of morality (Honneth 1992).
23 Cf. the “Nowheresville”-scenario in Feinberg (1970).
24 This difference corresponds to Stephen Darwall’s distinction between third- and second-personal
reasons (Darwall 2006: Chapter 3).
25 “Justification” is meant in a weak sense, i.e. as giving you an account of the reasons I acted for,
not as being able to show that what I did was not blameworthy.
8 Torture 113

justification from me for my acts affecting you.26 This moral standing will in the
following be called human dignity.27
A closer look at the (de facto, not de jure) distribution of power in a torture
situation allows us to see more clearly why the relationship between torturer and
victim is the prime reason for the moral wrongness of torture: What the torturer
denies the victim is not merely her exercise of autonomy or respect for her right
not to be violated but her very standing as a moral being with the right to be given
a justification for what is done to her; by putting himself into a position with the
absolute power to determine the victim’s fate without having to justify his acts to
the victim, the torturer places his victim outside of the game of giving and asking
for (moral) reasons.28 An outward sign for this kind of relationship is the frequent
use of derogative language and other ways of symbolically humiliating the victim,
since such behavior is expressive of the inferior position the victim is assigned in
a torture situation. This kind of asymmetric relationship, where one person denies
another person her very standing as a moral being, is the specific reason why torture
is a violation of the victim’s dignity.

8.5 Why Is Torture Always Wrong?

In the last section I argued that the moral wrongness of torture consists in the depri-
vation of the victim’s standing as a moral being and that this is the very feature
which makes torture a practice which violates the dignity of the victim. The oppo-
sition between my intersubjective account and other accounts tying dignity to the
properties of human beings was already implicit in my argument against Twining.29
According to such property-based accounts, a violation of dignity consists in the
violation of claims we have as beings with certain characteristics30 ; the question
who or what violates these claims is completely irrelevant for the moral assess-
ment of such acts. In my account, however, the distinctiveness of practices violating
human dignity stems from the fact that there is something profoundly morally wrong
about the way persons relate to each other when engaging in such practices; as terri-
ble as it might be to be harmed in an accident or in consequence of a natural disaster,

26 This is similar to Feinberg’s idea that dignity is the “capacity to claim rights” (Feinberg 1970).
Recent renewals and elaborations of this idea can be found in Stephen Darwall’s theory of a
“second-personal dignity” (Darwall 2006: Chapter 6) and Rainer Forst’s conception of dignity
as the right to justification (Forst 2007).
27 Despite the rich tradition of intersubjective accounts of the concept of human dignity (see fn. 26
above) this move might seem quite arbitrary. For a (qualified) defense see Section 5.
28 This puts torture into a category with other morally wrong practices like rape or slavery where
exactly the same asymmetry is a dominant feature.
29 See Section 8.3.1 above.
30 For example, the capacity for self-respect (Margalit 1996) or rational agency (Gewirth 1992).
114 A. Maier

what makes practices like torture especially horrifying is the fact that it is something
persons do to persons.
So far, it is still an open question if it is always and without exception morally
wrong to put another person in a situation where her moral standing is completely
denied. Can’t we easily imagine scenarios where we have a perfect justification for
torture and, hence, can give the victim valid moral reasons for what we do to him?
In such cases, torturing a person and respecting her standing as a moral being would
be perfectly compatible. A much discussed example in this fashion is the so-called
“Dirty Harry” scenario where a kidnapper has hidden his victim in a place where
she will suffocate within hours if she cannot be rescued. A police officer arrests the
criminal, but since he refuses to cooperate the only means to save the victim is to
torture the kidnapper; so the officer inflicts pain on the criminal until he is willing
to give up the wanted information.31
In this case it seems undeniable that there are good reasons to torture the kidnap-
per: In analogy to defense of others, the police officer could claim that torture was
the only means to avoid the killing of an innocent person and thus give a perfect
justification for what he does.32
But this objection misses a fundamental point about the role of the justifying
reasons: Even if there is a justification for torturing, the torturer cannot justify what
he does to the torture victim himself since the social context in which torture takes
place establishes an asymmetric relationship incompatible with viewing the victim
as an addressee for moral reasons. When we take seriously the idea that reasons
are relational and that in moral discourse the persons affected by our actions are
the prime addressees when we have to justify our conduct, then it is incoherent to
maintain that we can simultaneously deprive a person of her standing as a moral
being and engage in a game of giving and asking for (moral) reasons with her.33
This explains why violations of dignity are, on the one hand, a distinct type of
moral wrong and, on the other, especially abominable: Practices like torture do
not merely constitute a breach of rules within the moral practice but undermine
the presuppositions of the moral practice itself and, hence, can never be morally
justified.34
But, even if this picture is accepted, there is another pressing objection: If the
moral relationship between persons is so central, what about the fact that the evil
kidnapper in the example above has himself cut the ties between him and the moral
community? Are there any moral obligations toward a person who refuses to enter
into a moral relationship with others? Supposing so might look counter-intuitive on

31 Seumas Miller mentions a real case with these features (Miller 2008).
32 For a defense of torture along these lines cf. Steinhoff (2006).
33 The foundation of this account is the idea that the basic elements of morality are concrete others,
not ideal and abstract moral agents. Benhabib presents a strong argument against the validity of
moral theories not taking the moral identity of concrete persons into view (Benhabib (1987: 88–90).
34 Jeremy Waldron has a similar argument with respect to the legal wrongness of torture. He con-
tends that with giving up the legal prohibition of torture we would not merely lose a single legal
norm but change the shape of the whole legal system (Waldron 2005: 1728–1734).
8 Torture 115

first glance, since to uphold the absolute prohibition to torture, it seems, we have to
force the terrorist to benefit from something he explicitly denies, namely being part
of a moral relationship.
But this objection overlooks two important points: Firstly, the moral commu-
nity is not an association everybody can opt out of at will but a robust social
fact which cannot just be denied; otherwise, everybody could just opt out when
moral pressure becomes too high. Secondly, we cannot hold a person morally
accountable for her actions without entering into a moral relationship with her
in which she is accorded the standing of an equal moral being (Darwall 2006:
67–70). Viewing another person as morally responsible and blameworthy already
presupposes that we view her as a part of the moral language game; hence, what-
ever reasons there might be to torture a person, these reasons cannot be moral
reasons.
This result seems to amount to a cold-hearted and rigorous brand of absolutism
which completely blanks out the perspective of the kidnapped person. Furthermore,
when moral relationships matter in the way suggested above, it seems incoher-
ent to worry only about our relationship with the kidnapper and neglect the fact
that we also stand in a moral relationship with the victim.35 Once we take into
account that we owe her a justification for what we do, too, we seem to be stuck
in a genuine dilemmatic situation: We cannot justify the decision to torture to
the kidnapper and we cannot justify the decision to refrain from torture to the
victim.
I take it that this result does not present an objection to my account but captures
a common intuition: Even if we grant that the best decision in the “Dirty Harry”
scenario is to try to save the victim and to torture the kidnapper, it would seem
strange to hold that the police officer has done nothing wrong and has no reason to
regret what he did at all; torturing the kidnapper is – even in the face of the horrible
alternative – still morally abominable. In situations of this kind, there is just no way
out without dirtying one’s hands.36

8.6 The Scope of My Argument

Even if the argument presented in the last sections is sound, there might be some
worries about the method employed to arrive at a relational view of dignity. First of
all, the results gained by looking at a practice to elucidate a concept C are subject
to variation depending on the examples taken as raw data: When certain aspects of
C are elaborated by looking at particular instances of C, there is no guarantee that
the results represent C as a whole. This can be shown by a simple example: When
we want to clarify the concept “bird” we can look at entities typically regarded

35 Thanks to Susanne Boshammer for this objection.

36 The same holds true for so-called “catastrophic” scenarios where a morally wrong action (e.g.
killing an innocent person) has to be committed to “save the world” (Fried 1994: 76).
116 A. Maier

as birds, for instance, blackbirds, thrushes, finches, and starlings. The conditions
for the concept “bird” that we will end up with will most probably include “can
fly,” “lays eggs,” and so on. But this would only represent a (considerable) subset
of birds, since there are of course birds which cannot fly (for example, penguins or
ostriches). From these considerations, it becomes clear that the results to be expected
from looking at torture as one practice commonly considered a violation of dignity
may be limited in their significance since a look at other such practices might yield
very different results – possibly not fully congruent with those presented here.
Secondly, calling a practice like torture a violation of human dignity obviously
begs the question for those skeptical about this concept. Skeptics might argue that
whatever is morally wrong about practices like rape, slavery, or torture, it is not
the fact that they are violations of dignity – since there is no such thing as human
dignity. An ornithologist thinking he can do without the concept of oscines will
not be impressed when you point at a nightingale and say, “But there is one!” In a
way, this objection is justified, since the skeptic is right in pointing out that there
is no guarantee that the features identified as those making torture morally wrong
really are features of violations of dignity. But, on the other hand, such a proof can
never be provided anyway. The only way of establishing a connection between these
features and the concept of dignity is to look at the usage of the concept with respect
to certain practices; if there is a pattern in the application of the concept of human
dignity, and we can give an analysis of this pattern, this is all the proof that can be
given.
Both objections point to the same problem: Giving an analysis of one isolated
practice, as was conducted here with respect to torture, is not sufficient to bring
into view every aspect related with the notion of dignity and the conditions for its
application. Understanding why we call torture a violation of dignity can only be a
first step towards a clarification of the concept of human dignity.37

References
BBC/Globescan/PIPA. 2006. One-third support ‘some torture’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
6063386.stm. Accessed 3 Aug 2009.
Beccaria, Cesare. 1995. On crimes and punishments. In On crimes and punishments and other
writings, ed. Richard Bellamy, 111–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1987. The generalized and the concrete other. In Feminism as critique, eds. Seyla
Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, 77–95. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bloch, Ernst. 1961. Naturrecht und menschliche Würde. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
Brecher, Bob. 2007. Torture and the ticking bomb. Oxford: Blackwell.
Darwall, Stephen. 2006. The second-personal standpoint. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.

37 I
would like to thank Holger Baumann, Susanne Boshammer, Paulus Kaufmann, and Elaine
Webster for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and the editors of this volume for
many valuable suggestions.
8 Torture 117

Davis, Michael. 2005. The moral justification of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading
treatment. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 19(2): 161–178.
Dershowitz, Alan. 2002. Why terrorism works: Understanding the threat, responding to the
challenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Feinberg, Joel. 1970. The nature and value of rights. The Journal of Value Inquiry 4: 243–257, Dec
1970.
Forst, Rainer. 2007. Das Recht auf Rechtfertigung. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.
Frankena, William. 1986. The ethics of respect for persons. Philosophical Topics 14:
149–167.
Fried, Charles. 1994. Right and wrong as absolute. In absolutism and its consequentialist critics,
ed. Joram Graf Haber, 73–92. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gewirth, Alan. 1992. Human dignity as the basis of rights. In The constitution of rights. Human
dignity and american values, ed. Michael J. Meyer and William A Parent, 10–28. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Greenberg, Karen, ed. 2006. The torture debate in America. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University
Press.
Honneth, Axel. 1992. Integrity and disrespect: Principles of a conception of morality based on the
theory of recognition. Political Theory 20(2): 187–201.
Human Rights Watch. 2008. The torture of Tasneem Khalil. http://www.hrw.org/sites
/default/files/reports/bangladesh0208_1.pdf. Accessed 3 Aug 2009.
Kull, Steven et al. 2008. World public opinion on torture. http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/
pdf/jun08/WPO_Torture_Jun08_packet.pdf. Accessed 3 Aug 2009.
Macklin, Ruth. 2003. Dignity is a useless concept. BMJ 327: 1419–1420.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Miller, Seumas. 2005. Is torture ever morally justified? International Journal of Applied
Philosophy 19(2): 179–192.
Miller, Seumas. 2008. Torture. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2008 edn), ed.
Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/torture/. Accessed 3 Aug
2009.
Pinker, Stephen. 2008. The stupidity of dignity. The New Republic May 28, 2008.
Powers, Madison and Ruth Faden. 2008. Social justice: The moral foundations of public health
and health policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scanlon, Thomas, and Rainer Forst. 2007. Das Recht auf Rechtfertigung. Frankfurt/Main:
Suhrkamp.
Scanlon, Thomas, and Rainer Forst. 2008. Moral dimensions. Permissibility, meaning, blame.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Shue, Henry. 1978. Torture. Philosophy and Public Affairs 7(1): 124–143.
Steinhoff, Uwe. 2006. Torture – The case for dirty harry and against Alan Dershowitz. Journal of
Applied Philosophy 23(3): 337–353.
Sussman, David. 2005. What’s wrong with torture? Philosophy and Public Affairs 33(1): 1–33.
Twining, William. 1978. Torture and philosophy. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
52(Suppl): 143–194.
Waldron, Jeremy. 2005. Torture and positive law. Jurisprudence for the white house. Columbia Law
Review 105(6): 1681–1750.
Žižek, Slavoj. 2002. Welcome to the desert of the real. London: Verso.
Chapter 9
Rape
Does International Human Rights Law Adequately
Protect the Dignity of Women?

Ivana Radačić

Abstract While rape has long been thought of as a prime example of a violation of
human dignity, it has only recently started to be conceptualized as a human rights
violation. This chapter analyzes international human rights jurisprudence on rape,
assessing whether it adequately protects the human dignity of women. In particular,
it examines how rape has been classified in international human rights jurisprudence
and what obligations have been imposed on states to ensure respect for the dignity
of women. While acknowledging significant contributions in setting the standard of
protection of women’s dignity, the chapter criticizes the failure of the mainstream
human rights bodies to conceptualize rape as a form of sex discrimination, as well
as their gendered application of the public/private divide and occasional reference
to family integrity and morals. The chapter argues that rape is a severe violation of
human dignity regardless of whether it has been committed by a private individual
or a state actor, and violates the right to be free from torture, the right to private life
and the right to equality and freedom from discrimination.

9.1 Introduction
Rape has long been thought of as one of the prime examples of a violation of human
dignity. While throughout history the concept of dignity in rape discourse has pri-
marily reflected the notion of sexual morals, as rape was seen as an attack on honor
(first of the man and family, and then of the woman), with the rise of the human
rights movement, dignity violated by rape is conceived primarily in terms of equality
and autonomy of women (Radačić 2005).1

I. Radačić (B)
Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences, Centre for Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, Croatia
e-mail: [email protected]
1 Thus, the notion of dignity in rape discourse has developed from the communitarian understand-
ing of dignity to an individualistic conceptualization of dignity, and from the concept of dignity as
connoting a certain quality of an individual to expressing the inherent and (equal) value of a human
being.

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 119

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_9,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
120 I. Radačić

However, it was not before the late 1980s that rape started to be conceptualized
as a human rights violation. When rape entered human rights discourse, it was first
understood as a violation of private life. Later on, with the growth of the global
women’s rights movement, rape was also considered to constitute a violation of the
right to be free from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment,
its precise characterization depending on whether it was committed by a state agent
or a private individual. The concept of human dignity has had a prominent role
in the conceptualization and interpretation of both of these rights (Feldman 1999,
McCrudden 2008). Finally, in women’s rights instruments, which have been devel-
oped since the mid 1990s, rape has been defined as a form of gender-based violence
and thus gender-based discrimination.2 Discrimination has also been linked with a
negative conception of human dignity (Grant 2007).
In this chapter, I analyze the international human rights jurisprudence on rape,
assessing whether it adequately protects the human dignity of women, and propose
a way forward. I call for a conceptualization of rape not only as a form of inhuman
treatment but also as a violation of the right to private life, as well as a form of sex
discrimination, as only then are all aspects of a violation of dignity acknowledged.
Moreover, I argue that the circumstances external to the victim should not be rele-
vant for assessing the level of severity of rape, as rape is a severe violation of human
dignity in any circumstances of its commission. Finally, I argue that no reference
should be made to any notion of sexual morals.

9.2 Dignity in International Human Rights Law

Human dignity plays a central role in human rights discourse: It has been a
source from which the validity and universal authority of human rights is derived
(Schultziner 2003). The whole international human rights movement arose from the
need to protect the inherent human dignity and equality of all people. All major
human rights conventions contain references to dignity in their preambles, asserting
the centrality of dignity to human rights in general, and in specific articles, asserting
the relevance of dignity to specific areas of human rights law in particular.3

2 Gender-based violence is defined as violence that is directed against a woman because she is
a woman or that affects women disproportionately. Committee on Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (1992), General Recommendation No. 19, para. 6.
3 See, for example, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted 10 December 1948) UNGA
Res 217 A (III) (UDHR), Preamble and Articles 1, 23, 24; International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (entered into force 23 March 1976) 999 UNTS 171 (ICCPR), Preamble, Article
10; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (entered into force 3 January
1976) 993 UNTS 3 (ICESCR), Preamble and Article 13; Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (entered into force 26 June 1987) 1465
UNTS 85 (CAT) Preamble; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (entered into force 3 September 1981) 1249 UNTS 13 (CEDAW), Preamble.
9 Rape 121

However, the meaning of dignity is not defined. As an underlying principle of

international human rights law, human dignity is linked to the values of autonomy
(freedom) and equality. Thus, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in their preambulary para-
graphs) stipulate that the recognition of dignity and equality (equal rights) is a
foundation for freedom.
The interrelated nature of dignity, freedom and equality is further seen in the use
of dignity language in certain areas of human rights: protection from ill-treatment,
self-determination, equality and non-discrimination, and socio-economic rights. For
example, the Vienna Declaration and Platform for Action refers to dignity not only
as a foundation of human rights but also in provisions dealing with the treatment
of indigenous people, the prohibition of torture, the prohibition of gender based
violence, the abolition of extreme poverty and the issue of medical bioethics.4 While
human rights conventions differ in their use of dignity language, in international
human rights jurisprudence dignity has been employed specifically in interpretation
of freedom from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment, the
right to private life, the right to equality and freedom from discrimination, as well
as the right to social security and work (McCrudden 2008).
In sum, in international human rights law – the central aim of which is to protect
human dignity – inhuman treatment, violations of private life, discrimination and
severe denials of social and economic rights have all been seen as attacks on human
dignity. The concept of human dignity in international law thus seems to have, as
Clapham (2006: 545–546) writes, at least four aspects: (1) the prohibition of all
types of inhuman treatment, humiliation, degradation by one person over another;
(2) the assurance of the possibility of individual choice and the conditions for “each
individual’s self-fulfilment,” autonomy, or self-realization; (3) the recognition that
the protection of group identity and culture may be essential for the protection of
personal dignity; (4) the creation of the necessary conditions for each individual to
have their essential needs satisfied. Not all of these aspects of dignity are, however,
fully recognized in international human rights law jurisprudence on rape.

9.3 Rape in International Human Rights Law

Rape is not specifically mentioned in any of the main human rights conventions.
Moreover, until the 1990s, rape, together with other forms of gender-based violence,
was marginalized in international human rights law. It was only under the pres-
sure of grass-root women’s rights activists, who have vigorously documented the
extent of sexual violence against women in different countries and the inadequacy
of states’ responses to the problem, that violence against women became a topic

4 Vienna Declaration and Programme for Action (12 July 1993) UN Doc A/CONF.157/23, the
second preambulary paragraph and paragraphs 11, 18, 20, 25, 55.
122 I. Radačić

of international human rights law. The wide media coverage and documentation of
the unprecedented scope of sexual violence in the wars of the former Yugoslavia
and Rwanda and the developments in international criminal law that these events
prompted also contributed to placing gender-based violence on the human rights
agenda (Radačić 2005).
The major change in the treatment of sexual violence in international human
rights law occurred at the Vienna Conference on Human Rights as this was the
first time that violence against women was a major topic of an important human
rights conference. Since then many regional and global instruments addressing vio-
lence against women have been adopted and mechanisms set up.5 Moreover, as
the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action promoted the strategy of gen-
der mainstreaming,6 the UN treaty monitoring bodies and regional courts have also
started addressing sexual violence against women in their mandate, realizing the
fact that gender-based violence violates a number of civil and political as well as
economic, social and cultural rights (Center for Reproductive Rights 2002).
Within international human rights law, two approaches to rape have been devel-
oped. Jurisprudence of the mainstream international human rights bodies defines
rape primarily as a form of inhuman treatment. The focus is on physical and psycho-
logical abuse of a woman in a particular case at issue rather than on discriminatory
effects of rape on women in general. The importance of the protection of the group
identity, of achieving equality of women, for the dignity of any singular woman is
neglected. Women-specific instruments conceptualize rape primarily as a form of
gender-based discrimination. The focus is thus on the group identity, and dignity is
conceived of in more collective terms: dignity owed to women as women.7

9.4 Rape Jurisprudence

Rape cases until now have been adjudicated both within the European and Inter-
American systems for the protection of human rights. In addition, there was a
number of individual complaints adjudicated by the Committee against Torture
(CAT) in which women, members of opposition parties, who were raped in their
country of origin, argued that their expulsion to these countries would violate Article
3 of the Convention against Torture on account of the risk of being subjected to

5 For example, UN Declaration on Elimination of Violence against Women, UNGA Res 48/104
(20 December 1993) UN Doc A/RES/48/104; Inter-American Convention on the Prevention,
Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (entered into force 5 March 1995) (1994)
33 ILM 1534. In 1994 the position of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its
Causes and Consequences was instituted.
6 Beijing Platform for Action (15 September 1995) UN Doc A/CONF.177/20/Add.1, paras. 37–42.
7 For an account of the collective dimension of human dignity see Neuhäuser (Chapter 3, this
volume).
9 Rape 123

torture.8 Due to lack of space, CAT jurisprudence will not be analyzed here. It is
important to mention, though, that CAT only analyzes on merits the cases in which a
woman was raped by a state agent, as it holds that “the issue whether the State party
has an obligation to refrain from expelling a person who might risk pain or suffering
inflicted by a non-governmental entity, without the consent or acquiescence of the
Government, falls outside the scope of article 3 of the Convention.”9

9.4.1 Cases of the Inter-American Commission10

The Inter-American Commission has dealt with two rape cases: Raquel Martin
de Mejia v. Peru; and Celia, Ana and Beatriz Gonzalez Perez v. Mexico.11 Inter-
American Court also examined cases in which (some of) the applicant(s) alleged
that they were, inter alia, raped: María Elena Loayza-Tamayo v. Mexico; Plan de
Sanchez Massacre v. Guatemala; and Castro-Castro Prison v. Peru.12 However,
rape complaints ware not the only allegations, nor were they at the centre of the
submissions; and therefore, for the lack of space these cases will not be analysed
here.13

8 Article 3(1): No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State
where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to
torture. Supra n. 2.
9 CAT “Views on Communication no 87/1997 (GRB v Sweden)” (15 May 1998) UN Doc
CAT/C/20/D/83/1997, para 6.5.
10 The Inter-American Court also examined cases in which (some of) the applicant(s) alleged that

they were, inter alia, raped: María Elena Loayza-Tamayo v. Mexico; Plan de Sanchez Massacre
v. Guatemala; and Castro-Castro Prison v. Peru. However, rape complaints ware not the only alle-
gations, nor were they at the centre of the submissions; in the Loayaza-Tamayo case the applicant
alleged that rape was one of the acts of torture she suffered while being illegally detained; in the
Plan de Sanchez Massacre twenty of the hundreds of victims were raped before they were killed in
the context of an attack on the village by the government’s agents; and in the Castro-Castro Prison
one of the detainees was submitted to “finger vaginal inspection” in the context of the attack on
the prison (mainly women’s wing) by the government’s agents. In the first case, the Court simply
stated that the allegation was not substantiated, even though other allegations of torture were no
more substantiated but were considered proven; in the second case, the Government accepted the
facts of the case and its responsibility; and in the third case, the Court held that the treatment in
question constituted rape in violation of the right to humane treatment. It also held the state respon-
sible for the failure to investigate these acts and punish those responsible. Due to lack of space,
these cases will not be analyzed here. For the analysis of these cases, see Quintana Osuna (2008).
11 Case 10.970, Report No. 5/96, Inter-Am.C.H.R., OEA/Ser.L/V/II.91 Doc. 7 at 157 (1996); Case
11.565, Report No. 129/99, Inter-Am.C.H.R., OEA/Ser.L/V/II.106 Doc. 3 rev. at 232 (1999).
12 Case of Loayza-Tamayo v. Peru (Merits), Inter-Am. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No. 33 (Sept. 17, 1997).
Case of the Plan de Sanchez Massacre v. Guatemala (Merits), Inter-Amer. Ct. H.R. (ser. C) No.
105, at 36 (April 29, 2004). Case of the Miguel Castro-Castro Prison v. Peru (Merits, Reparations
and Costs), Inter-Amer. Ct. H.R. (ser. C.) No. 160 (Nov. 25, 2006).
13 In the Loayaza-Tamayo case the applicant alleged that rape was one of the acts of torture she
suffered while being illegally detained; in the Plan de Sanchez Massacre twenty of the hundreds
of victims were raped before they were killed in the context of an attack on the village by the gov-
ernment’s agents; and in the Castro-Castro Prison one of the detainees was submitted to “finger
124 I. Radačić

The cases of the Inter-American Commission both concerned rape by a state

agent (members of the military). While the Gonzalez Perez sisters reported rape to
the prosecutor and submitted a gynecological report, Raquel Mejia did not report
rape to the domestic authorities. In both cases the applicants argued a violation of
their right to be free from torture, their right to privacy, and the right to have access
to domestic recourse for remedying violations they suffered.

9.4.1.1 Implicated Rights

One of the issues in these cases was how rape (by a state agent) is to be defined under
the American Convention on Human Rights.14 In both cases, the Commission found
a violation of both the right to be free from torture and the right to a private life
(Articles 5 and 11 of the Convention).15 In the Raquel Mejia case, the Commission,
defining torture as an intentional act through which physical and mental pain and
suffering are inflicted on a person with a purpose (such as punishment, intimidation
or discrimination of any kind) by a public official or by a private person acting at the
instigation of the former, looked at whether rape could be so classified. Finding that
the rape in question was committed by a state agent for the purpose of punishing
the victim, it focused on the first element. Considering rape as “physical and mental
abuse that is perpetrated as a result of the act of violence,” the Commission defined
the rape of Raquel Mejia as an act of torture. Discussing the effects of rape, the
Commission noted the condemnation of the victims by the community, stating that
the integrity of the family was at stake in the case of rape and that “no woman wants
to publicly announce that she was raped, as she does not know how her husband
would react.”
In the Gonzalez Perez case, the Commission referred to its statements in Mejia,
the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights, and the ICTY16 and held that
“abuses targeting the physical, mental and moral integrity of the three Tzeltal sisters
committed by the agents of Mexican state constitute torture” (para. 22).
In both cases, the Commission also found a violation of the right to privacy.
In the Rachel Mejia case it referred to the statement of the Special Rapporteur on

vaginal inspection” in the context of the attack on the prison (mainly women’s wing) by the gov-
ernment’s agents. In the first case, the Court simply stated that the allegation was not substantiated,
even though other allegations of torture were no more substantiated but were considered proven;
in the second case, the Government accepted the facts of the case and its responsibility; and in the
third case, the Court held that the treatment in question constituted rape in violation of the right
to humane treatment. It also held the state responsible for the failure to investigate these acts and
punish those responsible. For the analysis of these cases, see Quintana Osuna (2008).
14 American Convention on Human Rights (entered into force 18 July 1978).O.A.S. Treaty Series
No. 36, 1144 U.N.T.S. 123.
15 Article 5 contains an express reference to dignity in the first paragraph.
16 Aydin v. Turkey (App no 23178/94) ECHR 1997–VI; Anto Furundžija (judgment) IT–95–17/1–T
(10 December 1998).
9 Rape 125

Torture that rape is a particularly base attack against human dignity, and stated fur-
ther that women are affected in the most sensitive part of their personality. Thus,
the Commission concluded that “besides being a violation of the victim’s physical
and mental integrity [rape] implies a deliberate outrage to [the victim’s] dignity, and
thus constitutes a violation of the victim’s private life.” Similarly, in the Gonzalez
Perez case, the Commission (in para. 52) found that events at issue “represent a vio-
lation of the private lives of the four women and their families and an illegal attack
on their privacy which led them to flee their community in a situation of fear, shame
and humiliation.”
The Commission’s classification of rape as both a violation of the right to be
free from torture and other forms of ill-treatment, and the right to privacy (which is
in the American Convention explicitly linked to the protection of dignity) is to be
welcomed, as it recognizes that rape violates both physical and mental integrity, and
autonomy. However, the problem is that according to the Commission, only rape
by a state agent can be classified as torture, since its definition of torture requires
a direct involvement of a state official. This is, however, problematic as rape by a
private individual is not qualitatively different from rape by a state agent: In both
instances, it causes severe mental and physical pain and suffering, and constitutes a
denial of sexual autonomy and a form of discrimination, and thus a serious violation
of human dignity.
Further, while the ostracization often suffered by the rape victims is acknowl-
edged, the Commission’s concern with the integrity of the family and the husbands’
reactions does not do much to challenge views about sexual honor which lead to the
stigmatization of victims. Moreover, the pronunciation that rape is an attack on the
moral integrity of the victim might imply that victims become morally diminished
once they are raped and thus goes against the understanding of dignity as inherent
in humans, which can be violated but not lost or diminished.

9.4.1.2 Scope of Positive Obligations

Another question raised in these cases was the scope of the state’s positive obli-
gations to investigate and prosecute rape. In both cases, the Commission found a
violation of the right to a fair trial and to judicial protection (Articles 8 and 25 of the
American Convention in relation to Article 1). In Rachel Mejia, it concluded that
there was no access to a domestic recourse for determining a violation of Mejia’s
rights, as the practice in Peru was that these types of acts involving state agents were
not investigated while those who reported them ran the risk of reprisal.
In the Gonzalez Perez case, the Commission criticized the fact that the complaint
filed by the sisters to the prosecutor was transferred from ordinary courts to military
courts, which lacked both competence and impartiality. It also critiqued the fact
that at the time of its submission before the Commission, the case was pending for
8 years without results. Addressing the state’s argument that the inactivity of the
authorities was due to the failure of the applicants to subject themselves to another
gynecological exam, the Commission held:
126 I. Radačić

Rape is an aberrant act, which, because of its very nature, requires evidence that is differ-
ent from other crimes. Subjecting the victim to another episode of humiliation or one that
causes that person to relive the events involving the most private parts of the person’s body
in the form of review proceedings should be avoided. Consequently, [. . .] the investigating
authorities should analyze the circumstances surrounding the case and all available ele-
ments such as statements, circumstantial evidence, presumption, and other legal elements.
In the absence of evidence, the medical examination must provide all the guarantees for
fully respecting the dignity of the person and for considering that individual’s mental and
psychological condition.

The recognition of the humiliation caused by subjecting the victims to repeated

gynecological examinations, directing the states to use other means of evidence and
imposing an obligation on states to institute guarantees for respecting the dignity
of a victim when conducting medical examinations, goes a long way in protecting
the dignity of the victims. The need to examine victims with sensitivity was also
emphasized in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, which
further clarified the scope of positive obligations to effectively investigate rape
crimes.

9.4.2 Cases of the European Court of Human Rights

The European Court has dealt with three rape cases. X and Y v. the Netherlands
concerned a rape of a mentally disabled girl by a private individual; Aydin v. Turkey
concerned a rape of a 17 years old Kurdish girl in police custody by a state agent;
and M.C. v. Bulgaria concerned a rape of a young woman by her acquaintances.17

9.4.2.1 Implicated Rights

As in the jurisprudence of the Inter-America Commission, one of the issues raised
was how to classify rape under the Convention. In X and Y v. the Netherlands and
MC v. Bulgaria, the applicants claimed a violation of the right to respect for private
life (Article 8) and the right to be free from torture and inhuman and degrading treat-
ment or punishment (Article 3), without specifying what kind of treatment under
Article 3 was at issue.18 In Aydin v. Turkey, the applicant claimed that the rape she
had suffered constituted torture.
Rape was classified as torture only in Aydin v. Turkey. The Court explained that
the concept of torture, as distinct from “inhuman and degrading treatment and pun-
ishment,” referred only to “deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and

17 X and Y v Netherlands (App no 8978/80) (1985) Series A no 91; Aydin v Turkey (App no
23178/94) ECHR 1997–VI; MC v Bulgaria (App no 39272/98) ECHR 2003–VII.
18 In the Court’s jurisprudence, dignity discourse is most present in its interpretation of Article 3.
9 Rape 127

cruel suffering” on account of the severity and special stigma attached to torture.19
Assessing whether rape could be so classified, the Court held that:
Rape of a detainee by an official of the State must be considered to be an especially grave
and abhorrent form of ill-treatment given the ease with which the offender can exploit the
vulnerability and weakened resistance of his victim. Furthermore, rape leaves deep psy-
chological scars on the victim which do not respond to the passage of time as quickly as
other forms of physical and mental violence. The applicant also experienced the acute phys-
ical pain of forced penetration, which must have left her feeling debased and violated both
physically and emotionally.

The Court’s conceptualization of rape in custody as an “especially grave and abhor-

rent form of ill-treatment” and its recognition of the vulnerable position of detainees
in respect of sexual abuse is to be greeted as a gender-sensitive judicial pronunci-
ation that acknowledges rape as a severe violation of human dignity. However, the
focus on the vulnerability of the detainee in determining the severity of treatment is
problematic, as it leaves unclear whether a rape by a private individual also reaches
the level of severity of torture (Dembour 2006: 204–205).
This question was not answered in either of the remaining cases: in X and Y, the
Court refused even to consider the Article 3 complaint, and in MC v. Bulgaria, it
failed to state what kind of Article 3 treatment was at issue. Rape, however, should
always be assessed as a grave and abhorrent form of ill-treatment constituting tor-
ture, regardless of whether it was committed by a state or a non-state actor, provided
that the state responsibility is established. As noted by the Appeals Chamber of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Kunarac
judgment:
[S]ome acts establish per se the suffering of those upon whom they were inflicted. Rape is
[. . .] such an act. [. . .] Sexual violence necessarily gives rise to severe pain or suffering,
whether physical or mental, and in this way justifies its characterisation as an act of tor-
ture. Severe pain or suffering, as required by the definition of the crime of torture, can thus
be said to be established once rape has been proved, since the act of rape necessarily implies
such pain or suffering.20

19 Aydin v Turkey, para 82. Article 3 does not explicitly require the Court to draw a distinction
between the forms of ill-treatment it prohibits, but the Court has tended to state the nature of
ill-treatment suffered by a given applicant. The distinction between various forms of ill-treatment
prohibited by Article 3 derives principally from the intensity of suffering inflicted. For the treatment
to constitute torture under the Convention, it has to be intentional, it has to cause severe suffering,
and it has to be committed with a purpose, such as: obtaining from the victim or a third person
information or a confession, punishing the victim for an act s/he or a third person has committed
or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing the victim or a third person for
any reason based on discrimination of any kind. The level of severity is assessed according to the
facts at issue (duration of treatment, physical and mental effects on the victim, and, in some cases,
personal characteristics of the victim, such as sex and age) and in light of “social developments”.
See, e.g., Tyrer v UK (App no 5856/72) (1978) Series A no 26.
20 Kunarac, Kovač and Vuković (Appeals Chamber Judgment) ICTY–96–23 (2 June 2002), paras.
149–151.
128 I. Radačić

Whether an individual was raped by a state agent or by a private individual

should not be relevant for determining the severity of treatment but only for estab-
lishing the responsibility of the state. State responsibility is under the European
Court’s jurisprudence and, unlike in the jurisprudence of CAT or the Inter-American
Commission, is not limited to a direct state action (or instigation or acquiescence),
but includes responsibility to prevent and investigate human rights violations by pri-
vate individuals (Mowbray 2004). Thus, where responsibility of the state is found,
rape should always be conceptualized as torture, regardless of the implicated sphere.

9.4.2.2 Scope and Content of Positive Obligation

The content and scope of a state’s obligations in respect of securing effective pro-
tection from rape was another question addressed in the cases. In X and Y v. the
Netherlands, at issue was the adequacy of legislation, as the applicant challenged
the prosecutor’s refusal to institute proceedings due to the fact that the criminal pro-
vision prohibiting indecent assault, which he found applicable in the case at issue,
required a victim herself to institute proceedings (which she was not able to do due
to her disability).21
The Court, clarifying first that states have positive obligations even in the sphere
of the relationship between individuals, analyzed whether civil remedies were
sufficient, as the government argued. It concluded (in para. 27):
[. . .] This is a case where fundamental values and essential aspects of private life are
at stake. Effective deterrence is indispensable in this area and it can be achieved only
by criminal-law provisions; indeed, it is by such provisions that the matter is normally
regulated.

It then looked at the compatibility of the Dutch criminal law provision with Article
8. It found a violation of Article 8, concluding that it left the applicant unprotected
because of its requirement that the victim file a criminal report.
Recognizing rape as implicating fundamental aspects of a private life and impos-
ing on states a positive obligation to provide criminal law remedies in respect of
forceful intercourse with a person with mental disability is a positive development,
which affirms the dignity of women with disabilities. However, the Court’s anal-
ysis of the relevant legislation was too narrow, as the Court only examined the
provision that the government argued was applicable, and only in respect of its
requirement that the victim herself had to institute proceedings. The fact that the
provision offered protection only to the “minor of the blameless conduct” was not
criticized. Moreover, it was not questioned whether it was appropriate to define the

21 The provision prohibits “causing a minor of blameless conduct to commit indecent acts or to suf-
fer acts through gift, promises, abuse of dominant position, or deceit.” It required the victim herself
to take the action. As she was unable to do so, the father filed a criminal report, but the prosecutor
declared it inadmissible, which was affirmed by the courts. While the provision prohibiting rape
does not require a victim to institute the proceedings, the authorities found it inapplicable as it
required recourse to force.
9 Rape 129

crime in question as an “indecent act” or whether it would have been more appro-
priate to define the crime as rape (or criminalize specifically the forceful sexual
intercourse with a person with mental disability). The requirement of recourse to
physical force as an element of rape was not criticized, despite its apparent incom-
patibility with human rights standards in respect of protection of women from sexual
abuse. This was to be done only later.
In Aydin v. Turkey, the question was whether the investigation in the applicant’s
case was effective. The Court held that the investigation was ineffective and incom-
plete; the prosecutor had not taken all the measures at his disposal to verify the
applicant’s statements, and the medical examinations were aimed at establishing
whether she had lost her virginity rather than whether she was a rape victim. In
this respect the Court noted that doctors did not have experience in examining rape
victims, and held (in para. 107):
The requirement of a thorough and effective investigation into an allegation of rape in
custody at the hands of a State official also implies that the victim be examined, with all
appropriate sensitivity, by medical professionals with particular competence in this area and
whose independence is not circumscribed by instructions given by the prosecuting authority
as to the scope of the examination.

Imposing this specific obligation on the state is a progressive step in establishing

standards of the protection of women’s dignity in the context of rape investiga-
tion. Together with the obligation to respect the dignity of women pronounced in
the Gonzalez Perez case, it sets the standards of protection of the victims from
humiliation and re-victimization in the criminal proceedings.
In MC v. Bulgaria, at issue was the adequacy of both legislation and prosecution.
The applicant argued that the investigation into her case was ineffective and that
Bulgarian laws and practices generally leave the victims of sexual abuse unprotected
by prosecuting only those cases where the victim resisted violently.22 The Court,
examining the scope of positive obligations, first concluded that “states have a pos-
itive obligation inherent in Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention to enact criminal-law
provisions effectively punishing rape and to apply them in practice through effective
investigation and prosecution” (para. 153).
The Court then went on to discuss what was meant by “effective”. Examining the
state of the European consensus, documents within the Council of Europe, the stan-
dards in international criminal law,23 and noting the “evolution of societies toward

22 The definition of rape in cases where the victim was not incapable of defending herself required
recourse to the use of force or threats by the perpetrator. The applicant claimed that only cases in
which there was evidence of physical force and active resistance were prosecuted. She supported
her claim by an overview of the reported judgments of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court
of Cassation, which showed that from 21 judgments, 18 involved significant physical force.
23 The Court looked at the rape laws in Europe, the ICTY case Prosecutor v Kunarac, Kovač and
Vuković (Appeals Chamber judgment) (12 June 2002), and Recommendation Rec (2002) 5 of the
Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on the protection of women against violence and
Explanatory Memorandum. It also examined Interights’ amicus curiae brief which argued that the
central element of rape is non-consent. See paras. 104–108 of the judgment.
130 I. Radačić

effective equality and respect of each individual’s autonomy,” the Court (in para.
166) held:
The Court is persuaded that any rigid approach to the prosecution of sexual offences, such
as requiring proof of physical resistance in all circumstances, risks leaving certain types
of rape unpunished and thus jeopardising the effective protection of the individual’s sexual
autonomy. In accordance with contemporary standards and trends in that area, the member
States’ positive obligations under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention must be seen as requir-
ing the penalisation and effective prosecution of any non-consensual sexual act, including
in the absence of physical resistance by the victim.

The Court finally examined whether Bulgarian legislation and practice on rape and
their application in the applicant’s case, combined with the alleged shortcomings
in the investigation, had such significant flaws to amount to a breach of positive
obligations under Articles 3 and 8. Accepting the applicant’s submission of restric-
tive interpretation of “force” as an element of rape, and finding that in the case at
issue the authorities had failed to investigate sufficiently all the surrounding cir-
cumstances (including consideration of the special psychological factors involved
in cases of rape concerning minors)24 while putting undue emphasis on the “direct”
proof of rape, the Court held that there was a violation of positive obligations under
Articles 3 and 8.
Imposing the obligation on states to prosecute all forms of rape, regardless of
whether the victim actively resisted, is a landmark development from the perspective
of protection of women’s dignity, achieved by a gender-sensitive methodologi-
cal approach. In assessing the scope and content of state obligations, the Court
asked whose experience the challenged laws and practices reflected and what their
effect was on protecting women’s sexual autonomy, dignity and equality. The
Court looked at the implications for women – in particular, a vulnerable cate-
gory of young women – of prosecuting only those cases where victims actively
resist. In this respect, the Court took seriously the experiences of women and
acknowledged and challenged the discriminatory social and legal attitudes in
respect of the victims of sexual violence, especially present in date rape scenarios
(McColgan 1996).
Furthermore, by acknowledging that sex might be non-consensual even when
there is no active force or active resistance, due to many factors connected to
inequalities in relationships (MacKinnon 2005), the Court opened a way for a
re-conceptualization of consent from investigating when “no means no” to inves-
tigating when “yes means yes”, when consent is given freely and voluntarily (Little
2005, Munro 2005). This “affirmative consent” approach, which requires the par-
ties of sexual acts to take steps to ascertain whether there is a free and genuine
agreement, has greater potential to challenge gender subordination and stereotypical

24 The applicant submitted research by a Bulgarian psychologist and psychiatrist on the response of
young women to rape, which concluded that most young women displayed a passive psychological
reaction to panic (known as “frozen fright”).
9 Rape 131

norms of sexuality (according to which men propose sexual advances and women
passively accept them) and of prompting the establishment of norms of sexuality that
see women and men as equal parties.25 Only such norms can adequately protect the
dignity of both women and men.

9.5 Conclusion
In this chapter I have examined the international human rights law on rape, assess-
ing how it protects women’s human dignity. While in international human rights
law dignity has four interrelated aspects – physical and moral integrity, autonomy,
non-discrimination, and enjoyment of social conditions in which a person can
strive – international human rights jurisprudence has not yet recognized all of these
elements as implicated in rape, since the mainstream human rights bodies have
failed to conceptualize rape as a gender-based discrimination. Moreover, it has only
been recently that the European Court of Human Rights has defined rape as a vio-
lation of both the right to respect for a private life and the right to be free from
torture and other forms of ill-treatment. On the other hand, in the jurisprudence of
the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights we can still see a conceptual-
ization of dignity connected with sexual morality and a focus on the integrity of
family. Such conceptualization of dignity does nothing to challenge the stigmati-
zation of rape victims and runs against the understanding of dignity as inherent in
human beings and owed to an individual.
Another problematic aspect of the jurisprudence is the operation of the pub-
lic/private divide. Thus, CAT has refused to examine expulsion cases in which
victims had been raped by non-state actors; the Inter-American Commission
requires direct involvement of a state actor (through action or instigation) for rape
to be classified as torture; and the European Court has defined rape as torture only
when committed by a state agent, even though direct involvement of the state agent
is not an element of torture in its jurisprudence. These applications of the pub-
lic/private divide are, however, harmful to women as they create hierarchies of rape
and its victims. In international criminal law no such boundaries are found, as any
rape is seen as constituting torture.
While the failure to conceptualize rape as torture – regardless of whether it
is committed by a public or a private actor, provided that the state responsi-
bility is engaged – and as an act of gender-based violence fails to reflect all
aspects of the dignity of women. The following features of the human rights

25 Under this approach mere submission would not indicate consent; only free and genuine agree-
ment would suffice. Certain circumstances – such as where force, threats, fraud or abuse of power
was used – would entail a presumption of a lack of consent as well as a reasonable belief in the lack
of consent. Only reasonable mistaken belief of consent, where the accused took steps to ascertain
whether the other party agreed to the sexual act, would negate criminal responsibility (see Radačić
and Turković 2010).
132 I. Radačić

jurisprudence represent significant steps forward in setting the standard of protection

of women’s dignity:

1. Imposing on states the obligation to criminalise all forms of sexual abuse;

2. Imposing on states the obligation to effectively prosecute all forms of sexual
abuse, regardless of whether the perpetrator used force and whether the victim
resisted, and thus identifying non-consent rather than force or resistance as the
central element of rape;
3. Imposing on states the obligation to secure respect for dignity of women
in investigation of rape, particularly in respect of conducting gynaecological
examinations.

References
Center for Reproductive Rights. 2002. Bringing rights to bear: An analysis of work of the treaty
monitoring bodies on reproductive and sexual rights. New York, NY: Center for Reproductive
Rights.
Clapham, Andrew. 2006. Human rights obligations of non-state actors. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Dembour, Marie-Bénédicte. 2006. Who believes in human rights? Reflections on the European
convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Feldman, David. 1999. Human dignity as a legal value – Part I. Public Law 682–702.
Grant, Evandé. 2007. Dignity and equality. Human Rights Law Review 7(2): 299–329.
Little, Nicholas J. 2005. From no means no to only yes means yes: The rational results of an
affirmative consent standard in rape law. Vanderbilt Law Review 58: 1321–1365.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. 2005. Unequal sex: A sex equality approach to sexual assault. In
Women’s lives – Men’s laws, ed. Catharine A. MacKinnon, 240–248. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
McColgan, Aileen. 1996. The case for taking the date out of rape. London: Pandora.
McCrudden, Christopher. 2008. Human dignity and judicial interpretation of human rights.
European Journal of International Law 18(9): 656–724.
Mowbray, Andrew W. 2004. Development of positive obligations under the European convention
on human rights. Oxford: Hart.
Munro, Vanessa. 2005. Concerning consent: Standards of permissibility in sexual relations. Oxford
Journal of Legal Studies 25(2): 335–352.
Quintana Osuna, Karla. 2008. Recognition of women’s rights before the Inter-American court of
human rights. Harvard Human Rights Journal 21(2): 301–312.
Radačić, Ivana. 2005. Status of women and treatment of gender-specific violence in international
humanitarian and international criminal law. Zbornik Pravnog fakulteta Sveučilišta u Rijeci
26(1): 1041–1062.
Radačić, Ivana, and Ksenija Turković. 2010. Rethinking Croatian rape laws: Force, consent and the
contribution of the victim. In Rethinking rape law: international and comparative perspectivesl,
eds. Clare McGlynn and Vanessa Munro, 169–183. Oxon: Routledge.
Schultziner, Doron. 2003. Human dignity – Function and meaning. Global Jurist Topics 3(3),
Article 3.
Chapter 10
Social Exclusion
Practices of Misrecognition

Steffen K. Herrmann

Abstract Social Exclusion can be mainly understood in three different ways: as a

form of spatial separation, a lack of participation, or as emanating from practices
of misrecognition. One of the approaches based on the latter understanding was
proposed by the Israeli social philosopher Avishai Margalit. For him, social exclu-
sion by practices of misrecognition is one way to harm human dignity. Margalit
frequently referred to the persecution of Jews during National Socialism in order
to substantiate this thought. In my chapter, I take up this thought and demonstrate
that in national socialist Germany various practices of misrecognition played an
important role within anti-Semitism, a fact which can be clearly shown in the pol-
itics of the personal name. This is because the personal name is a unique symbol
of human dignity. The giving of a name is not only a performative act by which
we become singular and distinctive; first and foremost, it inaugurates us as social
beings. I would like to distinguish four stages within which Jewish names were tar-
gets of social exclusion during National Socialism: insult, degradation, debasement
and humiliation. What began as a seemingly harmless and ordinary practice of teas-
ing, displayed in nicknames such as “Itzig”, gradually developed into a system of
utmost cruelty, embodied in a state-run policy of debasement and exclusion of a
whole section of the population, which was initiated by the declaration of the names
“Sarah” and “Israel” as obligatory for Jews. This system culminated in the concen-
tration camps where the number replaced the human name. As the paradigmatic
figure of the nameless, I will examine the so called “Muselmann” more closely. He
marks the transitional point where social exclusion turns into social death, and the
loss of human dignity becomes absolute.

S.K. Herrmann (B)

Department of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 133

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_10,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
134 S.K. Herrmann

10.1 Introduction
When the idea of “social exclusion” entered into academic debates as a theoretical
concept around the end of the twentieth century, it was meant to reflect the situation
of those people who no longer experience themselves as fully participating members
of society, but instead as part of a merely dispensable human mass. In contrast to
members of the underprivileged lower classes, who at least experience having a
positive social identity within a system of social inequality, these individuals find
themselves in a state of social isolation providing no positive identification at all.
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman coined the expression “wasted life” to describe
this condition (Bauman 2004).
The concept of social exclusion, resulting from the need to conceptualize this
condition, was principally influenced by two basic approaches. One of the latter
takes the concept literally and examines the phenomenon of social exclusion mainly
in regard to practices of spatial separation. Seminal contributions to this posi-
tion were provided by the works of Erving Goffman (1961) and Michel Foucault
(2003), which investigated the shutting away of mentally-ill patients into psychi-
atric institutions. While their work focused mainly on the fate of those stigmatized
as “abnormal” from a hegemonic point of view, the subsequent research widened
the focus on other socially marginalized groups – for example, the marginalization
of economically disadvantaged classes who live largely separated from society in
socially deprived areas, ghettos, or favelas. Based on this perspective, social exclu-
sion is understood as a process of setting up spatial zones in which the socially
disadvantaged are segregated from the rest of society. On the other hand, there is
a second tradition which considers social exclusion in regard to the lack of possi-
bilities for social groups to participate politically and socially. In the Anglo-Saxon
context, these inquiries focused on the concept of the “underclass” to examine to
what extent poverty, unemployment, or social origin make it impossible to partici-
pate in what is commonly considered to be a good life (Dahrendorf 1988). In similar
ways, close attention has been paid to this potential for a lack of participation with
the concept of “les exclus” in France. However, more socially proven factors were
at play here, such as, for example, lack of education, cultural habitus or a minority
lifestyle (Castel 2002). In contrast to the first perspective, these approaches do not
consider social exclusion within a context of spatial segregation, but rather as a lack
of participation as a result of political, economic, and social barriers. Consequently,
this theoretical tradition therefore regards social exclusion as being the systematic
discrimination of socially disadvantaged groups to whom participation in society’s
good life is denied.
A third theoretical tradition recently became available as a research resource.
Here, exclusion processes are not traced back to local separation or a lack of
participation but rather understood as emanating from practices of misrecognition
(Honneth 1995, Taylor 1994). Central to this theory is the exclusion from social
belonging. In analogy to the approach first introduced, the concept of social exclu-
sion here is also understood literally, with the crucial difference, however, that it is
not the concept of exclusion which is taken literally, but rather that of “the social”.
10 Social Exclusion 135

Social rather than spatial positionings are now the central focus of interest. Based
on this perspective, exclusion is understood as a lack of recognition of certain social
groups through which individuals are driven into a state of social isolation, where
any positive identification with their own identity is no longer possible. One of the
approaches based on the latter theoretical tradition was proposed by the Israeli social
philosopher Avishai Margalit. His reflections are of particular importance in that,
for him, in acts of humiliation social exclusion can be increased to the extent that a
human being is excluded from “the family of man” (Margalit 1996: 108). In this case
it is not only questioned whether the excluded are full-fledged members of society,
but rather it is their basic human dignity which is at stake. In what follows, I would
like to show that, based on this notion, it is not only possible to adequately describe
the state of “wasted life” in theoretical terms, but also to work out an entire set of
symbolic practices of misrecognition through which social exclusion processes are
executed.
Margalit frequently exemplified his reflections on exclusion through the example
of the persecution of Jews during National Socialism. For him, the misrecognition
of the Jewish community is a paradigmatic case which serves to demonstrate how
social exclusion can escalate into dehumanization. In the following, I would like
to take up Margalit’s basic thought and apply it to a specific matter: the human per-
sonal name. I would like to concentrate on the personal name because it is especially
useful in clearly depicting the transformation and increase of practices of misrecog-
nition – and this, indeed, not by showing how exclusion expands quantitatively but
rather how it increases qualitatively. Therefore, first of all, I would like to demon-
strate how our human existence is inimitably expressed by the personal name (10.2).
Based on this, I would like to succinctly reconstruct how the politics of personal
names became a fundamental component of the persecution of the Jews in National
Socialism (10.3). Subsequently, the third section will reveal how processes of the
social exclusion of Jews were implemented with the help of the misrecognition of
the personal name (10.4). In the fourth section, it will ultimately become clear how,
through the humiliation of the personal name, social exclusion could reach so far
that the affected individuals’ humanity was put into question (10.5). In conclusion,
I will summarize the continuum of practices of misrecognition and their relevance
for social exclusion processes (10.6).

10.2 The Personal Name as a Sign of Humanity

“No mortal remains nameless,” stated Homer in the Odyssey – and it seems that he
was indeed right when he alleged that no human being was without a name. For,
not only is it so that, according to current knowledge, the personal name is a solid
component of all natural languages, it is also the case that we know of no culture in
which people are not bestowed with a name. It appears as though the personal name
plays a decisive role for our human existence. For this reason, in the Anglo-Saxon
as well as the continental philosophical tradition, relevant studies have continuously
been devoted to personal names. Although I am not able to reproduce the entire
136 S.K. Herrmann

controversial debate surrounding the functionality of personal names here, I would

like to point out two important characteristics.
First of all, the personal name is special in that it names an individual object
without defining it conceptually. In this way, it is contrasted to definite descriptions
which name an individual object by means of a specification. An example of this
distinction is the personal name “Aristotle” compared to the description “Alexander
the Great’s teacher.” While the latter does attempt to name a person by particu-
lar characteristics, the former names an individual without any specifications about
the one named. The fact that the proper name can’t be understood as a description
was first pointed out by John Stuart Mill (Mill 1843: book 1, ch. 2, §§ 1–5) with
his realist theory and then subsequently by Saul Kripke (Kripke 1980) who devel-
oped it into a pragmatic theory of the personal name. This means that it makes no
conceptual declaration about the named person and that the person is named omit-
ting any concrete characteristics. Therefore, the name is not in fact the word with
the most abstract meaning but rather the most concrete: It names a unique social
being. The personal name individuates its bearer as no other verbal expression can.
We do not have to make any particular effort in order to complete the name, it
just names us: at all times. Even if our characteristics change with time, the per-
sonal name names the same person when she/he is a child, an adult or in old age.
Independent of all changes, it guarantees that “I” was the same yesterday as “I” am
today and that “I” will be tomorrow. In this way, the personal name notably endows
“selfsameness” as it was termed by Paul Ricœur (1992: 27–40). As a result, the
personal name uniquely stabilizes our individual existence. This also becomes clear
when we consider the basic difference between addressing someone with “you” ver-
sus addressing someone by name: The “you” address has no continuous reference:
“You” retains its continuity only for the duration of the act of addressing, for in
the moment where another addressee is spoken to, the “you” is someone different.
“You”, according to Benveniste, is a “mobile sign” whose reference is constituted
in each case based on the performance of the utterance – due to its indexicality,
the appellative power of the pronoun is rooted within the context (Benveniste 1971:
220). By contrast, the use of the personal name is stable across contexts; its naming
does not only make reference to the addressed person in completely varied situa-
tions, but also in their absence – and it is for exactly this reason that it is unique.
In contrast to “you”, personal names constitute a “fixed sign” to which its reference
adheres.1 Thus, at all times, and even in the absence of the concerned person, the
existence of a concrete “you” can be referred to and with that the situation-specific
game of presence and absence can be transcended. For this reason, our individual
existence is anchored in our personal names as it is in no other form of address. The
personal name accords individuality throughout time and different contexts. Not
least because of this does it serve as an identificatory sign in the signature: It is the
identification of an unmistakable singularity.

1 Cf. also Saul Kripke’s concept of the rigid designators (Kripke 1980: 48–71).
10 Social Exclusion 137

We must, however, differentiate between this analytical meaning of the name

and the social meaning, which only comes to the fore if we address the naming
process. The latter will demonstrate to us that not only is it true that singularity
is imparted upon individuals through names in what concerns space and time, but
that social belongings are also endowed through them. The act of baptism is one
social ritual which represents a clear example of this. The baptism ritual belongs
to the “original performatives”, referred to as such by John L. Austin; in other
words, those classes of utterances which name and produce something in the same
breath. However, the endowing power of naming is not only of interest here in
that the priest dictates a name to the newborn before the eyes of the community
and in doing so creates a singular societal being, but rather is representative of the
child’s belonging to the Christian community. In this case, the act of immersion into
holy water can be read as the symbolization of immersion into the human commu-
nity.2 This social importance of the naming process, the endowment of belonging,
is also apparent in other rites of passage. The transition into, for example, marriage,
a monastery, or the priesthood is sealed with a new name. Here, naming repre-
sents a kind of social rebirth which is meant to make it clear that the individual
now belongs to a new social group. This effect is also evidenced in very differ-
ent cultural contexts: For example, in Borneo, the Kayan only grant their newborns
a personal name after 8 months. If the child dies before the naming ritual, it is
mourned with the same rituals as if it had been stillborn (Bering 1992: 186). There
is thus a direct connection between the granting of a name and being treated as a
social being with the corresponding burial ceremonies. What this and the previous
examples demonstrate is that the name granting which occurs in our social prac-
tices does not only serve to create a clearly identifiable reference for someone from
the very beginning, but rather also to mark her/his belonging. While the context
of belonging can differ from case to case, all personal names do have one thing in
common: The personal name vouches for the fact that we recognize someone to be a
member of the human community. The name itself conveys a fundamental belong-
ing to this species; in other words, having a name means that one is recognized
as human.3

2 Subsequently, Judith Butler emphatically referenced Austin regarding the constitutive power of
the name. She writes that to obtain a name means “to have the very term conferred by which the
recognition of existence becomes possible” (Butler 1997: 5). While Butler focuses on the subject-
constituting power of the name, in the following context I am more concerned with the social
belonging which accompanies the name.
3 The much discussed question of what status we accord animals when we grant them a name
naturally comes up in this case. Although I am not able to debate this in detail here, I would like to
point out two important considerations concerning how this problem could be solved: First of all,
for the most part, we grant animals with just one first name and not with a personal name which
includes a first and last name. One could conclude from this that we follow a different practice in
the naming of animals as compared to the naming of humans. And, indeed, I think we should keep
in mind that the naming of a human being makes a different normative claim then does the naming
of an animal. However, we should also be aware of the fact that the naming of animals causes the
138 S.K. Herrmann

The analytical and social research concerning the meaning of the personal name
shows us that two extremes are condensed within it. On one hand, it names a unique
being: an individual; on the other hand, a general being: a human. Individuality and
sociality create the inseparable double-sided nature of the name granting process
through which we are simultaneously produced as individuals and as members of the
human community. However, the personal name’s inimitable endowment power has
a consequence: Its misrecognition has the ability to not only injure our individuality
but also our very humanity.

10.3 The Politics of the Personal Name

The misrecognition of the personal name played an influential role in the German
history of antisemitism. In this case, the Jewish name was used in a unique way as
a means of enforcing the politics of social exclusion. The initial use of nicknames
or derogatory names, which can be regarded as seemingly harmless and belonging
to ordinary teasing practices, gradually developed into a systematically controlled
policy which culminated in the complete disappropriation of the name. In order to
understand this process, we must first return to the point of origin which enabled
the naming politics in German-Jewish relations to attain such decisive importance
in the first place.4
(i) The “baptism” of the German Jews: The decisive starting point of personal
name policy is the year 1812. Up until this year, Jews were almost completely
excluded from social life in the German States. During the Age of Enlightenment,
however, the emancipation of the Jews was promoted: The forced segregation was to
be repealed in favor of assimilation. The Jews were to leave behind their old identity
and become a part of the “German community” as citizens. This social rebirth of the
“German Jew” was directly tied to a naming law: Jews, who traditionally up until
that point often only had a first name, were supposed to take on a last name. This
new social belonging was meant to be confirmed through the names by a kind of col-
lective baptism – the choice of name was consequently not subject to restrictions.
On the contrary, Jews were even encouraged to take on Germanic names in order to
be able to completely identify with German society. In this way, one was well and
truly abiding by Wilhelm v. Humboldt’s quintessentially progressive inspired opin-
ion about the Law of Emancipation which stated “that each individual who has no
reason to ask about it for religious reasons, shall remain uncertain whether someone
is Jewish or not” (Bering 1989: 198).

line of separation between animals and humans sometimes to become indistinct. For, to the degree
to which we give animals names, we surprisingly often begin to treat them as social beings.
4 The onomast Dietz Bering has done an excellent job of tracing the various stages of antisemitic
political strategies in Germany regarding the personal name in several publications. His research,
upon which I will draw below, is to this day unrivalled in the field (Cf. above all Bering 1992,
1989).
10 Social Exclusion 139

(ii) Restoration and incipient regulation: No later than the emergence of modern
antisemitism in the late nineteenth century (representative of this is the time between
the publication date of the antisemitic “founding works” by Gobineau in 1853 and
Chamberlain in 1899) (Gobineau 1983, Chamberlain 1912), it was attempted to
limit and reverse the emancipation process begun at the beginning of the century.
The antisemitic movement demanded that clear measures concerning names must
be established once again. This demand was doomed to failure, however, for in
the same way that there were Christians with Old Testament names, there were
now Jews with Germanic names. In order to stop anymore “misclarifications”, the
adoption of German names was therefore subjected by degree to strict regulations.
Thus, in 1898, the right which had been given to Jews to freely choose their first
names was retracted, and in turn, five years later the right to take on a name at
baptism which had less of a Jewish background was revoked. At the same time that
it was attempted to make it difficult for Jews to take on German names through such
restrictions, Germans were supposed to be motivated to take on Germanic names.
The following is a citation from the weekly newspaper Schlesische Landwacht in a
1924 issue: “He who loves Germany, should risk everything! A German man must
have a German name.”5
(iii) Marking and Segregation in NS: After the transfer of power, the National
Socialists continued with already existing efforts: Not only should it be made easier
for Germans with apparently Jewish names to take on Germanic names, but also, as
was proposed in 1933 by the German Bar Association [Deutscher Anwaltsverein],
all Jewish name changes were to be reversed. Consequently, on January 5, 1938, the
law concerning the “changing of surnames and first names” did indeed come to pass.
According to §7, a compulsory reversal of every Jewish name change before 1933
could be initiated. This process ended up being more difficult and less applicable
than initially assumed by the Nazis, so that while the compulsory reversal process
was in progress, an ordinance was released on January 1, 1939 which stated that
the additional name of “Israel” or “Sarah” would be attached to every Jewish name
which was not easily recognized as such. This enforced naming act was nearly the
exact opposite to the 1812 emancipation edict: In that case it aimed at integrating
the Jews into German society and making them indiscernible as Jews, whereas with
this second “baptism act”, the intention was to make the Jews visible in society so
that their exclusion could be implemented all the more easily. This stigmatization
process was intensified once again just two years later. Jews were subject to per-
manent visibility after the introduction of the Yellow Star on which the word “Jew”
was resplendent in large letters: This visual stigma guaranteed their separation prior
to any personal contact. The last chapter in the National Socialists’ naming pol-
icy was finally begun with the incarceration of Jews into concentration camps and
the beginning of the extermination policy: Upon arrival at the camp, names were

5 “Wer Deutschland liebt, soll auch das Letzte wagen! Ein deutscher Mann muß deutschen Namen
tragen.” Exemplar in “Geheimes Staatsarchiv Berlin/Dahlem” Justizministerium Rep. 84a, Nr.
2365, p. 91.
140 S.K. Herrmann

replaced with numbers. The sign of social existence was replaced with the number;
the sign of serial death.

10.4 Insult, Degradation, and Debasement

After this short summary of the antisemitic personal name policy, I would like to
examine the various naming practices used in this context with regard to their power
to implement social exclusion. At this point I’d like to take up Margalit’s distinction
between insult and humiliation (Margalit 1996: 119). What Margalit means by this is
that, where the former questions the reputation of a human being, the latter questions
the human being as such. Therefore, the meaning of social exclusion differs in both
cases: Where the insult tries to exclude its addressee from a social context within the
social sphere, the humiliation tries to totally exclude a human being from all social
contexts and, therefore, to situate it beyond the social sphere. While in his studies
Margalit argues that the forms of misrecognition, that a “decent society” should
care for, are primarily acts of humiliation, social philosopher Axel Honneth (1997)
has tried to show that the insult can exert a dramatic form of misrecognition too.
Following this latter argument, I would like to deepen Margalit’s concept of insult
by distinguishing between three different practices.6
(i) Transforming names into an insult: One of the most obvious forms of name
misrecognition is the nickname. However, unlike an insult such as “Jewish Pig”
[Judensau], which comes across as coarse and violent, nicknames always make use
of a certain kind of linguistic wit in their transformation of the name. On a very basic
rhetoric level, one example is the linking of a personal name and an attribute through
a rhyme, such as in the nickname “Itzig-Witzig” [ger. “witzig” means “funny”]. The
creativity used in this simple play on words can develop into elaborate metaphors.
The following passage from Wilhelm Marr’s 1873 appeal “Don’t vote for Jews” can
serve as an example here, where seemingly typical Jewish names are transferred into
a Darwinist scenario: “If you open the cages in a zoological garden and set free the
beasts of prey, shall the fox then not devour the chicken, shall the wolf not tear up
the sheep, shall the lion not break into the herds, shall the bear not steal the honey?
Yes, shall even the deer and the stag not graze to their hearts’ content wherever
they can?” (Bering 1989: 200)7 Marr here takes up the semanticity of particular
names and transfers them from their purely signifying use through a method of both
decontextualization and recontextualization into a setting where they seem to reflect
their bearers’ social roles. Here, Marr makes use of the iterability of language – in
other words, of the fact that no linguistic sign is permanently fixed in its meaning,

6 A profound analysis of the relationship between the works of Margalit and Honneth is given by
Jonathan Allen (1998). My distinction between the following three forms of insults is inspired
by the different discrimination mechanisms that were pointed out by Carl Graumann and Margret
Wintermantel in their research on discriminating speech acts (1989).
7 Translator’s note: The German names of these animals [Fuchs, Wolf, Löwe, Bär, Reh, Hirsch]
were perceived as typical Jewish surnames.
10 Social Exclusion 141

but is able to take on new meanings in new contexts through grafting (Derrida 1982).
Marr uses this openness of linguistic signs to incorporate seemingly Jewish names
into a context where these names suddenly seem to unveil the characteristics of their
addressee.
However, it would hardly occur to anyone to take these insults literally, for
nicknaming is not primarily about the semantic meaning but about the creative trans-
formation of names. This transformation is the reason why nicknames are laughed
at. Consequently, the crucial point of the insult is not what they denote on a seman-
tic level, but which social relationships they construct. The nickname produces a
solidarity community in that those who laugh are included in this community while
those who are laughed at are excluded from it. On this note, what is most insulting
of all is the distinction which is made between those who belong and those who
must remain on the outside. The nickname does not only indicate to the addressed
Jews that they are not a part of the laughing German community, but at the same
time claims the otherness of their existence. In this way, the insult reveals itself to
be merely an act of rejection which marks its addressees as social outsiders.
(ii) Ascription of names as degradation: The “Weiß vs. Goebbels case is a
well-known example of name ascription” (Bering 1983). When the future NSDAP
minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels came to Berlin in 1926 and was in search
of a protagonist for his anti-Jewish propaganda, he chose Bernhard Weiß: a Jew
from an assimilated family and a bearer of the “Iron Cross” [Eisernes Kreuz]. In
the 1920s, Weiß was Berlin’s vice police president and therefore presided over the
largest Prussian administrative body of 20,000 men. This important public figure
served Goebbels as a symbol for the “infiltration” of the most prestigious and high-
est positions in Germany by “Eastern Jews” [“Ostjuden”]. In his periodical Der
Angriff – German for The Attack – Goebbels tried to unmask Weiß as the paradig-
matic case of the Jews’ dangerous mimicking nature. Goebbels used the practice of
name ascription to support his claim that the reassuring mask of the police presi-
dent was only a façade used to hide the “eternal Jew” lurking behind it. From this
moment on, he would claim in his anti-police-column, “Watch out for rubber trun-
cheons” [Vorsicht Gummiknüppel], that Bernhard Weiß’ actual name was “Isidor.”8
Let us now take a closer look at what the ascription of this name means: For the anti-
Semites, “Isidor” represented not only a typical Jewish name, but moreover was a
description for a “typical Jew”. Therefore in its manner of use regarding Weiß, the
name did not serve as a proper noun for a person anymore but rather as a declara-
tion about his character – a declaration that Goebbels would make explicit on many
other occasions (ugly, stinky, obsessed with power, devious) and which condenses
into a conglomeration of prejudices in the form of the name Isidor. In this case, the
name becomes merely an ascription; in other words, it no longer refers to a person
independent of his or her characteristics but rather makes a declaration about this

8 “Yes, Isidor! I dare. I am breaking the spell. Under the cowardly protection of immunity, I call
the child by its name. Isidor! The ‘O’ must be stretched to real length, and the ‘R’ must be rolled,
and then the name will once again resound with unspeakable sweetness and strength. The gift of
the East.” Goebbels quoted in Bering (1989: 194) (unofficial translation).
142 S.K. Herrmann

person on a connotative level. This has the effect that the addressee is not named
anymore as an individual, but is rather ascribed certain characteristics – in this case,
this results in the typical array of contemporary antisemitic stereotypes.
In contrast to the insult, which attempts to label its addressees as social outsiders
through the marking of their non-belonging, the degradation achieved by the use of
the name “Isidor” works precisely because it ascribes devalorizing characteristics to
Weiß and thus questions his authority and integrity. The decisive analytic difference
between the insult and the degradation therefore lies in the fact that, while the for-
mer serves first and foremost to mark those concerned as social outsiders, the latter
aims primarily at claiming their social inferiority. The rejecting dissociation is in
this case, first and foremost, an ascribed devalorization. The degradation therefore
consists in a twofold step of devalorizing and ascribing.
(iii) De-individuating names as debasement: It has been reported that acts
of debasement were already occurring within the context of the 1812 Jewish
Emancipation Bill. While this edict allowed the Jews in Prussia to freely choose
their surnames, Jews in Western Galicia had to “receive” their new name – and
this name was often full of scorn and disdain: “Trumpet Slime”, “Banister” or
“Garlic Smell”; such were the names that were conferred at this time. In con-
trast to the degradation which gives names a conceptual character, those acts of
debasement rely exactly on the opposite mechanism: A concept is used as a per-
sonal name. This mechanism is also similarly deployed more than a 100 years later
in the National Socialist “Jew Policy”: Starting on September 19, 1941, all Jews
had to wear the Yellow Star in a clearly-visible manner on their clothes; the Star
featured the word “Jew” in letters which were supposed to look like Hebrew char-
acters. This act corresponds precisely to the paradigmatic naming moment which
Wittgenstein describes as the act of “attaching a label to a thing” (Wittgenstein
2001 [1953]: 6). The six-pointed Yellow Star was not only literally pinned on,
it simultaneously served as a name. However, in this case it was not a true per-
sonal name, but rather a term for a particular class: From now on, the name of a
Jew would be “Jew”. Therefore, the power of the name to establish individuality
increasingly disappeared. The Yellow Star instead transformed its bearer into part
of an anonymous mass. This was exactly the effect intended by the Nazis. They
were no longer interested in the power of naming to establish identity but, con-
versely, in subsuming individuals into one class. The Yellow Star was a visible sign
of belonging at all times, and its concealment was severely punished. Its permanent
visibility was the precondition for a comprehensive exclusion of Jews from pub-
lic life: sitting on park benches, going to the theatre, using the tramway, and other
forms of social participation were made impossible through the Star. In this way,
the imposed name became a key element in the exclusion of Jews from everyday
social life.
The debasement exerted through the Yellow Star differs from degradation in sev-
eral ways: First, through state policy, the devalorizing power of the degradation was
increased to general invalidation. To the same extent that the Jews were increasingly
deprived of their rights, they were consequently treated as second-class citizens.
Secondly, the degrading power of naming is increased through its legal anchoring.
10 Social Exclusion 143

It no longer solely depends on individual or collective acts of misrecognition, but is

decreed by the state’s sovereignty. Thus, ascription becomes an imposition. Thirdly,
with the introduction of the Yellow Star, the name lost its function of establishing
individuality. The individual became part of the masses where he or she no longer
enjoyed any individual esteem. The decisive mechanisms underlying debasement
thus consist of a threefold step of invalidating, imposing, and de-individuating.

10.5 Humiliation
Forcing individuals to wear the Yellow Star was not the end of the National Socialist
policy of misrecognition. It was not until the concentration camps that a last, dras-
tic step was implemented. Those who upon arrival were not sent directly from the
platform to the gas chamber were subjected to extermination through labor under
inhumane conditions. In her autobiographical records, Ruth Klüger describes the
predominant communication structure as follows:
During the following weeks I was to hear this hate-drenched tone all the time, and every
time I cringed. It was a tone which stripped the person it addressed of her or his personhood,
and at the same time held her like a lifeless thing; it was a tone no one should ever get used
to, designed to intimidate and thereby deaden the sense of self. [. . .] Authority in Auschwitz
meant disrespect for the prisoners to the point of rejecting their existence, their right simply
to be (Klüger 2001: 94–95).

The aporia to which this kind of speech leads is noticed by Klüger herself shortly
afterwards when she writes:
This relentless need to insult those discriminated against, at their expense: It can only mean
that it actually wasn’t so easy for the ‘master race’ to deal with the death camps. One had to
prove to oneself by exercising such flippant cruelty that these subhumans weren’t human.
And by proving it to oneself, they would actually become humans again, because they
counted on them having a reaction to the insult. The insult would have been meaningless
without the mortification that it was meant to produce.9

The address situation in the camp thus presents itself as follows: On the one hand,
it denies its counterpart’s humanity, but on the other hand, the act of denial itself is
in turn an acknowledgment of this very humanity. As inhumane as the address may
be, it always retains some remains of humanity. This leads to a state of contradiction
between the recognition and the misrecognition of the addressee. Avishai Margalit
called this problem the “paradox of dehumanization,” and considers it to be repre-
sentative of the unique nature of the National Socialist humiliation during the Shoah
(Margalit and Motzkin 1996). The fact that this contradiction can increase to such
an extremely critical degree becomes apparent not only in the fact that the camp SS

9 This passage was not included in the English translation of the German original, due to some
minor deviations from the German edition. It can be found in Klüger (1994: 143, unofficial
translation).
144 S.K. Herrmann

reduced their speaking to the prisoners to a minimum, but above all in the way they
dealt with the prisoners’ names.
The rite of passage for those who were not murdered immediately upon their
arrival at the Auschwitz camp was the tattooing of the number. In his autobiograph-
ical record “Survival in Auschwitz,” Primo Levi describes this scene as a baptismal
rite which assigns him a “new name.” He remembers: “My name was 174, 517”
(Levi 2008: 18). Now, prima facie, Levi seems to be right in thinking of the number
as a name, because the number can in fact assume the individuating function of the
personal name. It even seems to fulfill this task better than the name, since no over-
lapping of numbers can occur, as can happen with conventional personal names –
and the associated administrative advantage is certainly one of the reasons why the
Nazis decided to number the camp prisoners. However, the number does not seem to
be a better name for those concerned. Only shortly after his description of the assign-
ment of the number, Levi proclaims a particular uneasiness when he writes that the
bluish number engraved under his skin seems “taunting” to him. What Levi depicts
with such a moderate tone was experienced as a particularly forceful act of injury
by many other prisoners. This is apparent in Ilse Stephan’s record. She writes: “In
the concentration camp, we were not humans, but only numbers! My camp number
was 45,708” (Henneberg 1996: 82). As opposed to Levi, Stephan does not expe-
rience the number assignment as an act of naming but as the revocation of one’s
name. In her eyes, it is precisely a number which cannot be a name. However, if we
want to understand this experience, we cannot inquire about the analytical meaning
of names and numbers; we instead need to refer to their social meaning. The dehu-
manization experience linked to the assignment of the number is rooted in our way
of dealing with it. We already saw that the human personal name fundamentally
expresses belonging to the community of human beings. It is precisely this meaning
that is undermined by the number, in that its function is not to name people but to
name an object. The number is a unit, it is used for quantification, counting and
charging; it is an element within a universal series of all possible objects. Through
the number, a person is appropriated as an object and holds a functional value within
a defined context. She or he becomes an element in an equation in which different
values are calculated according to one another. Even if the number is therefore simi-
lar to the personal name when it comes to its identifying function, its social meaning
is an entirely different one. Where the name humanizes, the number dehumanizes,
because while the former indicates a belonging to the community of human beings,
the latter stands for the marking of the non-human. This experience of dehuman-
ization was reinforced by the fact that human beings who were reduced to numbers
were actually treated as objects. This becomes apparent in what kind of death peo-
ple died in the camps. For instance, in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah documentary,
survivors recount how the Germans had prohibited them to refer to murdered pris-
oners as “the dead” or “victims.” Instead, they had to talk about “figures,” “dolls” or
“marionettes” and refer to the murdered as “things.” In the camps, no human beings
were supposed to be carried to their graves; instead, things were to be destroyed.
Giorgio Agamben sums up this process when he states: “In Auschwitz, people did
not die, rather, corpses were produced. Corpses without death, non-humans whose
10 Social Exclusion 145

decease is debased into a matter of serial production” (Agamben 1999: 72). Death
was entirely devoid of any social ritual of human expression of grief; no ceremony
whatsoever testified to the demise of a human being – the individual burial was
replaced by the mass extermination of individual units.10 This reifying function can
be seen as an additional reason why the Nazis resorted to using numbers. The expro-
priation of the name was supposed to be a means for depriving the victims of their
human visage. This was meant to facilitate the executioner’s ability to annihilate
humans like things without feeling any emotions.
Now, it is subject to discussion whether or not the number was introduced as a
technical-administrative aid in order to allow for a smoother mass extermination
procedure, or if it was supposed to be a morality disinhibiting tool for the per-
petrators. In any case, for the victims it was undoubtedly linked to experiencing
the revoking of their humanity.11 At precisely this point, the expropriation of the
name changes from being a form of debasement to becoming a form of humiliation.
Regardless of what entitlements and rights we perceive as founded in human dig-
nity, they are all based on the fact that we treat human beings as human beings. Now
the humiliation does precisely the opposite: It treats human beings as if they were
things. Or, as Margalit puts it: “The key concept for humiliation is rejection from
the human commonwealth. But such rejection is not based on a belief or attitude
that the rejected person is merely an object or an animal. The rejection consists of
behaving as if the person were an object or an animal” (Margalit 1996: 112). So
even if humiliation works in a very similar manner to debasement, it goes one deci-
sive step further: It denies the very humanity of a human being by treating it as an
object. In the erasure of the name, this step becomes completely apparent.
The loss of belonging to the community of human beings often implied that those
concerned were no longer able to positively identify with their own self. Through
this loss of self-esteem, the prisoners entered that very state of “wasted life” that rep-
resents the outmost vanishing point of social exclusion procedures. In the context
of the camp, this incarnation of the wasted life is embodied in the character of the
Muselmann, who is also often referred to as a “nameless hulk”.12 This expression
was used to characterize those prisoners whose physical appearance was marked
by extreme emaciation. Their physical decline became obvious due to skin discol-
oration, loss of hair, development of edema all over the body and the vulnerability to

10 This also explains the importance of the struggle to turn the numbers back into names, as, for
instance, Hans-Joachim Lang succeeded in achieving with 86 victims. For the families’ grieving
rituals, the knowledge about the time and place of their relatives’ death is crucial (Lang 2004).
11 Although I mainly focus in this paper on the fate of the persecuted Jews, in remembrance of all
Shoah victims, I would like to point out that all other camp prisoners – Sinti and Roma, homosex-
uals, the mentally disabled, political opponents, or so-called asocials – were of course affected by
dehumanization too.
12 Margalit mentions the Muselmann as the paradigmatic figure of dehumanization: “Sometimes
directed efforts were made to bring the victims of aggression to a state where they can be seen as
non-human, as in the case of the Muselmann in the concentration camps” (Margalit 1996: 104).
For a closer analysis of the figure of the Muselmann, see also the seminal contributions by Sofsky
(1997: 200) and Agamben (1999).
146 S.K. Herrmann

all sorts of infections. In the course of their immiseration, they lost up to two thirds
of their normal body weight. As Zdzislaw Ryn and Stanislaw Klodziński write in
their study, unique up until today, the Muselmanns were avoided by all persons in the
camp due to their physical infirmity: “No one felt compassion for the Muselmann,
and no one felt sympathy for him either. The other inmates, who continually feared
for their lives, did not even judge him worthy being looked at. For the prisoners,
who collaborated, the Muselmann was a source of anger and worry; for the SS, he
was merely useless garbage” (Ryn and Klodzińksi 1987: 127, unofficial translation).
The Muselmann represented the figure who was excluded from nearly all social cir-
cles and who found him/herself at the point of utmost social isolation. This figure
represented a fate which threatened all camp prisoners: social death. For, when the
others had stopped addressing the Muselmann as a human being, he would lapse
into total social apathy. His face became apathetic, his eyes became dull, and his
voice grew increasingly faint. His speech, which could no longer hope for any kind
of response, changed into mere muttering. But it was not only the social capaci-
ties to express oneself which were incrementally lost, it was also the basic social
practices such as washing oneself or using the toilet; investment in social relations
gradually faded away, only to finally disappear entirely. The Muselmann is therefore
merely depicted as a “bundle of physical functions” (Améry 1980: 9), as a “living
dead” (Carpi 1993: 17) who vegetates on the “threshold between life and death”
(Agamben 1999: 47). In this state of social isolation, in most cases he inevitably
progressed towards his own physical expiration. It is, however, significant to note
that if the Muselmann was addressed once again by someone, he could sometimes be
saved from his fate. This could be in the form of a letter from the outside, an arous-
ing speech by a comrade, or through some human gesture.13 The minimal amount
of human recognition contained in such gestures created the beginning of a social
bond which could provide the broken-down bodies with the strength they needed to
survive.

10.6 Practices of Misrecognition

The history of the antisemitic personal name policy is one possible way to under-
stand the social exclusion of Jews from the community of human beings in National
Socialism. However, this is certainly not sufficient to comprehend the National
Socialist politics of exclusion in its entirety. Apart from symbolic practices of
exclusion, acts of physical violence also played an essential role: In the form of
physical abuse, of pogroms and of forced deportations, they contributed to the Jews’
exclusion from the social sphere. But just as it is important to emphasize that the
Jews’ exclusion cannot be understood solely by looking into the symbolic practices,
it is just as crucial not to overlook the symbolic dimension contained in the acts

13 See the testimonies collected in Ryn/Klozińksi (1987).

10 Social Exclusion 147

of physical violence (Margalit 1996: 88). It would be wrong to assume that prac-
tices of misrecognition only take place in a symbolic domain. In many cases, they
are intimately linked to acts of physical violence. For instance, people were forced,
under threat of violence, to abase themselves in numerous instances. Let me cite a
particularly stirring example from Vienna in the 1930s, where anti-Semites coerced
the local Jews to clean a cobbled street with toothbrushes (Stoecker 2003). This sce-
nario plainly shows that the threat of physical violence was often simply a means for
a symbolic purpose – the humiliation of those concerned. For, not only the threat,
but also the actual execution of physical violence can have humiliation as its goal.
For instance, the torture which was often conducted in the concentration camps
did not only aim at inflicting pain upon the tortured. This act of violence was also
used in order to remind them of their defenselessness and inferiority. Torture was
not only a cruel ordeal, but also a mise-en-scène of misrecognition (Scarry 1985).
It is precisely those traumata of misrecognition which are so difficult to overcome
for many survivors. The wounds of the abuse may be scarred over, but the experi-
ence of humiliation remains and cannot be coped with: the fact that a human being
could have done this to another human being. With torture, it becomes apparent in an
exemplary way that symbolic misrecognition is a part of even the most brutal acts of
violence. Nevertheless, the often lethal consequences of torture refer us to a decisive
characteristic of National Socialism: As of 1939 at the latest, it was no longer about
the social exclusion of Jews but their extermination. The goal of the persecution
of the Jews was mass murder. However, being aware of this goal must not lead us
to try and decipher the entire National Socialist persecution politics solely by con-
sidering its physical brutality. It had been prepared and supported to a large extent
by a policy of social exclusion which operated through practices of misrecognition.
By using the example of the history of the personal name, I attempted to outline
a typology of such practices in this paper and will now resume them conclusively.
I would like to mention at this point that these practices cannot always be clearly
distinguished from one another, but that they appear as a continuum whose intensity
gradually increases, and in which transitions are often not easily discernable.
(1) The insult is the most basic form of misrecognition, consisting mainly in a
rejection. It aims to create a dissociation between the individuals involved. A neg-
ative social relationship is thereby created which marks the addressee as a social
outsider.
(2) The degradation is a more powerful form of misrecognition than the insult in
that it transforms the rejection into the twofold step of devalorizing and ascribing.
In claiming to reveal certain negative characteristics or types of behavior of the
addressee, it not only aims to create a dissociation between the individuals involved,
but also to emphasize the social inferiority of the addressed person.
(3) The debasement consists of a threefold step of invalidating, imposing, and
de-individuating. The addressed person is treated as an interchangeable member of
a declassed group and not perceived anymore in his or her individuality. This aims
at codifying the person as belonging to a worthless social class.
(4) The humiliation contains the three steps of invalidating, imposing, and dehu-
manizing in which an individual is treated as if she or he were a thing. Practices of
148 S.K. Herrmann

humiliation do not recognize their addressee anymore as a social being. They rep-
resent the utmost margin of social exclusion, in the sense that what is questioned is
no longer the social value of a person, but her or his human existence in its entirety.

Translated by Jess Ring and Katharina Voss

References
Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. Remnants of auschwitz: The witness and the archive. New York, NY:
Zone.
Allen, Jonathan. 1998. Decency and the struggle for recognition. Social Theory and Practice 24:
449–469.
Améry, Jean. 1980. At the mind’s limits: Contemplations by a survivor of Auschwitz and its
realities. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2004. Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Cambridge: Polity.
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. The nature of the linguistic sign. In Problems in general linguistics, ed.
Emile Benveniste, 217–222. Miami, FL: Miami University Press.
Bering, Dietz. 1983. Der Kampf um den Namen Isidor. Polizeivizepräsident Bernhard Weiß gegen
Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels. Beiträge zur Namensforschung 18: 121–153.
Bering, Dietz. 1989. Gewalt gegen Namen. Ein sprachwissenschaftlicher Beitrag zur Geschichte
und Wirkung des Alltagsantisemitismus. Muttersprache. Zeitschrift zur Pflege und Erforschung
der deutschen Sprache 99: 193–212.
Bering, Dietz. 1992. The stigma of names: Antisemitism in German daily life, 1812–1933.
Michigan: Michigan University Press.
Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable speech. New York, NY: Routledge.
Carpi, Aldo. 1993. Diario di Gusen. Turin: Einaudi.
Castel, Robert. 2002. From manual workers to wage laborers: Transformation of the social
question. London: Transaction.
Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other
inmates. New York, NY: Anchor.
Chamberlain, Houston S. 1912 [1899]. The foundations of the nineteenth century. London: The
Bodley Head.
Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1988. The modern social conflict: An essay on the politics of liberty. New York,
NY: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Derrida, Jacques. 1982. Signature event context. In Margins of philosophy, ed. Jacques Derrida,
307–330. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Abnormal: Lectures at the college de France, 1974–1975. New York, NY:
Picador.
Gobineau, Arthur. 1983 [1853–55]. An essay on the inequality of the human races. Los Angeles,
CA: Noontide.
Graumann, Carl, and Margret Wintermantel. 1989. Discriminatory speech acts: A functional
approach. In Stereotyping and prejudice. Changing conceptions, eds. Daniel Bar-Tal et al.,
184–204. New York, NY: Springer.
Henneberg, Ilse. 1996. Vom Namen zur Nummer. Einlieferungsritual in Konzentrationslager.
Bremen: Donat.
Honneth, Axel. 1995. The struggle for recognition: The grammar of social conflicts. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Honneth, Axel. 1997. A society without humiliation? On Avishai Margalit’s draft of a ‘decent
society’. European Journal of Philosophy 5(3): 306–324.
Klüger, Ruth. 1994. Weiter leben. Eine Jugend. München: DTV.
10 Social Exclusion 149

Klüger, Ruth. 2001. Still alive: A holocaust girlhood remembered. New York, NY: The Feminist
Press.
Kripke, Saul A. 1980. Naming and necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lang, Hans-Joachim. 2004. Die Namen der Nummern. Wie es gelang, die 86 Opfer eines NS-
Verbrechens zu identifizieren. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe.
Levi, Primo. 2008. Survival in Auschwitz. New York, NY: Classic House.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. London: Harvard University Press.
Margalit, Avishai, and Gabriel Motzkin. 1996. The uniqueness of the holocaust. Philosophy and
Public Affair 25(1): 65–83.
Mill, John Stuart. 1843. A system of logic. London: Elibron.
Ricœur, Paul. 1992. Oneself as another. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Ryn, Zdzislaw, and Stanislaw Klodzińksi. 1987. An der Grenze zwischen Leben und Tod. Eine
Studie über die Erscheinung des Muselmanns im Konzentrationslager. Auschwitz-Hefte 1:
89–154.
Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Sofsky, Wolfgang. 1997. The order of terror: Concentration camp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Stoecker, Ralf. 2003. Menschenwürde und das Paradox der Entwürdigung. In Menschenwürde –
Annäherung an einen Begriff, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 133–151. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Taylor, Charles. 1994. Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001 [1953]. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Chapter 11
Absolute Poverty
Human Dignity, Self-Respect, and Dependency

Peter Schaber

Abstract The paper deals with the question of whether poverty as such violates
the dignity of persons. It is argued that it does. This is, it is argued, not due to a
lack of basic goods, nor to the fact that poverty prevents persons from enjoying
the rights they have, particularly the right to bodily integrity. Poverty does vio-
late dignity, so it is argued, insofar as poor people are dependent on others in a
degrading way.

11.1 Introduction
Is the dignity of all people living in poverty violated? Does poverty as such vio-
late dignity? Or does this apply only to severe forms of it? One reason why it is
unclear whether poverty can be considered a violation of human dignity is at least
partly due to the fact that poverty, in contrast to other violations of dignity, is nor-
mally not intentionally brought about by third persons. It is a state of affairs that
is – if at all – only indirectly caused by others. In most cases, poverty is an unin-
tended side-effect of the acts of many. Often, it does not result from acts at all but
from omissions. When we talk about violations of dignity, however, we are nor-
mally concerned with what individuals do to each other. For example, we hold it
to be a violation of human dignity if one person humiliates another. The former
individual’s acts violate the latter’s dignity. In the case of poverty, others do not
do anything comparable to the poor. Therefore, it is unclear in what way poverty
might violate human dignity. In what follows, I will try to remedy this lack of
clarity.
Some preliminary remarks are in order on the notion of poverty: Scholars as
well as practitioners commonly distinguish between relative and severe (absolute?)
poverty (Spicker 1998). Relative poverty is measured as a standard of basic needs

P. Schaber (B)
Centre for Ethics, University of Zürich, Switzerland
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 151

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_11,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
152 P. Schaber

acknowledged by a certain society. The notion of basic needs may be irritating, as

it normally refers to claims a human being has qua human being. Relative poverty,
however, refers to society-specific basic claims. In wealthy societies, the catalogue
of basic needs will be more comprehensive than in poor societies. According to the
standard definition by the World Bank, individuals live in severe poverty if they have
less than 1.25 dollars a day. These persons, it could be said, lack goods essential for
any form of a good life in any imaginable society in the world. This notion of poverty
presented in this brief discussion will be applied in what follows.

11.2 Dignity as a Claim to Be Respected

The following description of severe poverty by Robert McNamara, former director

of the World Bank, indicates that severe poverty at least could constitute a violation
of human dignity:
[Absolute poverty] as a condition of life so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease,
squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath any
reasonable definition of human decency. (Singer 1993: 219)

In order to be able to determine why and in what way severe or relative poverty
violates dignity, we first of all have to establish what it means to have dignity. What
is it that is violated when human dignity is violated?
The dignity I will be concerned with is inherent dignity, a form of dignity that
must be distinguished from forms of contingent dignity (Balzer et al. 1998: 17–
20). This inherent dignity is what the German Constitution refers to in stating that,
“Human dignity shall be inviolable.” It is also addressed in the preamble of the
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights that talks about the “inher-
ent dignity of all members of the human family.” Inherent dignity is characterized
by the fact that it cannot be acquired, lost, or regained. What I call contingent dig-
nity, on the contrary, can be acquired, lost or regained. Different forms of contingent
dignity can be distinguished: There is social dignity, which is related to social func-
tions. It is the dignity of a bishop or a judge, for example, who have dignity qua
office holders. There is expressive dignity, which refers to a person’s behavior. This
form of dignity is what we talk about when we say that a person bears her defeat
with dignity.
One important aspect of the inherent dignity of a person, distinguishing it from
forms of contingent dignity, is that it can be violated. It can be violated because it is
something normative. We can act in a way that is right or wrong in regard to it. That
inherent dignity is something normative does not mean that it is a normatively- or
morally-relevant property, like, for example, the capability to feel pain. For, unlike
dignity, morally-relevant properties of this kind cannot be violated. Dignity, how-
ever, can be violated. This is expressed, for example, in Article 1 of the Constitution,
stating that “human dignity shall be inviolable” – therefore implying that dignity is
something that can be violated. Normatively-relevant properties like the capability
to feel pain, in contrast, cannot be violated. Even if I inflict pain on another human
11 Absolute Poverty 153

being – which, of course, is possible – I do not violate this person’s capability to

feel pain but rather I violate a right or a claim he or she has. And this is what some-
one does who violates another person’s dignity: He or she violates a claim that this
person can legitimately assert.
What claim does the term “human dignity” refer to? If we assume that the humili-
ation of a person violates their dignity, we could say: The dignity of a person relates
to the claim to be acknowledged as a being that is allowed to live his or her life
according to his or her own ideas – in other words, to live a life with self-respect.
This is the claim against which humiliation is directed. Accordingly, one could say:
The claim to self-respect is inherent to dignity (Schaber 2007a). To be sure, what
is meant here should not be mistaken for self-esteem.1 Rather, self-respect must be
understood under the rubric of the right to live one’s own life. Self-respect consists
in realizing this right; it is not a claim to self-esteem, i.e. to believe in, or think much
of, oneself.
The claim to self-respect, and as such human dignity, is paradigmatically vio-
lated, for example, in the case of torture. This is not due to the pain inflicted on the
victims but to the fact that torture humiliates them. Torture is humiliating because
it is used to make it clear to the victims that they do not count, that they are fully
dominated. The victims are no longer accepted as independent beings. Torture is
a violation of dignity regardless of whether or not the victim feels humiliated.
Although torture often causes feelings of humiliation, it does not necessarily and
inevitably provoke such feelings. Regardless of whether a person survives torture
psychologically unharmed or not, he or she has been humiliated. He or she has
been treated as someone whose interests do not count. When the Nazis, during their
takeover of power in Vienna in 1938, forced Jewish citizens to clean the pavement
with tooth brushes, they intended to show to the world that these persons did not
count (Margalit 1996: 127, Stoecker 2003: 135). They treated them like things, and
as such like something that cannot plausibly be regarded as having any claims.
Slaves are also fully dominated. To enslave human beings is humiliating, as the
concerned individuals are denied any right to assert claims. It would be humiliating,
and as such constitute a violation of human dignity, even if the slaveholders cared
for the slaves and provided for their wellbeing. Given that slaves would then still
not be acknowledged as independent beings, their treatment would still be humiliat-
ing. They would live under degrading conditions, regardless of whether or not they
would feel humiliated or whether or not they were in a bad physical condition.

1 See also Margalit (1996: 44): “[S]elf-respect and self-esteem [. . .] can and should be distinguished
[. . .].”; and Margalit (1996: 24): “Self-respect, in contrast to self-esteem, is the honour a person
grants herself solely on the basis of the awareness that she is a human.” However, it is not clear
whether Margalit is really able to distinguish between self-respect and self-esteem. His paradox of
humiliation consists in the fact that we have no reason to feel humiliated when being treated in a
humiliating way. What is affected is self-esteem. Humiliation gives us a reason to esteem ourselves
less. Either way, it is a violation of rights.
154 P. Schaber

11.3 Lack of Basic Goods

What is it then that is humiliating about a life in poverty? One obvious answer
refers to the lack of basic goods: The dignity of a person is violated by the fact that
he or she lacks goods essential for a good life. This is the case when one lives in
severe poverty. A poor person does not have at his or her disposal the goods that are
essential for any form of a good life in any imaginable society, and this, one may
argue, is humiliating.
I do not think this suggestion is correct. Let us consider the following example:
For religious reasons, Paul has decided to live an extremely ascetic life. Secluded
from society, he lives a religious life, and the goods he has at his disposal are
scarcely sufficient for his survival. He does not have access to the goods that are
essential for a good life. With a view to material goods he is as bad off as many
people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day. That is all he wants; it is other things
he cares about.
Do the conditions under which Paul lives violate his dignity? One reason against
this conclusion is the fact that he has chosen this form of life and the lack of vitally
important goods that goes with it. A lack of vitally important goods can only be
a violation of human dignity if it is forced upon the person concerned. Hence, one
could say: Poverty violates human dignity only insofar as the lack of goods essential
for any form of a good life is forced upon the victims.
This suggestion, however, is not plausible either. The following example makes
this clear: A castaway finds himself on an uninhabited island with water, but no food.
Nobody knows about the fate of our castaway who has no possibility of getting in
touch with anybody. He will die a slow and cruel death from starvation.
This, no doubt, is horrible for him. Death from starvation involves great suffering
and pain. But is our castaway’s dignity violated? What happens to him is bad, very
bad indeed, but it is not humiliating. His self-respect is not affected. Within the limits
of what nature allows him to do, he remains an independent being. I will come back
to this point later in the chapter.

11.4 No Rights (Shue)

Following Henry Shue, one could argue that poverty is degrading because it deprives
poor persons of the ability to realize their rights:
No one can, if at all, enjoy any right that is supposedly protected by society if he or she
lacks the essentials for a reasonable healthy and active life. Deficiencies in the means of
subsistence can be just as fatal, incapacitating, or painful as violations of physical security.
The resulting damage or death can at least as decisively prevent the enjoyment of any right
as can the effects of security violations. (Shue 1996: 24–25)

Whoever lacks vitally important goods, so Shue’s idea goes, is unable to realize
any other rights like property rights, the right to political participation, the right to
education, etc. This, however, is true also for our ascetic. Although he could do
11 Absolute Poverty 155

things that would enable him to realize rights in the future, in his isolated asceticism
he is not able to do so. If poverty were a violation of dignity because it disables
individuals from realizing their rights, the dignity of our ascetic would be violated.
This, however, is not what makes poverty a violation of human dignity. It is not the
fact that an individual is unable to realize his or her right to property or education
that violates dignity. As we will see later on, it is rather the fact that poverty disables
individuals to assert claims altogether.
Furthermore, it is unclear whether the inability to realize rights is limited to indi-
viduals who live in absolute deprivation. Shue writes: “[E]veryone has a basic right
not to be allowed to die or to be seriously ill” (Shue 1996: 25).
If we make sure that people survive and are not severely ill (as far as that is
possible), we enable people to realize their rights. And if dignity is only violated
if these absolutely minimal provisions are no longer provided, then the dignity of
many to whose situation McNamara’s description of severe poverty applies would
not be violated.

11.5 The Right to Bodily Integrity

One could also argue that poverty constitutes a violation of human dignity because
it very often involves a violation of the right to bodily integrity. Persons who live in
poverty are often the victims of physical violence; women, for example, are often the
victims of rape. This particularly applies to individuals who live in severe poverty –
in slums, for example. These violations of the right to bodily integrity are no doubt
violations of human dignity. Poverty, or at least severe poverty, can thus lead to
violations of dignity.
If this is what violates the dignity of individuals living in severe poverty, it is,
however, not poverty as such that violates human dignity. The violation of dig-
nity, according to the present suggestion, consists in physical violence to which
the poor are particularly exposed. The factor that violates human dignity, then, is
not an aspect that is necessarily part of poverty. That it is not is implied in the fact
that people could be protected against physical violence without their poverty being
decreased. Empirically this may be unlikely, yet it is not impossible. Physical vio-
lence is not part of what it means to be poor. Accordingly, with a view to the current
suggestion, it is not poverty itself that violates dignity.

11.6 What is Degrading About Poverty?

Poverty, I have argued, does not violate the dignity of human beings because poor
people lack vitally important goods. Neither does it violate dignity because poor
people, due to poverty, are unable to realize their rights. Poverty violates human
dignity, because, and insofar as, poor people are dependent on others in a specific
way. It violates dignity when it is responsible for the fact that a person’s survival
156 P. Schaber

and her way of survival are placed at the mercy of others. Individuals who have
to live in poverty are not able to stand up to others when it comes to securing
their own survival. This does not have to be the case with every form of poverty.
There may be forms of relative poverty that allow individuals to live independent
lives and stand their ground. Yet even individuals living in relative poverty may
depend on others in a degrading way. If a person needs a pair of shoes and, in
order to get them, has to file an application at the social security office, she may
rightly see this as degrading. The more severe the poverty, the stronger this spe-
cial form of dependence becomes, for the dependence concerned here rests upon a
lack of options from which one can choose. And, given that the options decrease
with the severity of poverty, the dependence grows as the poverty becomes more
severe.
The dependence of the poor is not necessarily always exploited by others.
However, it exists even if the better-off mean well towards the poor and – to
take our example – donate the shoes they need. The situation is degrading for
the solicitant, even if help is granted. The humiliating dependence on others con-
sists in the lack of options. Of course, others can use this dependence for their
own ends and exploit the (emergency) situation of poor people, which in fact
happens often enough. This is a violation of dignity in itself, but poverty is a
violation of dignity even in the absence of such reactions – at least when, as
a consequence of poverty, individuals cannot stand up to others, as independent
beings.
This does not apply to our castaway. He does not depend on others, simply
because there are no others in his situation. He experiences great suffering. His
fate, however, is not at the mercy of others, but at the mercy of (impersonal)
nature. And this allows him to live a life according to his own ideas and convic-
tions, until his physical forces will cease. The aforementioned ascetic does not
live in dependence on others either. On the contrary, he lives an independent life
that resembles a life in poverty only insofar as he lacks goods that are essential
for any form of a good life in any imaginable society. This, however, does not
constitute a violation of dignity. For the ascetic lives a life according to his own
convictions.
The dependence on others and the inability to stand up to them violates a person’s
self-respect, for in order to respect oneself, one must be able to live a life of one’s
own choice and to interact with others as an independent being. Yet this is possible
only if one has options and one’s survival is not entirely at the mercy of others.2 And
this, in turn, presupposes that one has access to the goods and capabilities essential
for a good life. This requires not only material goods but also abilities to enable
the realization of options. The claim to self-respect therefore relates not only to a

2 This is a phenomenon that we can also find in the context of torture. The victim is at the mercy of
the torturer, evident in Jean Améry’s descriptions of his experiences (Améry 1977: 55).
11 Absolute Poverty 157

right to subsistence3 but also a right to basic education.4 Only when these rights are
fulfilled is one able to lead a life in self-respect. The rights to subsistence and basic
education must not be equated with the right to self-respect. These rights protect
goods that enable individuals to stand up to others. The claim to self-respect entails
them as means necessary to its realization.
At this point, some will note that we all depend on one another in many ways.
Children, for example, depend on their parents. At least during the first years of their
lives, they are placed at the mercy of their parents or educators. This dependence of
children, however, does not constitute a violation of dignity; this is, I would argue,
because infants do not yet have a claim to self-respect. This claim comes with the
ability to lead one’s own life; for one’s dignity is violated only if one has this ability
but is hindered from using it by others or by circumstances. Of course, children
must be treated in a way that enables them to realize the claim to self-respect in
the future.5 Yet this does not imply that their dependence constitutes a violation of
dignity.
But we are all, many will nevertheless object, dependent on each another in many
ways. How can dependence on others be considered a violation of dignity if it is a
part of the conditio humana? The dependence I am concerned with here is a special
form of dependence. It applies when, in order to acquire vitally important goods,
I have to rely on others without having any choice. It is the lack of reasonable
options that makes dependence on others degrading. Of course, everyone depends
on others’ willingness to, say, sell food. Nevertheless, as long as one can choose
between different ways of obtaining basic goods, and as such has options, this form
of dependence is not degrading.
If it is this special form of dependence that makes poverty a violation of dignity, it
is clear that poverty violates dignity regardless of whether or not it is self-induced.
And accordingly, if it is the case that recognition of the dignity of other persons
places upon us an obligation of respect (Schaber 2007b), then it is also the case
that those who are able to prevent poverty have a moral duty to do so, no matter
whether or not they have contributed to it.6 The dependence on others that poor
people experience violates their dignity. To abolish poverty is the moral duty of
those who have the ability to do so.

3 As Henry Shue has in mind when he writes: “By minimal economic security, or subsistence, I
mean unpolluted water, adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter, and minimal preventive
health care” (Shue 1996: 23).
4 See Nickel (2007: 141): “The right to basic education focuses on literacy, numeracy, and prepara-
tion for social participation, citizenship, and economic activity. It helps orient social rights towards
action, choice, self-help, mutual aid.”
5 See Scanlon (1998: 185): “Infants and young children are not separate kinds of creatures. Rather,
infancy and childhood are, in normal cases, stages in the life of a being who will have the capacity
for judgement-sensitive attitudes.”
6 If one has contributed to the poverty of others, it is, of course, one’s duty to fight this poverty as
well, and in this case it is a duty of compensation.
158 P. Schaber

References
Améry, Jean. 1977. Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Balzer, Philipp et al. 1998. Menschenwürde vs. Würde der Kreatur. Freiburg: Alber.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nickel, James. 2007. Making sense of human rights. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Scanlon, Thomas. 1998. What we owe to each other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schaber, Peter. 2007a. Achtung vor Personen. Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 4: 423–438.
Schaber, Peter. 2007b. Globale Hilfspflichten. In Weltarmut und Ethik, eds. Barbara Bleisch and
Peter Schaber, 139–152. Paderborn: Mentis.
Shue, Henry. 1996. Basic rights. Subsistence, affluence, and US foreign policy. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Singer, Peter. 1993. Practical ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spicker, Paul. 1998. Poverty. In Encyclopedia of applied ethics (3), ed. Ruth Chadwick,
1625–1632. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Stoecker, Ralf. 2003. Menschenwürde und das Paradox der Entwürdigung. In Menschenwürde.
Annäherungen an einen Begriff, ed. Ralf Stoecker, 133–151. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Chapter 12
Relative Poverty
On a Social Dimension of Dignity

Julia Müller and Christian Neuhäuser

Abstract Consumption and material wealth are important values for most people
living in affluent societies. Unless we opt for an ascetic life, caring about material
goods is rather inescapable; we all need to consume at least basic goods like food
and shelter, and most of us desire to have at least some material belongings. This
said, there seems to be nothing wrong with this state of affairs, it is just how things
are. But there are two facts that turn the whole issue of consumption and possession
into a moral question of great importance. One major issue is that there are many
people in the world who are so very poor compared to the people living in affluent
societies. That in one part of the world people are struggling for survival while in
another people dwell in the palaces of consumption is a major question of global
justice, a question political philosophy is putting more and more attention to, and
rightfully so (Pogge 2001, 2007), but this is not the question we are concerned with
in this paper. We want to look at the second issue, which is the wealth differences
within affluent societies and the high income gaps there, a moral problem totally
different from the global situation.

12.1 Introduction

On the one hand, there are rich people in our affluent societies who care a lot about,
what we call, luxurious goods, like fancy dresses and nice cars, and they seem to
suffer a great deal if they can’t afford the newest and most hip items. On the other
hand, we can observe in the same affluent societies how people collect returnable
bottles from garbage bins or offer to clean windscreens at red traffic lights for a
few cents. Obviously these people don’t do these things for fun, but they desper-
ately need to earn some money in order to be able to purchase their basic goods.
Something seems to be seriously wrong with the concurrence of those two extremes
within affluent societies. But what exactly is so irritating about this clearly visible

C. Neuhäuser (B)
Department of Philosophy, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 159

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_12,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
160 J. Müller and C. Neuhäuser

concurrence of relative poverty and the opulence of the rich? Why is it that we think
collecting bottles from garbage bins is humiliating while being in a fret about the
newest designer dress somehow appears to be a luxurious problem? Why – as we
want to argue – is the first scenario an issue of self-respect, while the latter is just
a prestige problem? There are different possible answers to the question why that
is so.
One first answer would point at the fact that poor people just have too little. They
cannot afford to buy the essentials that are really needed in order to live a decent
life. When someone has to collect bottles out of garbage bins, she is engaging in
an activity that is seen to be humiliating exactly because she has no choice, but
must do something degrading and embarrassing – something dirty so to speak –
in order to be able to have access to those basic goods. This answer points to the
fact that absolute poverty is humiliating and therefore a state of affairs that should
be abolished for ethical reasons. An open question is how narrow the definition of
absolute poverty should be. One very narrow definition would only see extreme
life-endangering poverty as absolute poverty, where only the most basic goods need
to be provided. A broader definition would include more goods like the ability to
play, to take part in political life, or to access information. Such a broader definition
would have the advantage that what goods are needed is somehow relative to the
conditions of a society. If information is mostly provided by television then a TV
becomes a basic good in this given society.
But is this society-relative concept of absolute poverty really all we care about,
when we think that someone is humiliated through her poverty? Imagine a different
situation: Think of a school class where almost all of the kids have lots of different
nice dresses because their parents are fairly well off. Among these youngsters, there
is just one poor boy, whose mom is a single mother with three children. This woman
obviously can’t go to work because she has lots of important work to do at home.
Therefore, she has to rely on welfare aid. Her boy has one pair of cheap shoes, two
pairs of jeans and a couple of not very fancy t-shirts and sweaters; more she cannot
afford. Still, this boy has much more than many people in this world have, and his
basic needs are surely taken care of. He is not, therefore, suffering from absolute
poverty in the strict sense, because he is not starving. He is also not suffering from
absolute poverty in the wider sense, because he has access to basic goods. But is
he not still a poor boy? He in fact is humiliated every day, because he clearly sees
the gross difference between himself and his classmates, and if those kids are not a
nice bunch, they might even ridicule him because of his poverty, and actively show
disrespect and diminish his self-respect in doing so.
Imagine another example: A young woman grew up in a very rich neighbour-
hood. Her family owns a middle-sized company and some real-estate. Now the
company suddenly doesn’t run so well anymore, and there is some trouble with
the structure of their buildings. The family is still very well off; they just have to cut
down on some things most people would deem as unimportant. One of the things
they cannot afford in this troublesome time is buying their daughter the newest
Gucci dress for the annual ball of her tennis club. She has to wear one of the dresses
of the previous years. To the young woman, this feels very humiliating, as would be
12 Relative Poverty 161

not attending the ball without a good reason. She seriously considers hurting herself
in order to have a good excuse for not going to the ball.
Now what is strange about these two cases is that both, the boy and the young
woman, feel humiliated, because they have less than others, but it is only the boy
most people would think of as poor. We might even want to say that the boy is
justified in feeling humiliated, while the young woman is not. But why is this so,
and what marks the difference? One prominent answer would identify equality as
the core value which is at issue here. Considering the standard in this given affluent
society, the young woman is still living high above average while the boy is living
far below. So it is this social equality problem that explains why the boy is poor and
the woman is not, and it also gives appeal to a moral demand for the boy to better his
social condition, exactly because equality is the core principle of distributive justice
(Rawls 1971, Sen 1980, Cohen 1993).
This is an important insight, and we agree that equality is a fundamental value,
but in this paper we want to argue that the issue of equality is not the only consid-
eration here in relation to relative poverty as a phenomenon distinct from absolute
poverty. Describing the situation of the poor boy as humiliating and not only unjust
hints at the point we are concerned about. We want to argue that relative poverty is
a kind of violation of human dignity, because it is humiliating and destructive to the
agent’s self-respect. One important insight of this description should be that it not
only explains why relative poverty is a serious problem for the humiliated poor, but
for all of us. The reason is that we all take part in social interaction that constitutes
the degrading situation for the poor.
We cannot escape the fact that most of us – the doing-well middle class, living
between the extreme poles of poverty and opulence – are part of the reason why the
poor are justified in feeling humiliated. It is our relative wealth and the advantages
that go hand in hand with it that are the cause for their humiliation. Remember the
situation of a person collecting returnable bottles from a garbage bin. If we stand
by and observe what she is doing and she notices us, we will be the cause for her
humiliation. We surely don’t want to, but can’t help it, because the situation alone –
regardless of our behaviour, if we look away or not, or if we are even actually there
or not – will scream into her face that what she is doing is highly embarrassing
and a serious threat to her self-respect.1 The only thing we can do is try to act as
decently as possible and work for a society where all kinds of shameful poverty are
abolished.
With this in mind, in this article we want to explore the relation between relative
poverty and human dignity in three steps. First, we will have a closer look at what
relative poverty is about and what distinguishes it from absolute poverty. Second, we
will analyze why describing relative poverty as unjust inequality is, while neglecting
its humiliating dimension, nonetheless important. Finally, we will try to elaborate

1 It is, of course, possible that someone decides freely to make a living by collecting returnable
bottles and even accept that this means to live in relative poverty. But here, like with all other
important goods, it should be clear that it is before all else the involuntary deprivation that is
morally problematic.
162 J. Müller and C. Neuhäuser

the argument why relative poverty is a violation of human dignity by pointing to the
social dimension of self-respect. In doing so we want to clarify that relative poverty
is distinct from absolute poverty, but still an all-too-common phenomenon which
could reasonably be expected to provoke moral concern.

12.2 Applied Absolute Poverty

One prominent way of understanding relative poverty construes it as a concept not
very distinct from absolute poverty (Schaber 2007, Schaber, Chapter 11, this vol-
ume). It describes absolute poverty as sensitive to social circumstances and declares
it to be relative in this sense. While in many societies it is not necessary to have
shoes, a TV, or even a car in order not to be poor, this may indeed be the case in
other societies. It is necessary, therefore, to apply absolute poverty to special social
circumstances if we want to find out what counts as poverty and what does not. This
rings true, because we can surely think of a society where not having shoes is an
indicator of poverty and others where it is not. But does the same count for TVs
or cars? Can we really imagine that people are poor just because they do not have
a TV or a car? And if not, is that because our imagination is not original enough
or because poverty, TVs, and cars just don’t have anything to do with each other?
An account of relative poverty as applied absolute poverty can provide answers to
all these questions, exactly because it starts from the basic idea of abstract absolute
poverty and applies it to different socioeconomic contexts.
The central idea of absolute poverty is the claim that poverty is about lacking
the most basic goods which are necessary for a good, or at least decent, life (Singer
1993: 218–221). If we can imagine a society where cars are basic goods and needed
for having a chance to live a good life, then not having a car is in fact an indicator
of being poor. At the core of this concept lies the idea of basic goods. Only when
we have understood what those basic goods are does it become clearer how absolute
poverty can be relative to social circumstances and maybe even be about not having
cars. Moreover, the term “basic goods” establishes the link to decency which in
turn can provide the normative groundwork for poverty as a “thick” concept not
only describing certain situations but also indicating why their existence is morally
wrong. But what are these basic goods?
The most prominent and well developed account of basic goods is neo-
Aristotelian in spirit and offered by Martha Nussbaum (Nussbaum 1992, 1993).
She produces a list of ten (sometimes eleven) goods, which she declares to be basic,
because life cannot be decent without them, or at least not decent without having
access to them, as Amartya Sen sharpened the account (Sen 1993). Here the decent
life is understood as a necessary base for being able to live a good life. In this sense,
basic goods are needed to have a chance to live a decent and good life. Among
those goods on Nussbaum’s list are food, shelter, and medical treatment, but also
the possibility to take part in public life, to travel freely and to play. Now we can
see how not only shoes but also TVs and cars come into the picture. If we imagine
a society where much of public life happens on TV and taking part in public life
12 Relative Poverty 163

is a basic good, then having a TV is essential to have one’s basic goods fulfilled.
This describes the situation in most industrial societies. Likewise, if we imagine a
society where people cannot move freely or travel properly without having a car,
then cars can indeed be needed to enable access to a basic good. Societies of this
kind actually do exist. Think of American suburbs without any public transportation
at all and long ways to the next supermarket, medical specialist, or bookstore at the
edge of town. Here cars are definitely needed to move freely, because many social
institutions of practical relevance, like those mentioned, can only be reached with
a car.
One of the great advantages of this account is the widespread agreeability of
Nussbaum’s list of basic goods. Nobody really questions that the goods she men-
tions are of fundamental importance to us humans to be able to live a good life.
Some might question the order of goods and others might want to add one or two
(Wolf and De-Shalit 2007: 57–61). Moreover the meta-ethical justification of the
list can be discussed (Antony 2000). Yet these issues don’t really raise the question
of the idea of basic goods as such; they can be accommodated within the concept.
Relating poverty to basic goods therefore provides quite a robust basis for judging
what it is really about. It gives us a reasonable argument for identifying which social
situations count as circumstances of poverty, because goods appearing to be of con-
tingent character – like shoes, TVs, and cars – can be related to basic goods. Under
certain circumstances they can be necessary tools for the access to certain basic
goods. Therefore, not having these apparently not so contingent goods constitutes
being poor in this concrete social situation.
A second advantage rests on the connection between basic goods and the good
life. If we understand a decent life as a life a person can live in dignity, which
includes being respected as well as the possibility to exercise self-respect and a fair
amount of autonomy, then it becomes clear why basic goods are important for such
a life (Nussbaum 2006: 159–160). Only when a person has access to those basic
goods can she command autonomy and rightfully respect herself, without seeing
her dignity violated. She probably will also need those goods in order to be fully
respected by others as a fellow citizen. Basic goods therefore provide her with the
tools needed to construct her own good, or at least decent, life in a social context.
On the one hand, this explains why basic goods are so important, and on the other
hand, it justifies why everybody should have access to them. Moreover, in this pic-
ture, basic goods give material content to the ideas of decency and dignity. Thereby
a stable framework of mutual support emerges, and both dignity and basic goods
obtain a firm foundation.
The third advantage of this account stems from the fact that it needs only one
notion of poverty to describe the apparently diverse and dissonant phenomenon of
being poor. Accounts which work with the traditional distinction between absolute
and relative poverty are confronted with the considerable inconvenience that they
have to explain how the two different concepts of poverty can be arranged with each
other. Understanding relative poverty as applied absolute poverty does not need to
do that. There is only one notion of poverty, which is lack of access to basic goods.
The differences on the surface phenomena come from the different composition
164 J. Müller and C. Neuhäuser

basic goods can have in different societies. This explains why social circumstances
are relevant to whether not having shoes, TVs, or cars counts as lack of basic goods
and constitutes poverty or not.
These three advantages of understanding relative poverty as applied absolute
poverty seem to build up a strong case for relative poverty perceived as socially
applied absolute poverty, but there are also some fundamental flaws that seriously
weaken this approach and even make it indefensible, or so we want to argue. This
understanding of relative poverty is too broad and too thin and, moreover, in an
important sense much too sketchy. It is too sketchy because it fails to draw an impor-
tant line between different kinds of poverty. The apparent strength of just having
one notion of poverty turns into a serious weakness. If there is only applied absolute
poverty relative to socioeconomic circumstances, it becomes hard to differentiate
between what is normally called absolute and relative poverty. Then those people
we normally call absolutely poor are in the same sense poor as those we normally
call relatively poor. This is counterintuitive, because the distinction between abso-
lute and relative poverty is designed to indicate that people in absolute poverty live
under much worse conditions than those in relative poverty.
A defense of relative poverty as applied absolute poverty could point at the plu-
rality of basic goods. It could be argued that in absolute poverty more important
basic goods like food or health are threatened, or simply that, in general, more basic
goods are lacking. This is certainly true, but it fails to capture the point of the differ-
entiation between relative and absolute poverty because it cannot establish that we
do, indeed, have two different kinds of poverty, only different intensities of poverty.
While the first account establishes a categorical difference, the latter can only estab-
lish gradual differences. Thereby, an important intuition concerning the dissimilar
nature of relative and absolute poverty is lost. Someone who is absolutely poor is
endangered in his ability to live any decent life at all, because he is facing an exis-
tential threat. Someone who is relatively poor is endangered in his ability to live
a decent life in his given society, because he is facing a social threat. An account
of relative poverty that can explain while both, relative and absolute poverty, are
kinds of poverty, but different kinds of poverty, as we attempt to present in the final
section, brings us closer to this intuition.
Another major problem of this understanding of relative poverty as socially
applied absolute poverty is that it fails to capture fully what we normally perceive
as relative poverty. As said: It is too broad and too thin. Think again of the two
examples of the poor boy and the rich young woman. The poor boy has access to
all basic goods; he can go to school, has shelter and food, is in good health; he can
even play, maybe not with the school kids who ridicule him, but surely with other
poor boys in the area he lives in. Yet although he has access to all basic goods he
is still poor and humiliated by his classmates for this poverty. Now, the rich young
woman, on the other hand, is still rich, but maybe she does not really have access
to all basic goods. For her the ball is one of the most important events she can go
to and have fun. Now this ball and all the other similar events she used to attend are
not options anymore; she cannot do what is needed to be accepted there, which is
12 Relative Poverty 165

showing up with a new dress each time. Yet for her it is the only way to go out to
party, show herself to others, and have fun.
Of course, one might want to object that the young woman could go to other
events to play and have fun there. There are no external obstacles which forestall
this option. In fact, she still has many more possibilities than most of the other
people in her society. After all, she is a rich girl. Her point of view is indeed very
subjective and can be criticized for that, as we will do in the final section. But one
should take seriously, at least initially, that there is an inner hindrance, because she
cannot go to the events of the society she feels she belongs to. Her society does not
consist of all people living in the same state, but only of those very rich people who
attend fancy balls. So, in a way, her situation seems to be even worse than that of the
poor boy. To be sure, to have access to the basic good of education, the boy needs
to endure the humiliating behavior of his classmates, but at least he has access to
all basic goods. The young woman, on the other hand, does not – in a way – have
access too all basic goods, because she cannot move and play freely anymore in the
society she thinks she belongs to. Yet we would still say that the boy is relatively
poor and the young woman is not.
One way to solve this paradox could be to introduce the concept of social inequal-
ity, wherever the borders of the relevant society are identical with the borders of a
sovereign state.2 This could be related to poverty by understanding equality as a
basic good itself, which could help to explain why the poor boy is poor and the rich
girl is not. We, therefore, want to explore and finally reject this idea – not the idea
of inequality as such, but as a substitute for relative poverty.

12.3 Unfair Inequality

The last section indicated that it is not possible to reduce the troublesome concept of
relative poverty to a form of socially applied absolute poverty, but another reductive
strategy might do the job. The idea is simply to drop the talk of relative poverty
altogether and replace it by talking about inequality instead. In this perspective, the
moral problem in regard of those people who have been called relatively poor is
not that they are poor, but that they have to suffer from unjustified inequality. The
schoolboy and the woman collecting garbage are not really poor; instead, they are
treated harshly by society and unfairly so. The young rich woman, on the other hand,
is not treated unfairly. Although her situation might seem to be harsh to her, she will
have to learn to live with it, because no right is infringed and no moral problem at
stake.

2 This is not to imply that there is some kind of strange collective entity that has a value in itself,
something like a nation. A society identical with a state should rather be understood in the terms
of an encompassing group as Margalit and Raz (1990) phrase it. It is a constructed group with no
direct value of its own, but, nonetheless, the identity of the individual members is dependent on it,
which makes the group very valuable in an instrumental way.
166 J. Müller and C. Neuhäuser

This perspective on the issue of relative poverty as unjustified inequality goes

well with our intuitions about what is morally acceptable and what is not. It seems
to get the difference between the schoolboy and the young rich woman right.
Moreover, it rests on the powerful ideas of justice and equality. The idea that all
humans are equal by birth has a long history, and the idea that justice, therefore,
includes a fair distribution of wealth and goods among those equal beings was
brought to prominence (again) by John Rawls and his groundbreaking theory of
justice as fairness (Rawls 1971, 2001). In this tradition, much work has been done
to clarify the concept of justice as fairness and to establish what kind of inequal-
ity is acceptable (Barry 1973, Beitz 1979, Cohen and Rogers 1983, Pogge 1989,
Daniels 1996, Freeman 2006). The basic idea is simple: All inequality that stems
from contingent causes needs to be counterbalanced. Only inequality that stems
from the achievements of the agents themselves is justified. There is some discus-
sion about what qualifies as given and what as earned – for instance, when it comes
to intelligence – but, apart from these secondary problems, the approach is clear and
compelling.
There is a further complexity within the liberal theory of justice that makes it
even more attractive as a basis for replacing the idea of relative poverty by the idea
of unjust inequality. Rawls establishes a second principle of justice which leads
to redistribution independent of the idea of equal starting conditions. He calls it
the “difference principle”, because it states that those in the worst condition need
to benefit most from the socioeconomic structure (Rawls 1971: §§ 11, 12, Rawls
2001: §§ 13, 14). One might imagine that this could lead to a society where taxing
is so penetrating that in the end all individuals have roughly the same amount of
money. Rawls rejects this solution because he thinks that money is an important
incentive for skilful people to work harder and thereby increase the overall level of
welfare. A rather high inequality of income can be justified in this way, because it
increases the overall amount of goods that can be distributed (Rawls 2001: § 20,
Cohen 2000: 117–120, Cohen 2008: 68–86). Compared to other liberal theories
of justice, the Rawlsian difference principle still sets a relatively harsh limit on the
acceptable inequality that stems from unequal merits of individuals (Gosepath 2004:
425–433).
The idea of individuals who cooperate fairly combined with the difference prin-
ciple produces a formidable argument for initial equality, and a robust notion of
egalitarian justice can be constructed on this account. Nonetheless, the approach
of justice as fairness still fails to capture the whole problem of relative poverty. It
fails, because it is unable to grasp that relative poverty is humiliating and a threat
to decency regardless of being unfair or not. At this point, it is rather unclear if
decency itself is best understood as a part of justice next to fairness or a separate
idea of social morality besides justice. We do not want to take a stance on this issue,
but for matters of clarity we will present decency as an idea different from justice,
especially justice as fairness. Margalit understands his concept of decency as some-
how weaker than the concept of justice. In his view a society can be decent but
still unjust. He thereby implies that a society cannot be just and still be indecent
(Margalit 1996: 3, 271–281, Honneth 1997).
12 Relative Poverty 167

But that is exactly the point of view we want to defend. A society can be just but
indecent; at least, if justice is understood as fairness alone and not also including
decency. Now it becomes clear why the concept of relative poverty cannot simply
be replaced by the concept of unjust inequality. The point simply is that the idea
of justice as fairness fails to establish that nobody has to live in relative poverty,
because people might come to this state of relative poverty without any unfairness
involved in the process. Maybe it is the fault of the mother of the poor boy that she
is poor. Maybe she left school early on her own free will; maybe she freely decided
never to go for any secondary qualification; maybe she used to spend money on
expensive, but useless, things before she had children, and never made any savings.
In this situation, her poverty might be justified from the point of view of fairness,
but it is, nonetheless, indecent.
A defender of justice as fairness can insist that such a state of relative poverty is
impossible under conditions of fairness, because a cooperating society of free and
equal citizens will always produce a basic structure that excludes relative poverty.
These are high hopes that do not follow from the difference principle alone, because
it is possible that the weakest group of society will benefit most in a situation of
high inequality, where the strongest group benefits even more. One might even want
to argue that this describes the situation of contemporary societies where managers
and other professionals in key positions make lots of money and where the overall
welfare of society is high. In this view, such a situation is justified because the good
performance of the professionals benefits the whole society. Rawls and his followers
would probably question the empirical validity of these claims, and rightfully so.
Be that as it may, the theoretical point that such a situation might be possible in his
approach is still a valid complaint.
But as indicated above, Rawls understands the difference principle as an addi-
tional principle of justice different from equality of opportunity. This principle rests
on the idea that inequality cannot be so high that some people have cause to see
themselves as secondary citizens. This follows from his idea of society as coop-
eration among free and equal citizens (Rawls 2001: § 7). We do not question this
principle, yet we want to clarify that in our perspective it introduces the idea of
decency next to fairness and therefore rests on the notion of relative poverty and not
inequality. The reason why citizens loathe huge differences in income is not, or not
only, because it is unfair, and certainly not out of envy, but because it is indecent
(Anderson 1999: 314). This is not part of the idea that true cooperation is fair but
part of the idea that citizenship as a normative ideal entails decency. It doesn’t matter
why the poor boy is poor, or why someone has to collect cans from the garbage bin
or beg for money, or why she cannot afford a TV. These situations are instantiations
of relative poverty in any case and, therefore, humiliating. In the next section, we
will defend why relative poverty is humiliating and, therefore, contradictory to the
idea of a decent society.
According to this understanding of humiliation and decency, the proper relation
between inequality and relative poverty can be expressed thus: Relative poverty is
the result of indecent cooperation while unjustified inequality is the result of unfair
cooperation. In many situations the relative poverty of people is also an instantiation
168 J. Müller and C. Neuhäuser

of unjustified cooperation. But while it is often unfair, it is always indecent. Aside

from this, it is still possible, of course, that someone’s economic situation is unfair,
without constituting relative poverty. This is the case when women with good qual-
ifications are not paid the same amount of money for the same kind of work or
when someone abuses his oligarchic bargaining power to cut exploiting deals with
weaker companies. Unjust inequality can go far beyond relative poverty, and in
this sense it might be true that most forms of relative poverty are also cases of
unfair inequality, but this does not take the normative power from the additional
and universally valid argument that relative poverty is always indecent because it is
humiliating.

12.4 Humiliation and Relative Poverty

Relative poverty can neither be reduced to absolute poverty nor to unjust inequality.
Instead, the idea of relative poverty functions to describe a genuine moral problem
of its own. But what exactly is so problematic about relative poverty, and why can
this moral problem only be described in terms of relative poverty? Those are the
questions we want to address in this final section. Our answer will very much rely on
Margalit’s account of humiliation and decency (Margalit 1996). The idea is basically
this: Relative poverty is humiliating, because relatively poor people have reason to
see themselves as second class citizens, which gives them a reason to see their self-
respect undermined (Margalit 1996: 225–231). This is a violation of their human
dignity, which a decent society has to avoid; therefore, we should put great effort
into trying to end relative poverty.
But why does relative poverty humiliate and diminish self-respect? The answer
does not lie so much in a conceptual link between human dignity and material
wealth. It, indeed, is possible to live a dignified life without too many material
goods. The answer lies in the significance material wealth has in a real society and
the consequences this fact has for those people who lack the needed goods to be seen
as equal fellow citizens in this society. Relatively poor people are marginalized,
rejected, and humiliated in many subtle ways (Bourdieu et al. 1999). Single inci-
dents or situations often do not seem to be humiliating as such, but taken together
they give a reason to see one’s self-respect and human dignity violated. Examples
of this are the inability to be as mobile as others, to dress in a proper way, to attend
ordinary social events, or to spend money on goods for entertainment in general.
These examples reveal the hidden mechanisms of humiliation that are in place when
it comes to relative poverty. Not being able to dress properly might be acceptable in
a single event or at a certain situation, but when someone realizes that he is never
dressed in a proper way compared to the majority of his fellow citizens, he realizes
that he is somehow left behind on an overall social level. Not being able to purchase
one special, trendy good of entertainment is not humiliating at all, but realizing time
and again that one is not able to purchase for oneself or one’s family some of those
goods that the others play and have fun with makes it quite obvious that one is some
kind of social outsider.
12 Relative Poverty 169

The problem becomes even more visible, and surely more pressing, when rela-
tively poor people have only very limited healthcare or no healthcare at all, while
others can afford the fanciest kinds of plastic surgery. The same counts for hav-
ing very different and fewer education opportunities or having to live in segregated
housing areas because everything else is far too expensive. The availability of all
these things, from clothing and entertainment goods to healthcare and housing, very
much depends on a person’s income. The problem here is not that relatively poor
people do not have access to basic goods at all, but that they have much less access
to those goods compared to their fellow citizens. But why should that be a problem?
To understand the humiliating character of relative poverty, it is necessary to see the
social character of self-respect. Self-respect is not something totally individualistic,
but dependent on how others see and treat us. Moreover, we see ourselves as part of
certain groups, and our identity is very much dependent on our membership in those
groups (Sen 2006, Young 1990, 2000). If we are rejected by one of the groups we
identify with, this can be humiliating, because it harms our identity on which our
self-respect is built (Margalit 1996: 134–137). A very special group that we belong
to, and our identity and self-respect is dependent on, is the society we live in. We see
ourselves as citizens, who belong to the same group as our fellow citizens. Relative
poverty seriously undermines this self-perception and is, therefore, humiliating.
To be sure, not every rejection by a group someone identifies with is humiliat-
ing, but rejection by the society she lives in does constitute a violation of human
dignity. What marks the difference? This can be seen when we once more stress
the differences between the two cases of the poor boy and the young rich woman.
Both are rejected by their groups because of their improper dressing. In the case of
the young woman, the group can be described as the local upper class. In the case
of the boy, the group can be described as his schoolmates. The obvious difference
between these two groups is that the first consists of especially privileged people
within society, while the latter group consists of an arbitrary assembly of members
of this society. This second group can be seen as representative for society, while
the first cannot. The boy gets the message that he is not seen as an equal member of
this group, and, because this group stands for society, he gets the message that he is
not seen as an equal member of society. The young woman only gets the message
that she is not seen as an equal member of this privileged group within society. As
Margalit says, the first is a threat to the boy’s self-respect, while the latter is only a
threat to the woman’s self-esteem (Margalit 1996: 44–48).
One could object to this and claim that, according to our own account presented
here, the situation of the young woman is humiliating as well. There is a group
within society that is very exclusive and only very few privileged people have access
to. This, the objection would claim, is humiliating to all others, including the young
woman, because they are seen as inferior by this privileged group. The difference is
only that the young woman is aware of this humiliating fact while most other peo-
ple are not. They simply do not know that there is a social group that sees them as
inferior, but they still have a reason to see themselves humiliated by this group. This
objection is not sustainable but touches upon an important point. Some institutions,
indeed, indicate the existence of a two-class society. Examples are different areas in
170 J. Müller and C. Neuhäuser

trains for rich and not so rich people, or even more seriously, the already mentioned
two-class system in healthcare due to different insurances. A very serious prob-
lem of growing concern is the difference between professionals and mere workers
(Young 1990: 214–222). These institutionalized differences ought to be seen very
critically, and if their number, or the intensity of difference, becomes too high, they
can, indeed, be seen as humiliating for the lower class. However, this cannot be
transferred to the example of the young woman and her tennis club just like that.
The reason is simply that the tennis club does not form an institution standing
for society as such. It can rather be seen as a snobbish social group with a lim-
ited capacity to undermine a sense of equal citizenship. This club simply does not
stand for society as a whole, and its attempt to humiliate non-members by exclusion
therefore does not work, but rather leaves an impression of an establishment folly.
This is why it is only a threat to one’s self-esteem but not to ones self-respect. The
young woman could, therefore, just walk away and reflect on the new opportunities
she has gained by opening herself up to a much richer and more interesting society.
But if the differentiation between those who can attend tennis club balls and those
who cannot becomes a crucial symbol of belonging in a society, it can indeed be
humiliating not to be able to attend those balls.
This shows how fragile the concept of human dignity is. It very much depends
on the constitution of a society and how the different groups within this society
relate to each other and manage not to dominate or oppress each other (Miller 2007:
111–134). This actually opens up a second objection against the idea that relative
poverty undermines the self-respect of those who are poor and, therefore, humili-
ated. We can imagine a society where people can have great differences in income
and possessions and where this does not lead to a two-class society, because mate-
rial wealth does not play an important role at all. The connection between equal
citizenship and relative poverty, which leads to humiliation, is not a conceptual one
but, in a way, contingent. But we still doubt that a decent society with great dif-
ference in income can exist. The reason is simply that in a society where income
does not play a crucial role for the construction of the self and where public life
is seriously de-commercialized, nobody will care very much about material goods.
So either relative poverty should not occur, because it is humiliating, or it will not
occur, because everyone will share their goods willingly.
There is a third objection to the thesis that relative poverty is humiliating and
should therefore be eradicated. It is a common enough argument that some peo-
ple deserve their poverty because it is their own fault that they are poor (Rakowski
1991). They may have spent too much money in the past or are just a lazy lot. This
criticism often neglects the importance of structural factors influencing the oppor-
tunities individual agents have. But even if it is true that some people are relatively
poor due to their own fault, society still has reason to end their poverty. This is
because relative poverty is not a problem of fairness but a problem of decency.
A decent society does not tolerate that its members are humiliated. Relative poverty
is humiliating because relatively poor people are seen as second-class citizens and
12 Relative Poverty 171

have reason to see themselves in their self-respect violated. It does not matter why
they are poor; it only matters that they have a right to be seen and treated as equal
citizens. Their human dignity is fragile and can be violated, but they can never fully
lose their human dignity and the rights that come with it. A decent society, therefore,
has to end relative poverty no matter why it exists.

References
Anderson, Elizabeth. 1999. What is the point of equality? Ethics 109(2): 287–337.
Antony, Louise. 2000. Natures and norms. Ethics 111(1): 8–36.
Barry, Brian. 1973. The liberal theory of justice. Oxford: Clarendon.
Beitz, Charles R. 1979. Political theory and international relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre et al. 1999. The weight of the world: Social suffering in contemporary society.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Cohen, Gerald A. 1993. Equality of what? On welfare, goods and capabilities. In The quality of
life, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, 9–29. Oxford: Clarendon.
Cohen, Gerald A. 2000. If you’re an Egalitarian, how come you’re so rich? Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Cohen, Gerald A. 2008. Rescuing justice and equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cohen, Joshua, and Joel Rogers. 1983. On democracy. New York, NY: Penguin.
Daniels, Norman. 1996. Justice and justification: Reflective equilibrium in theory and practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Freeman, Samuel. 2006. Justice and the social contract. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gosepath, Stefan. 2004. Gleiche Gerechtigkeit. Grundlagen eines liberalen Egalitarismus.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Honneth, Axel. 1997. A society without humiliation? European Journal of Philosophy 5(3):
306–324.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Margalit, Avishai and Joseph Raz. 1990. National self-determination. Journal of Philosophy 87(9):
439–461.
Miller, David. 2007. National responsibility and global justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1992. Human functioning and social justice. Political Theory 20(2):
202–246.
Nussbaum, Martha. 1993. Non-relative virtues: An aristotelian approach. In The quality of life, eds.
Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, 242–269. Oxford: Clarendon.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2006. Frontiers of justice. Disability, nationality, species membership.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pogge, Thomas. 1989. Realizing rawls. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Pogge, Thomas, ed. 2001. Global justice. Oxford: Blackwell.
Pogge, Thomas. 2007. Freedom from poverty as a human right: Who owes what to the very poor.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Rakowski, Eric. 1991. Equal justice. Oxford, NY: Clarendon Press.
Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as fairness. A restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schaber, Peter. 2007. Globale Hilfspflichten. In Weltarmut und Ethik, eds. Barbara Bleisch and
Peter Schaber, 139–153. Paderborn: Mentis.
Sen, Amartya. 1980. Equality of what? In Tanner lectures on human values, ed. Sterling
M. McMurrin, 197–220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
172 J. Müller and C. Neuhäuser

Sen, Amartya. 1993. Capability and well-being. In The quality of life, eds. Martha Nussbaum and
Amartya Sen, 30–53. Oxford, NY: Clarendon.
Sen, Amartya. 2006. Identity and violence: The illusion of destiny. New York, NY: Norton.
Singer, Peter. 1993. Practical ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolf, Jonathan, and Avner De-Shalit. 2007. Disadvantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Young, Iris M. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Young, Iris M. 2000. Inclusion and democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 13
Labor Exploitation
Crossing the Threshold Between Acceptable
and Unacceptable Labor Conditions

Kirsteen Shields

Abstract “Dignity” is often evoked in the pursuit of better labor standards, and
labor exploitation is often found to entail a loss of human dignity. In a bid to
understand what dignity means in the context of labor, this chapter examines and
compares the threshold between acceptable labor conditions and labor exploitation
from the perspectives of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as inter-
national standard-setter, of selected NGOs as international monitors, and of a
field-study of Fairtrade laborers as subjects of international labor standards. The dis-
tinction between the material and the immaterial elements of the labor relationship
emerges as a key to all three perspectives, with the ILO demonstrating a prevailing
tendency to link dignity with the immaterial elements of the labor relationship. In
response, this chapter asks whether it is enough to consider dignity as contingent on
the immaterial elements of the employment relationship or whether dignity in labor
does not also require the satisfaction of certain material needs of the laborer.

13.1 Introduction
The concept of “labor exploitation” comes loaded with ideology. For Kant, one
wrongfully exploited when one treated another instrumentally or merely as a means.
For Marx, exploitation was making use of some vulnerability in another person in
order to use him or her to attain one’s own ends at his or her expense. Whilst divided
on the causes of exploitation (for Liberals, it is organizational; for Marxists, it is
structural), Liberals and Marxists agree that the involuntary nature of the labor rela-
tionship is key to any situation of labor exploitation. Nowadays the term “exploita-
tion” is often evoked in a way that is detached from its ideological origins as a corol-
lary of capitalist society, if not as a symptom (see, for example, Kymlicka 1989).
According to the estimates of Kevin Bales, one of the world’s leading experts
on contemporary slavery, there are 27 million slaves in the world today (Bales

K. Shields (B)
London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for the Study of Human Rights, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 173

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_13,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
174 K. Shields

1999). The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) first global estimate on forced
labor is more modest at 12.3 million. This prevalence has not gone unnoticed,
and, in response, civil society and the “international community” have mobilized
to condemn labor exploitation through legislation, social movements and consumer
protest. Yet as chains of production grow longer and as labor mutates into increas-
ingly unrecognizable forms, is it plausible that these organs are fighting for a
common cause under the banner of labor exploitation? If so, what is that common
cause? Is it something we could call human rights? Fairness? Or dignity? In fact, all
of these paradigms are evoked in the pursuit of improved labor standards.
In respect of this anthology, this chapter attempts to understand what is meant by
“dignity” when it is evoked in relation to labor exploitation. In a bid to understand
what dignity means in this context, this chapter seeks to identify the triggers that
drive diverse organs to act on the grounds of dignity in labor. These triggers may be
considered to operate on the threshold between “acceptable” labor conditions and
labor exploitation. This chapter seeks to examine and compare the thresholds set for
labor exploitation from the perspectives of the ILO as international standard-setter
and of selected NGOs as international monitors, before considering the relevance of
these triggers from the perspective of a field-study of laborers.

13.2 Labor Exploitation According to the ILO

Labor legislation comes from overlapping sources: national labor laws; human
rights law at the national and regional level; UN human rights law; and interna-
tional trade law. At the centre of all of this, the International Labour Organization,
as a UN specialized agency, is charged with drafting and directing the universal min-
imum labor standards to be implemented at the national level. As the institutional
leader in the campaign against labor exploitation, the ILO has been developing stan-
dards for the protection of the individual from exploitative labor practices since its
creation in 1919. As with exploitation, it is difficult to talk of the ILO’s labor stan-
dards regime without acknowledging its ideological origins. Perhaps more than any
other set of norms, the ILO’s labor standards regime embodies the clash of ideolo-
gies inherent in the UN and everything emanating from it. At once utilitarian and
deontological, individualist and collectivist, the ILO’s labor standards regime is a
complex creature.
The rationales for the adoption of the ILO’s labor standards in its formative
period varied between the ethical and the economic. In many ways it is this dual-
ity that has made their existence possible; worker’s organizations, as members
of the ILO, campaigned for and supported the ILO’s labor standards as mini-
mum rights; equally, business enterprises, as members of the ILO, accepted the
standards on the basis of economic efficiency (and states swung between the
two). Increasingly, however, in recent decades we have witnessed the domina-
tion of the economic rationalization of labor standards over ethical rationalization.
This is reflected in trends whereby labor standards are treated as a bargaining
13 Labor Exploitation 175

tool in bilateral and regional free trade agreements or relegated to the form of
voluntary commitments in multilateral codes of conduct.
Despite these trends, it is important to recall that whilst the economic function
of labor standards is often recognized as being of equal relevance to the ethi-
cal function, it is no more than that (see Ghebali 1989, Engerman 2003, Davies
2004). Reference to the ILO’s constitutional documents reveal that the ILO’s labor
standards originated from a quest for “social justice”1 a priori, and, more gener-
ally, the moral consensus set by the Abolitionist Movement cannot be overlooked
as the deontological predecessor of universal labor standards. Subsequently, the
International Bill of Human Rights has unfolded to comprise many of the ILO labor
standards, and much of the ILO’s labor standards regime now constitutes codified
international human rights obligations.2 On this basis it is arguable that labor stan-
dards should be valued as rights and awarded that status (see Alston 2005b, Dworkin
1985).3
This marriage with international human rights law is of immense importance
when we come to consider the relationship between labor exploitation and dignity,
as reference to the functions and roles of labor standards helps identify what is at

1 Preamble ILO Constitution 1919.

2 To be precise: (i) Freedom of Association features in Article 23(4) Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 22 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) (and also included as an economic and social right, the right to form and join trade unions
is included in Article 8 International Covenant of Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR));
(ii) The right to be free from forced or compulsory labor can be interpreted from Article 4 UDHR:
“the right not to be held in slavery or servitude” and Article 23 UDHR: “everyone has the right to
work, to free choice of employment [. . .]”; also Article 8 ICCPR: “No one shall be held in slavery;
slavery and the slave-trade in all their forms shall be prohibited; No one shall be held in servi-
tude; No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour (except in the conditions
of imprisonment)”; (iii) The effective abolition of child labor is contained in Article 3 Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989): “the right of the child to be protected from economic
exploitation”; (iv) is provided by Article 7 UDHR, Article 26 ICCPR and features in almost every
human rights document (although some instruments contain a right not to be discriminated against
which applies only to the human rights contained in the instrument itself). Beyond this, just and
favorable conditions of work are included under Article 7 ICESCR and Article 24 UDHR. The
right to work is included in UDHR (Article 23(1)) and ICESCR (Article 6); Article 23 states that
everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his
family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of
social protection. EU provisions go farther regarding protection of dignity: Article 26 EU Charter
protects the right to dignity at work, and applies both to sexual harassment and to other forms
of bullying. The EU Charter contains a general reference to working conditions which protect a
workers dignity (Article 31). (See generally Davies 2004).
3 For a good summary of the opposing viewpoint see Hepple (2005: 22), the principal argument
being that much of the labor rights agenda are desirable social goals but to call them human rights
is to devalue the importance of basic civil and political rights. Hepple also makes the points that:
“Rights to decent working conditions and fair pay depend upon the level of socio-economic devel-
opment in a particular country and they generally presuppose economic growth and expanding
social welfare. Secondly there is a contradiction between the inequality of class in the market
place and the democratic element of citizenship and equal rights in the political sphere” (Hepple
2005: 265).
176 K. Shields

risk when these standards are not upheld. More specifically, the question what is
the purpose of labor standards? leads us to the more acute question of what, and
indeed whom, are labor standards intended to protect? Adopting a human rights per-
spective when answering this question implicates the rationales behind the human
rights movement; that human rights seek to preserve individual liberty or auton-
omy (Hart 1973); and, similarly, that they seek to protect human dignity (Dworkin
1985). Therefore, if we consider labor standards in their human rights cloak, the link
between labor standards and the protection of dignity becomes clearer.
Indeed, it is not necessary to look far to find glimmers of human rights threads
within the ILO’s normative tapestry. The Declaration of Philadelphia 1944 (an
amendment to the original ILO’s constitution of 1919) includes a blend of mate-
rial and non-material values as encapsulated in this provision from Article II (a):
“All human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both
their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom
and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity.” From the outset, there-
fore, dignity is described as a requisite element of labor conditions detached from
the material gains of labor.
The next logical question is how does the international labor standards regime
go about protecting dignity (setting aside for the moment the question of whether
this is effectively achieved in practice)? The ILO pertains to do this in two ways: (i)
by legislating against labor exploitation, and (ii) by promoting “acceptable” labor
conditions under the “Decent Work” agenda.

13.2.1 Legislating Against Labor Exploitation

The ILO seeks to legislate against labor exploitation under the broad ambit of
“forced labor”, within which forms of labor exploitation such as slavery and traf-
ficking are included. The ILO’s “A Global Alliance Against Forced Labour” 2005
report (hereinafter “ILO report 2005b”) aimed to develop an initial typology on
forced labor. This typology referred to the sector in which forced labor situations
could occur and included as forms of forced labor: slavery and abductions; compul-
sory participation in public work; forced labor in agriculture and remote rural areas;
domestic workers in forced labor situations; bonded labor; forced labor exacted
by the military (with particular reference to Myanmar); forced labor related to
trafficking in persons; and prison-linked forced labor (ILO Report 2005b: para. 39).
The ILO’s original convention on forced labor, the Forced Labour Convention
1930 (ILO Convention No 29), provides the starting point for the ILO’s definition
of forced labor. Therein, the ILO defines forced labor as “all work or service which
is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said
person has not offered himself voluntarily”.4 This is reiterated in the ILO’s only
other convention on forced labor, the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention 1957
(No 105), where it is specified that forced labor can never be used for the purpose

4 ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No 29) Article 2(1).

13 Labor Exploitation 177

of economic development or as a means of political education, discrimination, labor

discipline, or punishment for having participated in strikes.5
Over a period of 75 years, the ILO has developed its definition of forced labor
to detail aspects of the penalty imposed, the nature of consent and the significance
of the relationship between employer and employee, thereby sketching with greater
detail the boundaries whereby the employment relationship may become exploita-
tive. At each stage, the material conditions of the labor relationship are presented as
secondary to the ILO’s focus on the immaterial conditions of the relationship.
As regards the penalty that constitutes the first element of the ILO’s legal defi-
nition of forced labor, the ILO has expressed that the penalty does not need to be
in the form of penal sanction, but may also take the form of a loss of rights and
privilege (ILO Report 2005b: para. 13). The menace of a penalty can take multi-
ple different forms; the ILO suggests six indictors of a menace or penalty (see ILO
Report 2005a: 20):

(i) Threats or actual physical harm to the worker.

(ii) Restriction of movement and confinement to the workplace or to a limited area.
(iii) Debt bondage: where the worker works to pay off a debt or loan, and is not paid
for his or her services. The employer may provide food and accommodation at
such inflated prices that the worker cannot escape the debt.
(iv) Withholding of wages or excessive wage reductions that violate previously
made agreements.
(v) Retention of passports and identity documents, so that the worker cannot leave
or prove his/her identity and status.
(vi) Threat of denunciation to the authorities where the worker is in an irregular
immigration status.

The significance of the immaterial elements of the labor situation is made yet clearer
by the ILO’s description of instances where forced labor cannot be invoked as sit-
uations where material conditions are poor but there is no evidence of immaterial
harm to the person:
Forced labour cannot be equated simply with low wages or poor working conditions. Nor
does it cover situations of pure economic necessity, as when a worker feels unable to leave
a job because of the real or perceived absence of employment alternatives. Forced labour
represents a severe violation of human rights and restriction of human freedom, as defined in
the ILO conventions on the subject and in other related international instruments on slavery,
practices similar to slavery, debt bondage or serfdom.

According to the ILO, therefore, there must be immaterial harm to the person for
conditions to be deemed to amount to forced labor.
The “voluntariness” of the labor relation forms the second element of the ILO’s
legal definition of forced labor. In this respect the ILO considers the form and subject
matter of consent, in particular the role of external constraints or indirect coercion

5 ILO Abolition of Forced Labour Convention 1957 (No 105).

178 K. Shields

and the possibility of revoking freely given consent. The ILO report 2005b makes
the following point relating to the durability of consent:
Many victims enter forced labour situations initially of their own accord, albeit through
fraud and deception, only to discover later that they are not free to withdraw their labour.
They are subsequently unable to leave their work owing to legal, physical or psychological
coercion. Initial consent may be considered irrelevant when deception or fraud has been
used to obtain it. (ILO Report 2005b: para. 15)

Both of these conditions, penalty and “voluntariness”, impact upon the relation-
ship between employer and employee, and this is perhaps the most illuminating
aspect of the ILO’s theorization on forced labor. According to the ILO, a forced
labor situation is determined by the nature of the relationship between employee
and employer, “and not by the type of activity performed, however hard or haz-
ardous the conditions of work may be” (ILO Report 2005b: para. 16). In summary,
in crossing the threshold between the acceptable labor conditions and exploitative
labor conditions, according to the ILO, the key factor is the nature of the relation-
ship between employee and employer, and that relationship is defined by the extent
to which it may be considered to be voluntary in nature and by the non-material
harm or penalty (actual or threatened) experienced by the employee.

13.2.2 Promotion of “Decent Work” Agenda

Ancillary to the ILO’s work on forced labor, an equally important aspect of the
ILO’s approach to prevention of labor exploitation is its promotion of “core labour
standards” and the Decent Work Agenda. Through the promotion of core labor stan-
dards, the ILO has sought to establish a “minimum floor of labour conditions”. The
ILO’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work 1998 (hereinafter
the 1998 Declaration) is often misrepresented as the definitive statement of the ILO’s
core labor standards agenda. It is perhaps better described as the ILO’s most general
statement of its international labor standards regime. It consists of the following four
standards:

(i) Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective
bargaining;
(ii) The elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour;
(iii) The effective abolition of child labour;
(iv) The elimination of discrimination in respect of employment.6

The value of the 1998 Declaration’s contribution is doubtful; it is difficult to perceive

the presentation of a limited group of labor rights in non-binding declaratory form
as the definitive core labor standards to be in any way progressive. As Alston puts it:

6 Article 2, ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work 1998. The introduction
of core labor standards has been surrounded by debate as to the impact of these norms (see Alston
2005a, Langille 2005).
13 Labor Exploitation 179

“The bottom line is that the Declaration proclaims as ‘principles’ a range of values
which had already been recognized as rights exactly 50 years earlier in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights” (Alston 2004: 483).
The impact of the promotion of these four labor rights as core labor standards
on the wider labor standards regime cannot be underestimated. It has essentially
codified a hierarchy among labor standards, as Alston puts it, “those rights which
did not make it into the premier league were inevitably relegated to second-class
status” (Alston 2004: 488). Those rights left out include: the right to a safe and
healthy workplace; the right to some limits on working hours; the right to reason-
able rest periods; and protection against abusive treatment in the workplace. Compa
describes the core labor standards as taking “no account of the essential economic
and social component of rights at work (which legitimizes matters such as maternity
provisions, pensions and holidays)” (Compa 2000: 15).
Shortly after the adoption of the Declaration on core labor standards, the ILO’s
Decent Work Agenda was launched in order to address some of the labor standards
that had been left out of the core group in a non-binding form. Of considerable
significance for the purpose of this study is the fact that “dignity” is freely invoked
in the Decent Work Agenda. The ILO describes “decent work” as:
Productive work under conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity, in which rights
are protected and adequate remuneration and social coverage are provided. (ILO Decent
Work 1999 Report: 15)

Furthermore, the ILO adopts the following as its working definition of “decent
work”:
[Decent work] involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income;
provides security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for
personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns,
organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives and equality of opportunity
and treatment for all women and men.7

Pursuant to the promotion of “decent work” (described by ILO Director General

Juan Somavia as the ILO’s primary goal8 ), the ILO is in the process of establishing
a global template for measuring decent work conditions composed of qualitative
indicators for labor standards. The proposal includes the following main indicators9
of decent work standards: access to employment opportunities; work that should be
eliminated or abolished; adequate earnings and productive work; decent hours; sta-
bility and security of work; combining work and family life; equal opportunity and
treatment in employment; safe work environment; social security; social dialogue;
and worker’s representation (ILO Report 2008: Table 1).

7 See www.ilo.org/global/Themes/Decentwork/lang–en/index.htm
8 See:www.ilo.org/global/about_the_ILO/Mainpillars/WhatisDecentWork/lang–en/index.htm
9 Besides main indicators, the ILO report also considers additional indicators, context indicators,
indicators which are candidates for future inclusion, indicators which are candidates for exclusion,
and indicators of a legal nature (ILO Report 2008).
180 K. Shields

By promoting the “essential economic and social component” of labor standards

under the Decent Work Agenda, with its reliance on the rhetoric of dignity, the ILO
has established the social and economic component of labor standards as integral
to dignity. However, by promoting these labor standards, integral to dignity, under
the non-binding and voluntarist Decent Work Agenda, the ILO throws them into
the ambiguous territory of “second-class standards”, – i.e. below the set of rights
that the ILO calls the “minimum floor of labour standards.” On the basis that the
minimum floor of acceptable standards does not include components of labor stan-
dards which are elsewhere asserted by the ILO as integral to dignity in labor, it
would seem that the ILO’s minimum floor of labor standards is set below conditions
of labor which respect dignity. Whether this represents acquiescence by the ILO,
or merely an oversight, is impossible to say; more fundamentally, it would seem
to demonstrate that efforts to protect dignity are not necessarily synonymous with
efforts to prevent violations of dignity.

13.3 Civil Society Organizations

While the ILO standards attempt to set boundaries between acceptable and unac-
ceptable labor practices, these decisions largely remain at the standard-setting level.
As the malpractice of multinational corporations has become a subject of inter-
national notoriety, social movements and consumer campaigns have assumed the
traditional battleground of trade unions. In general, both trade unions and civil soci-
ety organizations alike refer to the ILO’s core labor standards as the minimum
level of acceptable labor standards, but to what extent may their activities further
inform the discussion as to the threshold between acceptable and unacceptable labor
conditions? Campaigns by Anti-Slavery International, Oxfam, and International
Labor Rights Forum offer insights into the meaning of labor exploitation from the
perspective of civil society.10

13.3.1 Anti-Slavery International

Anti-Slavery International, founded in 1839, was at the forefront of movements to
abolish the transatlantic slave trade and slavery throughout the British colonies. In
1975, it worked for the creation of a group of experts within the United Nations
dedicated to the elimination of slavery, now called the UN Working Group on
Contemporary Forms of Slavery. The organization’s activities have moved beyond

10 For the purpose of this study only campaigns that are specifically concerned with the improve-
ment of labor conditions are presented, as opposed to those campaigns which advocate alternatives
to trade liberalization. Moreover, it is worth noting that many major international NGOs, Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty International amongst them, have often explained their hesitancy to
include economic and social rights in their mandate due to the absence of specific international
standards of measurement, amongst other reasons.
13 Labor Exploitation 181

the transatlantic slave trade to campaign against labor exploitation in its modern
forms.11
Besides awareness-raising and lobbying, Anti-Slavery International has engaged
in groundbreaking research that builds and extends a modern concept of labor
exploitation under its terminology of “modern slavery”. Within its definition of
modern slavery, Anti-Slavery International includes forced labor, bonded labor,
child labor, and trafficking. According to Anti-Slavery International, common
characteristics of modern slavery are:

• Forced to work – through mental or physical threat;

• Owned or controlled by an “employer”, usually through mental or physical abuse
or threatened abuse;
• Dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as “property”;
• Physically constrained or having restrictions placed on one’s freedom of
movement.12

Further to this, a recent report by Anti-Slavery International addresses the implica-

tions of ILO’s six indicators of forced labor; “cases where at least one of the ILO
indicators is identified should at the very minimum merit a thorough investigation,
and where two or more elements of coercion are identified then the case should be
identified as forced labour” (Guichon and van den Anker 2006: 8).
The report highlights the absence of consent in labor exploitation by illustrating
the difference between trafficking and smuggling. According to the report, in the
case of smuggling, even though it often happens under “dangerous and undignified
conditions”, it is a contract with consent; “Trafficking involves ongoing exploitation
and even if the person might have consented at some stage, this consent is meaning-
less, because of the deception and coercion involved” (Guichon and van den Anker
2006: 8).
Beyond the ILO’s indicators, Anti-Slavery International has identified common
factors experienced by exploited workers from its research cases on trafficking for
forced labor in the UK, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Portugal. The first set of
common factors identified in the cases of trafficking for forced labor relates to the
vulnerable situation of migrant workers. These are: “isolation, lack of knowledge of
their rights and multiple dependency” (Guichon and van den Anker 2006: 10). In
addition, the report goes on to identify the following factors; “subject to complex
and confusing labour laws” (Guichon and van den Anker 2006: 11); “living under
the threat of violence” (Guichon and van den Anker 2006: 15); and part of a demand
for cheap labor often linked to supply chains for cheap products (Guichon and van
den Anker 2006: 18). Significantly these are factors that qualify consent.

11 Recent successful campaigns include a campaign for the introduction of new laws against slavery
in Niger in 2003 and against bonded labor in Nepal in 2002 following Anti-Slavery International
reporting and lobbying.
12 http://www.antislavery.org/homepage/antislavery/modern.html
182 K. Shields

Secondly, the report identifies “a complexity of labour and migration laws” and
a related difficulty of knowing one’s legal rights as common factors faced by the
subjects of trafficking for forced labor (Guichon and van den Anker 2006: 11).

13.3.2 Oxfam’s “Make Trade Fair” Campaign

Oxfam’s “Make Trade Fair” campaign seeks to “press decision-makers and govern-
ments for new trade rules – fair rules to make a real and positive difference in the
fight against poverty”.13 As part of this campaign, Oxfam conducted research with
partners in 12 countries involving interviews with hundreds of women workers and
many farm and factory managers, supply chain agents, retail and brand company
staff, unions and government officials. The report sought to illustrate “how retailers
(supermarkets and department stores) and clothing brands are using their power in
supply chains systematically to push many costs and risks of business on to pro-
ducers, who in turn pass them on to working women” (Raworth, Oxfam 2004: 5).
Chapter 1 of the report sets out the impacts of this trend on women workers and their
families as workers being “permanently temporary”; “with no formal contracts”;
“no support for families such as maternity pay”; “little or no job progression”; “low
pay for high pressure jobs”; “long overtime at short notice”; “violence and sexual
harassment”; and “prevention from joining a union” (Oxfam 2004: chap. 1).
The report gives the following examples of unacceptable labor conditions:

• In Chile, 75% of women in the agricultural sector are hired on temporary con-
tracts picking fruit, and put in more than 60 h a week during the season. But one
in three still earns below the minimum wage.
• Fewer than half of the women employed in Bangladesh’s textile and garment
export sector have a contract, and the vast majority gets no maternity or health
coverage – but 80% fear dismissal if they complain.
• In China’s Guangdong province, one of the world’s fastest growing industrial
areas, young women face 150 h of overtime each month in the garment factories –
but 60% have no written contract and 90% have no access to social insurance.
(Oxfam 2004: 5).

The issue of contract is of central importance to Oxfam’s definition of unacceptable

labor standards:
Commonly hired on short-term contracts – or with no contract at all – women are working
at high speed for low wages in unhealthy conditions. They are forced to put in long hours
to earn enough to get by. Most have no sick leave or maternity leave, few are enrolled
in health or unemployment schemes, and fewer still have savings for the future. Instead
of supporting long-term development, trade is reinforcing insecurity and vulnerability for
millions of women workers. (Oxfam 2004: 4)

13 See http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/trade/about
13 Labor Exploitation 183

The report identifies the importance of workers being recognized by law in the labor
relationship:
When workers are not formally recognized as employees, they fall outside the protection of
labour law. In some countries, having no written contract means having no legal recognition.
(Oxfam 2004: 20)

Examples from Oxfam’s “Make Trade Fair” campaign demonstrate a focus on the
non-material dimensions of labor, and more specifically on the legal recognition
created by contract. This reinforces the issue of consent at the heart of labor exploita-
tion; the nature of the activity is not as significant as the means by which it is carried
out, i.e. whether the activity is voluntary or involuntary.

13.3.3 The International Labor Rights Forum

The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) describes itself as “an advocacy orga-
nization dedicated to achieving just and humane treatment for workers worldwide”.
It was established in 1986 as the International Labor Rights Education and Research
Fund.14 Its mission statement reads:
We believe that all workers have the right to a safe working environment where they are
treated with dignity and respect, and where they can organize freely to defend and promote
their rights and interests. We are committed to ending the problems of child labor, forced
labor, and other abusive practices.

The ILFR has had considerable success with organized campaigns against Nike and
other firms (see Cavanaugh 1997). The ILFR’s current campaign against Wal-Mart’s
labor practices provides an example of the kinds of conditions the ILRF considers
unacceptable. In its report “Wal-Mart in China: Rolling Back Labour Rights” the
ILRF raised the following concerns:

(i) Many workers did not possess any copy of the labor contract, most of them
do not know the precise stipulations regarding their work hours or wage and
benefits.
(ii) Wages at the Winbo factory were below the national minimum.
(iii) Overtime was not compensated appropriately.
(iv) No paid days of rest.
(v) No holidays.
(vi) No sick pay.
(vii) Factory frequently withholds workers’ salaries for at least one and a half
months (sometimes 2 months).
(viii) Excessive working hours (11 h per day).
(ix) Inadequate health and safety provision such as failure to provide protective
clothing where necessary.

14 Subsequently shortened to the “The International Labor Rights Fund” and in 2007 changed again
to the “International Labor Rights Forum”.
184 K. Shields

(x) Inadequate safety training.

(xi) No social security, including pensions, injury insurance or medical insurance.
(xii) Inappropriate fining and punishments.
(xiii) Prevention of union activities (through fining for involvement and through
terminating the employment of union leaders).

ILRF identifies the absence of a contract of employment as a key element of the

unacceptable labor conditions. The labor contract is considered to codify consent,
thereby ensuring that the activity is not undertaken involuntarily.15

13.4 The Laborers: Views from South African Vineyards16

The ILO sets the framework for international labor standards and builds interna-
tional consensus on these conditions. Meanwhile, civil society fleshes out these
standards with application to specific situations and often demands “economic jus-
tice” beyond the ILO’s core labor standards. But what relevance do these boundaries
have at the local level to the subjects of these standards, the laborers?17 This section
attempts to draw a sense of what amounts to labor exploitation from the perspective
of landless farm-workers in Rawsonville, South Africa.
The information presented was collected during a field study carried out in
South Africa in July 2008 as part of a research project on the Fairtrade Movement
funded by the Art and Humanities Research Council at Queen Mary, University of
London.18 In 2005, the Fairhills Rawsonville Fairtrade Project was set up in the
Rawsonville region. In its most recent report, the South African Human Rights
Commission Farming Inquiry Report 2008 identified Rawsonville as “an alleged
human rights abuse hotspot” (South African Human Rights Commission Report
2008: 61). The report also noted that the underlying causes of human rights abuses
appeared to be rooted in the paternalistic relationship between farm-owner and
farm-dweller.
The Fairtrade cooperative in Rawsonville is currently the largest Fairtrade coop-
erative in the world, whereby over 800 people (farm-workers and their families)
benefit from the premiums generated. In order to qualify for Fairtrade status from
the Fairtrade Labelling Organization, the farms are obliged to organize themselves
as a cooperative, with group representatives from the farms making decisions as
to changes on the farms. Through the cooperative, the farm-workers receive a

15 The extent to which perceptions of consent in employment contracts may be inaccurate is the
subject of on-going research by the author.
16 These findings are intended to be anecdotal in nature and are limited to this unique case study

Further conclusive findings would require further field trips.

17 In the context of South Africa, “farm-workers” on wine estates in the Western Cape are almost
without exception landless and of black or “Coloured” descent. The South African Human Rights
Commission uses the term “farm-dwellers” to describe the workers and their families.
18 http://www.qmul-fairtradeproject.org/index.htm
13 Labor Exploitation 185

community payment into the Fairhills joint body account, alongside their wage pay-
ments. The joint account is used to finance crèches and community centers and
vocational training. The Fairtrade Labelling Organization obliges the provision of
training courses (on topics such as health and safety, and IT skills) and daycare for
infants, but there is no obligation as to the provision of social security benefits such
as sick pay, holiday pay or pensions.
Previous studies in different geographical contexts have found that the benefits
to individual producers participating in Fairtrade are significant, with many benefits
occurring in forms far more complex than simply increasing income. Benefits occur-
ring at other levels are subtle but significant. These can be tangible benefits such as
the provision of crèches and adult education programs, or they can be more subtle
changes in organizational structure which enable greater participation and trans-
parency in decision making and impact on the relationship between employee and
employer. Several studies on Fairtrade employers have reported a “marked increase
in self-esteem” of Fairtrade employees (Murray et al. 2003: 8).
In light of the introduction of Fairtrade in Rawsonville in 2005, the information
presented below comes from anecdotal evidence collected during interviews with
the farm-workers in Rawsonville and consists of the farm-worker’s reflections on
the changes that had been brought by the introduction of Fairtrade. In assessing
the value of these changes, farm-worker’s comments have been grouped under two
questions – Are the principal benefits material or are the immaterial changes equally
important to the farm-workers? And have the Fairtrade changes had any impact on
the relationship between farm-owner (employer) and farm-worker (employee)?

13.4.1 Hierarchy of Benefits: Are Material Benefits More

Significant than Immaterial Benefits or Vice Versa?
In order to assess the contribution of the Fairtrade changes to the farm, the farm-
workers were asked: (i) What was the greatest change that the Fairtrade system
had introduced? (ii) Would the farm-workers remain on the farm should their
income drop? In response to the first question, the farm-workers almost unani-
mously responded that the introduction of childcare had been the greatest change
on the farm – the Fairtrade organization had built crèches for infants on every
Fairtrade farm we visited, which were maintained by financing from the Fairtrade
joint body’s account. According to the farm-workers, the second greatest change
had been improvements to the farm-worker’s houses (situated on the farm), although
many stressed that there should be more improvements made in this regard.
Secondly, regarding a decrease in income, the majority of farm-workers inter-
viewed commented that should their income decrease below the minimum wage
they would remain as farm-workers on the farm. Many farm-workers said that they
would stay attached to the farm because they were unaware of any other employ-
ment options and because they believed that “a good year would follow a bad one”
and many explicitly mentioned that they would remain on the farm because of the
community benefits.
186 K. Shields

As regards social security benefits such as pension, incapacity for work due to
sickness, and incapacity for work due to invalidity, these varied between farms in
Rawsonville, as the Fairtrade Labelling Organization does not place obligations on
the provision of social security. However, on one farm the provision of an uncon-
ventional pension scheme had clearly generated goodwill, if not pride, amongst
farm-workers there. The farm-owner had offered a plot of arid land, which they
planned to use to graze sheep, as an ongoing project for their pension scheme. As
regards sick pay and maternity leave, these rights did not even seem to be envisaged
by the farm-workers. Rather, their concern in this respect was that they should not
be prevented from working (and thereby earning) when they were sick or pregnant
(as some farm-owners had forced farm-workers to take unpaid leave when sick or
pregnant).

13.4.2 Relationship: Did the Farm-Workers Feel Greater

Choice or Control Over Their Labor Conditions?
One farm-owner commented that he felt that there had been a change of attitudes
of farm-workers since the Fairtrade changes had taken places. He told us that there
had been increased motivation to work well on the farm, that the farm-workers took
greater pride in their crop, and that they knew that the quality was important for
Fairtrade.
Very few farm-workers were aware of alternative employment; however, it is
worth recalling that according to the ILO, “forced labour” does not “cover situations
of pure economic necessity, as when a worker feels unable to leave a job because of
the real or perceived absence of employment alternatives” (ILO Report 2005b: para.
13). Several farm-workers were unsure of the content of their contract but said that
they had signed the contract because it meant guaranteed work and the benefits of
remaining in the community.
The Fairtrade Labelling Organization seeks to improve “social dialogue and
worker’s representation” by obliging cooperatives to increase worker’s participa-
tion through collective decision-making. These criteria have led to the creation
of a joint body composed of farm-workers and farm-owners who take decisions
regarding how the joint-body account is used to finance improvements in working
and living conditions on the farm. In the farms we visited, the group communi-
cates with the farm-owner informally once a week or once every 2 weeks. Some
farm-workers reported that this gave them greater bargaining power with the farm-
owner. However, one farm-worker admitted, “we attend the meetings because the
farm-owner tells us to”.
In general farm-workers use collective bargaining to regulate what they consid-
ered to be unfair conditions imposed by the farm-owner; from the farm-worker’s
point of view, their most effective way to improve a situation is to visit the farm-
owner as a group. Yet demands on the farm-owners in Rawsonville were generally
tempered with either realism or submission; one farm-worker commented, “it’s not
the farm-owner’s fault if there is not enough money”. Similar apathy was expressed
13 Labor Exploitation 187

by one farm-owner when he explained that he saw limits as to what he could offer
the farm-workers on his farm: “Everyone talks about ‘upliftment’, but ‘upliftment’
to where? We cannot all be running the farm; someone has to do the manual labor.
I believe we can improve living conditions but not labor conditions”.
On several occasions, the farm-workers and farm-owners listed the following as
milestones towards decent living conditions: first electricity, then running water,
then toilet and shower, then gardens. They did not have a similar list related to
decent labor conditions (however, childcare seemed to be a shared priority over
higher wages). The ILO and the NGOs would suggest such a list starts with contract,
includes the core labor standards, and then social security benefits such as sick pay
and holiday pay. The farm-workers I met did seem to value the established stages
of decent work (of contracts, core labor standards and social security benefits), but,
more intrinsically, what seemed to matter most was their relationship with their
employer, the farm-owner (and on occasion this extended to the wider world of
buyers and consumers). With the lingering of the master-servant relationship, there
was a prevailing sense that the employer had the power to remove the improved
living and labor standards, and, as a result, their sense of empowerment seemed to
rest precariously on this relationship. Certainly the farm-owner’s cooperation was
not to be taken for granted, attitudes amongst farm-owners varied, but in this region
at least, progress was apparent. One farm-owner explained: “It’s not only the world
that wants improved labor conditions, we [the farm-owners] also want them for our
men [the farm-workers]”.

13.5 Conclusion
In seeking to understand the relationship between dignity and labor exploitation,
this paper has examined associations made between labor exploitation and a loss of
human dignity from the perspectives of the ILO, a selection of NGOs, and a case-
study of laborers. It has been shown that the ILO, as international standard-setter,
identifies the nature of the employment relationship as key to labor exploitation
and, at the same time, acknowledges that the essential economic and social com-
ponents of labor standards are integral to “work in conditions of freedom, equality,
security and dignity” (otherwise known as “Decent Work”). Yet the ILO fails to for-
malize the economic and social components of labor standards through a binding
legal framework. Instead, the essential economic and social components of labor
standards, concerning as they do questions of distribution, are now, in light of the
disintegration of trade unions, the concern of civil society organizations. NGO cam-
paigns against labor exploitation advance the ILO’s political rights agenda whilst
demanding “economic justice” beyond the ILO’s limited regime. On the ground,
my case-study in South Africa suggests that for this group of laborers, improve-
ments in labor conditions are changes which improve their relationship with their
employer whilst strengthening the communities they go home to.
According to the three perspectives examined, both the immaterial and the mate-
rial have an impact on the dignity of any labor situation. Whilst NGOs and laborers
188 K. Shields

appear to place the material and immaterial benefits of labor on an equal footing,
the ILO prioritizes the immaterial, and this bears significant consequences. With
little incentive or legal obligation for states to implement the ILO’s Decent Work
Agenda (which I see as constituting the material branch of dignified labor stan-
dards), ultimately it is left to ethical consumerism, through initiatives such as the
Fairtrade Movement, to deliver the economic and social components of labor stan-
dards. The rights to a safe and healthy workplace, to a decent wage, to reasonable
working hours, to security in the work place and social protection for workers and
their families, and to prospects for personal development and social integration are
now the concern of ethical trade initiatives. These are labor standards that are rec-
ognized as human rights and have been internationally recognized as integral to
dignity in labor – the dignity of laborers is thereby made subject to the altruism of
consumers. This would appear to represent an enormous failure of the International
Labour Organization and the machinery of international economic law in
general.
On the other hand, the interaction of the actors examined here may itself be
considered a finely tuned mechanism of international economic law. These actors
converge on what constitutes dignity but diverge on when to act on that cause, gener-
ating what Sen describes as a combination of rights-based reasoning and goal-based
programming (Sen 2000). Yet, regardless of the angle from which it is viewed, the
international labor rights regime would appear to be manifestly failing in its “pursuit
of social justice” as millions fall through the cracks somewhere between the promo-
tion and the protection of dignity. The task of drawing a line in the sand between
acceptable and unacceptable labor conditions becomes all the more difficult when,
upon examination, the ILO’s allusion to dignity evaporates like a mirage.

References
Alston, Philip. 2004. Core labour standards and the transformation of the international labour rights
regime. EJIL 15(3): 457–521.
Alston, Philip. 2005a. Facing up to the complexities of the ILO’s core labour standards Agenda.
EJIL 16(3): 467–480.
Alston, Philip. 2005b. Labour rights as human rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bales, Kevin. 1999. Disposable people: New slavery in the global economy. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Cavanaugh, John. 1997. The global resistance to sweatshops. In No sweat: Fashion, free trade and
the rights of garment workers, ed. Andrew Ross, 39–51. New York, NY: Verso.
Compa, Lance. 2000. The promise and perils of “Core” labour rights in global trade and
investment. Paper for CUNY conference January 17, 2000, cited in Alston 2004.
Davies, Anne C.L. 2004. Perspectives on labour law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dworkin, Ronald. 1985. A matter of principle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Engerman, Stanley L. 2003. The history and political economy of international labour standards.
In International labour standards: History, theory and policy options, eds. Kaushik Basu et al.,
9–83. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Ghebali, Victor Yves. 1989. The international labour organisation: A case study of the evolution
of the UN specialised agencies. Dordrecht: Nijhoff.
13 Labor Exploitation 189

Guichon, Audrey, and Christien van den Anker. 2006. Trafficking for forced labour in Europe:
Report on a study in the UK, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Portugal, November 2006. Anti-
slavery international with La Strada Czech Republic, Dublin City University, Migrants Rights
Centre Ireland, APAV Portugal, November 2006.
Hart, Herbert L.A. 1973. Bentham on legal rights. In Oxford essays in jurisprudence (second
series), ed. Alfred W.B. Simpson, 171–201. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hepple, Bob. 2005. Global trade and labour laws. Oxford: Hart.
ILO Report. 1999. Decent work. Report of the Director General to the 87th meeting of the
international labour conference, Geneva, 1999.
ILO Report. 2005a. Human trafficking and forced labour exploitation: Guidelines for legislation
and law enforcement. Geneva: ILO Publications, 2005.
ILO Report. 2005b. A global alliance against forced labour. Global report under the follow-up to
the ILO declaration on fundamental principles and rights at work. Geneva: ILO Publications,
2005.
ILO Report. 2008. Measurement of decent work. Discussion paper for the tripartite meeting of
experts on the measurement of decent work. Geneva: ILO Publications, September 2008.
Kymlicka, Will. 1989. Liberalism, community and culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Langille, Brian. 2005. Core labour rights – The true story (reply to Alston). EJIL 16(3): 409–437.
Murray, Douglas, Laura T. Raynolds, and Peter L. Taylor. 2003. One cup at a time: Poverty
alleviation and fair trade coffee in Latin America. Fort Collins: Colorado State University
Press.
Oxfam. 2004. Trading away our rights: Women working in global supply chains. Oxford: Oxfam
International Publications.
Sen, Amartya. 2000. Work and rights. International Labour Review 139(2): 119–128.
South African Human Rights Commission Report. 2008. Progress made in terms of land tenure
security, safety and labour relations in Farming Communities Since 2003.
Chapter 14
Bonded Labor
Dynamics Between Bondage, Identity, and Dignity

Tamara Enhuber

Abstract Bonded labor relations in India have commonly and primarily been
understood in terms of economic exploitation and manifestations of local power
structures. While their frequent concomitant conditions such as impoverishment,
denial of freedom, physical stress, adverse health effects, practices of social degra-
dation, and, not rarely, also physical violence are reported in almost all studies on
bonded labor, these factors have rarely been looked at from the perspective of human
dignity. However, the link between conditions of labor bondage and violations of
dignity has yet to be established and respective dynamics to be discovered. This
essay is intended as a first attempt to systematically interrogate various acts and
conditions of subjugation within bonded labor relations with regard to the laborers’
experiences of deprivation, degradation, and annihilation, and the violations of dig-
nity that may result. It is argued that seemingly comparable humiliating conditions
may be processed and dealt with differently by different bonded laborers. While it is
certain that, within bonded labor relations, human dignity is violated every day on a
massive scale, there is also evidence that bonded laborers may, under certain condi-
tions, yet be able to maintain their dignity. Once we stop reducing bonded laborers
to their bondage and pay attention to their collective and individual identities, their
social practices and social spaces, we may not only be in a position to grasp the
extent of violations suffered individually but also to identify the resources that may
allow for the limiting, negating or negotiating of those violations.

14.1 Introduction
While bonded labor is to be found in various regions of the world, this chapter
will – for methodological reasons – focus on the Indian context only. The advan-
tage is two-fold: On the one hand, this choice limits the scope of research to one
polity that offers a reasonable number of commonalities and that allows for the

T. Enhuber (B)
Department of Anthropology, University of Trier, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 191

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_14,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
192 T. Enhuber

development of a “thick analysis” of the complex dynamics between relations of

bondage and the experience of (violations of) dignity. On the other hand, the sit-
uation in India provides in itself a considerable level of heterogeneity in regard to
distinctive systems of bonded labor and their respective contexts, which does not
only enable us to cover a broad empirical spectrum but also to develop an analy-
sis that might be applicable beyond the particularities of a single system of labor
bondage.
Setting out to identify the conditions under which bonded labor may affect human
dignity, this contribution pursues two main questions. The first aims at determining
those consequences of various acts of subjugation within relationships of bondage
that are apt to violate the dignity of bonded laborers. The second question investi-
gates the circumstances that may influence how a bonded laborer may process and
respond to those acts. That is, whether he will suffer a violation of his dignity and
to what extent, and whether he will be able to restore it, or whether he may suc-
ceed in maintaining it in the first place. While violations of dignity are generally
conceived of in their intersubjective-social dimension, often discussed under the
heading of human rights (violations), the explicit focus here is on the subjective-
psychological processing1 by those whose dignity is offended. This approach is
accounted for by an understanding that does not wish to reiterate the reduction
of bonded laborers to their bondage but rather to recognize them in their entirety
and complexity as human beings who are not only victims but also agents of
their lives. The room to manoeuvre may, in many cases, be small but it might
allow the laborers, under certain conditions and to varying extents, to defend their
dignity.
The structure of the discussion is the following. Section 14.2 starts with a def-
inition of bonded labor and a brief introduction to this phenomenon in India. The
third section deals with the social status, and its theological and institutional foun-
dations, of the communities from which bonded laborers are drawn. The following
section offers a glimpse of the everyday experience of subjugation which these com-
munities are confronted with. A few case studies illustrating two central aspects of
bondage – loss of freedom and self-alienation – open up initial questions concern-
ing the relationship between acts of subordination and the experience of deprivation,
degradation and dehumanization. In Section 14.5 an attempt is made to conceptu-
alize those acts in terms of their potential to violate dignity. The final section then
avails itself of socio-psychological theories and of research on the impact of, and
responses to, slavery and further relationships of subordination in order to identify
the conditions that determine whether a bonded laborer may either actually expe-
rience those acts as violations of his dignity or, in contrast, be able to negate or
negotiate such effect.

1 These two terms are the result of an ongoing discussion during the process of writing this essay;
their authorship belongs to Christian Neuhäuser.
14 Bonded Labor 193

14.2 Bonded Labor

India’s Bonded Labor System (Abolition) Act of 1976 acknowledges bonded labor
as a kaleidoscope of distinctive features and realities. Here the bonded labor sys-
tem is defined as any system of forced labor under which someone agrees, first,
to work for someone else either due to some advance given by that person (usu-
ally credit or land), or some customary or social obligation (e.g., the involvement
of family members), or any economic consideration (accepting certain conditions
of bondage in order to secure at least one meal per day), or simply due to his
or her birth in any particular caste or community (i.e., a low-caste or non-caste
group that is expected to render certain services to the caste-Hindu community).
And secondly, thereby to forfeit the freedom of employment or other means of
livelihood, or the right to move freely, or the right to appropriate or sell at market-
value any of his property or product of his labor. In practice, these conditions
commonly do not occur individually; their boundaries are blurred and mutually
reinforcing.
Despite its legal abolition, bonded labor is still prevalent and also found to be
emerging in new forms throughout the country and in a wide range of economic sec-
tors. Its extent is difficult to assess and a matter of dispute; Indian and international
NGOs speak of several million people in bondage.
A closer look at the roots of bonded labor renders a complex picture of
various converging factors: First, bonded labor is to be found in an economic
environment that is marked by a huge informal labor market, high rates of unemploy-
ment/underemployment, and an extremely low livelihood potential in agriculture
(the largest economic sector). It is, furthermore, favoured by socio-cultural struc-
tures and processes that have culminated in a highly stratified society with its
hierarchy based on a religious belief system and on a set of concepts justifying
and stabilizing the status quo, and on remnants of feudal relations in rural areas.
The alienation of certain communities from their land and, in the case of tribal
communities, from their traditional livelihood systems, are aspects that illustrate
how inextricably interwoven economic and societal influences may be. Finally, it
is also an issue of state formation: where we find local state agents frequently not
implementing the respective laws, judgments and programs; that, in conjunction
with the previous factors, leads to and perpetuates non-compliance with regula-
tions on minimum wages in the informal sector, unequal distribution of land, and
unequal access to education and credit facilities. This inevitably results in, and
increases already existing poverty and forces laborers who are predominantly asset-
less to either take up credit from a private money lender, thus agreeing to work
for him or pledge their children, or to accept traditions such as the Devadasi sys-
tem,2 or render compulsory services/labor for the upper castes. The purpose of

2 Devadasis are girls that are dedicated and “married” to a deity without their consent. Once they
enter puberty they are considered available to sexual use by higher caste men, sometimes also by
their own communities (Antislavery 2007).
194 T. Enhuber

credit may generally range from medical expenses to seeds for cultivation and to
social ceremonies; in India’s poorest districts the major impulse, however, is hunger
(Sainath 1996: 216, CEC 2004: 67, 70). Laborers therefore endure exploitative
terms of employment rather than suffer starvation (Pandit 2000: 5). Having entered
bondage, poverty is bound to increase and with it the probability of remaining
in bondage. Given meagre wages, sometimes in-kind wages, and high compound
interest, there is little chance of ever paying back the loan (Srivastava 2005: 13–
14). This process creates dependency and servility on the part of the laborers:
because of the “sanctity of repayment” among the poor (Sainath 1996: 200), and
also since laborers feel forced to remain loyal towards their employers as poverty
may bring future situations in which they will rely upon the latter’s financial
support.
This situation allows for particularly harsh and degrading working conditions,
including the presence of physical violence, grossly undermining minimum labor
standards and human rights.3 The degree of dependency of the bonded laborer upon
the employer varies: The extent of control may be partial or total, ranging from
surveillance limited to the labor process to domination of the entire conduct of life
by the master; the duration in bondage may span from relatively short and one-time
occurrences to repeated, permanent or even inter-generational bondage. The fact
that bonded labor continues to be practised despite its legal abolition may allude to
the low social ascription and perception of rightlessness of its “victims” (Srivastava
2005: 9) and the “cumulative domination” they are subjected to (Oommen 1990:
254–255): almost all bonded laborers are assetless, functionally illiterate (CEC
2004: 67), and predominantly members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes (Srivastava 2005). While the Scheduled Castes comprise those communi-
ties who have, in the past, been considered the Untouchables, the Scheduled Tribes
are commonly understood as India’s indigenous population. Both groups are known
under various names with different connotations. I have chosen to refer to them as
Dalits and Adivasis respectively4 ; however, where authors employ different designa-
tions or if the context requires, other terms will be applied accordingly. References
to bonded laborers and their communities in this chapter refer to the Dalit and
Adivasi communities.

3 Bonded labor conditions characteristically entail wages below the subsistence level (up to 90%
less than the statutory minimum; with far-ranging consequences such as malnutrition, no access to
proper medical treatment, no or little access to formal education, etc.), long working hours (up to
18–22 h per day as well as few or no holidays), above-average exposure to hazardous substances,
frequent accidents, and various occupational diseases, and not seldom also subjection to sexual
exploitation.
4 Dalits and Adivasis appear to be the terms by which members of the respective communities seem
to self-identify most (Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998: 3–4; Appadurai 1988: 36–40; Barnes et al.
1995: 286; Ghurye 1980: 362–364; Waite 2006: 8; Isaacs 1964: 41; Zelliot 1996: 1).
14 Bonded Labor 195

14.3 Below the Lowest

14.3.1 Social Status and Its Foundations

Among various factors that determine the social position of an individual and his
community within Indian (Hindu) society, caste, with endogamy as its essence, and
the notion of purity-impurity appear to be the prevalent organizing principles of
society. According to classical texts of Hinduism, the population is divided into
four ranked varnas (generally translated as castes), with the Brahmans at the top.
Below those four categories there are the Untouchables, who are supposedly outside
the system but who are, if we take economic, social and even ritual relations into
account, an integral part of it (Srinivas 1966: 4, Milner 1994: 46). Today’s Adivasis,
in contrast, have generally remained outside the Hindu order (Oommen 1990: 255).
This construction around ritual status and along an axis of purity-pollution, which
presumably has been developed to support Brahmin supremacy (Srinivas 1966: 3–
4), attributes the Brahmin with the highest level of purity, while the Untouchables
allegorise the “embodiment of ultimate ritual defilement” (Gokhale 1993: 3) at the
opposite and complementary pole (Thapar 2002: 63–64, 279). To a certain extent
integral to the varna system is the institution of jati (frequently translated as sub-
castes), i.e. hereditary, endogamous units, commonly associated with one or a few
particular occupation(s). However, the ranking of jati varies regionally and tem-
porally (Thapar 2002: 63, Srinivas 1966: 4–5). Within this degree of leeway for
different interpretations and for mobility may lie a central stabilising factor of the
system, as it always allows every jati to feel superior to at least one other jati
(Srinivas 1992: 50, Pandit 2000: 4). Nevertheless, those groups that are attributed
with pollution are always “[s]et apart to perform needed but ritually impure func-
tions” (Isaacs 1964: 27), which automatically puts the lowest varna, the Sudras, but
also everyone else up the line on a higher footing; “[The] humiliations [of the Dalits]
are a matter of pride with others.” (Ambedkar, in Keer 1962: 233) Even many of the
Dalit jatis practice untouchability among themselves and against each other.5
While it has to be acknowledged that Hinduism has to be thought of as a diversity
of distinct traditions (Flood 2005: 1) and that one needs to be careful not to totalize
or essentialize the hierarchical component (Appadurai 1988: 41), it is established
that caste, whether someone believes in its legitimacy or not, has been a dominating
factor in Indian life, “influencing if not determining [one’s] choice of occupation,
diet and spouse, [. . .] collective rank in relation to other caste groups, and numer-
ous other matters” (Srinivas 1992: 59). This implies “institutionalized inequality
[and] differential access to the valued things in life” (Berreman 1979: 159). This is

5 The motivation appears to be the same as for the caste Hindus: the pursuit of status enhancement
by maintaining distance from the subsequently inferior caste and by adopting “clean” occupations
and habits (Isaacs 1964: 29, Ram 1995: 156).
196 T. Enhuber

still valid, particularly in rural areas “where caste looms large”, and even for non-
Hindu groups that, to some extent, “took on [. . .] the colour of caste” (Srinivas 1992:
59–60).
Obviously there are also various other forces besides those Brahmanic doctrines
discussed – be it economic, political, or administrative structures, or the general state
of the educational system – that add to the perpetuation of the status quo (as far as
the situation of Dalits and Adivasis is concerned) and that frequently touch upon
issues of dignity. Yet one could imagine that the indignities the latter carry may be
experienced as rather impersonal; it is, presumably, “the domination [. . .] that par-
ticularly leaves its mark on personal dignity” (Scott 1990: 112–113), a domination
that is based on perceptions of “the other and the self” on the grounds of caste and
of the notion of pollution. This chapter will primarily focus on the consequences of
the Dalits’ and Adivasis’ social status in its narrow sense.

14.3.2 Social Practice: Everyday Indignities

and (the Threat of) Atrocities

The blatant untouchability, where even the footprints, the shadow and the voice
of Dalits were considered contaminating (Isaacs 1964: 27–28), is generally not
found anymore, yet it may be suspected that its impact on the self-identity of
former Untouchable communities may well have extended to succeeding gener-
ations. Besides, untouchability as such has not altogether disappeared but rather
has frequently assumed a disguise. Despite its abolition and a policy of affirmative
action with reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in public sec-
tor/government jobs, in educational institutions, in parliament and in local governing
bodies, various forms of discrimination, marginalization, and ostracism continue. In
many rural places even today Dalits are expected to perform begar (a traditional
form of unpaid community service) and/or polluting jobs (e.g., ploughing, carry-
ing night soil, removing carcasses). They are expected to live in separate hamlets
outside the “real” village or in “Dalit only” housing in the cities, with lack of drink-
ing water, sanitation facilities, roads, street lights, and denial of access to common
taps or wells or to public sites such as streets, temples, and burial and cremation
grounds (Ram 1995: 225, Gatade 2009, Varadarajan 1993, Human Rights Watch
1999). Most common yet seems to be that Dalits generally continue to be avoided
by caste Hindus in domestic or “private” situations surrounding food and general
social life (Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998: 13).
Furthermore, new kinds of atrocities have emerged exceeding previous levels
of intensity. The Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act
of 1989 lists 22 types of atrocities that are committed towards Dalits and Adivasi.
These include murder, rape, false and vexatious litigation, forcing people to leave
their homes and areas of residence, polluting sources of water, exerting pressure
during elections, grabbing land, parading people naked in public, forcing people to
eat or drink inedible or obnoxious substances, dumping excreta or carcasses on their
premises, and so forth. It can be assumed that the commission of those atrocities is a
14 Bonded Labor 197

direct reaction by the higher castes to the rising self-consciousness of the Dalits and
the Adivasis and to the challenge this entails to the status quo. It is mostly the latter’s
defiance of age-old caste customs and boundaries, accompanied by the rising eco-
nomic and social status of some sections among them, that result in atrocities (Ram
1995: 224, 278, 323–324, Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998: 12, 47). Any refusal by
bonded laborers and their communities to continue performing tasks that are consid-
ered polluting leaves the higher castes with a dilemma – if they had to take on these
jobs themselves they would become ritually polluted themselves and the rationale
of their claim to superiority would be lost (Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998: 48–49).
What is at stake on the part of the caste Hindus is thus not just the convenience
of having others to do the menial work or the material benefit of cheap labor but,
maybe even more important, the status that is derived from these privileges as well
as the access to various resources such as land, higher education, jobs, and political
power (Srinivas 1992: 2).
This is the context within which Dalits and Adivasis generally have to manoeu-
vre. Those who have had access to education and/or who have been able to benefit
from governmental programs or from India’s reservation policy are affected to a
(sometimes considerably) lesser extent, but for the majority – particularly those liv-
ing in remote rural areas, and definitely the communities of bonded laborers – the
constant threat of everyday indignities and occasional atrocities is the ever-looming
scenario (Freeman 1986: 160). Even sporadic occurrences of such treatment towards
individuals within a certain area may suffice to instill enough fear and feelings of
helplessness among the members of those communities to perpetuate or reinstall
compliance. This is even more so if it is considered that the police and other local
authorities, for various reasons, frequently side with the caste Hindus, commonly
hampering the efforts by Dalits and Adivasis to assert their rights or even violently
obstructing any attempt at defiance.6 The following incident in which a female Dalit
agricultural laborer who had been sexually harassed by a superintendent of police
(SP) and who then complained to the subcollector may illustrate the situation:

The next morning the police broke all the doors and arrested all the men in the vil-
lage. [. . .] The SP came looking for me. My husband hid under the cot. [. . .] The police
started [. . .] beating me. The SP dragged me naked on the road for one hundred feet. I
was four months pregnant at the time. [. . .] They brought me to the police station naked.
[. . .] I spent 25 days in jail. I miscarried my baby after 10 days. Nothing has happened
to the officers who did this to me. (Guruswamy Guruammal, Tamil Nadu: Human Rights
Watch 1999)

These experiences and those within bondage may not always be distinguishable, yet
it can be safely said that increased dependency through bondage generally creates
an aggravated basis for humiliating structures and interactions.

6 Unpublished interviews with various social activists, conducted between January and July 2004
by the present author.
198 T. Enhuber

14.4 Living in Bondage

Bonded labor, embedded in the overall scenario just described, is marked by (var-
ious degrees of) constant structural degradation as well as occasional or frequent
interpersonal humiliations. In the following, two central aspects of labor bondage –
the deprivation of freedom and self-alienation – shall be interrogated in regard to
their potential to affect the laborers’ dignity. It goes without saying that both are
interrelated and frequently reinforce each other.

14.4.1 Deprivation of Freedom: Chains, Taints, and Boycotts

Bonded labor relations are characterized by a high asymmetry of power which is
manifested in the ability of the employer to execute any decision against the will of
the laborers. The dominant’s means “to make the weak perform” and thus to deprive
them of their basic freedoms can take on physical, social or economic force (Pandit
2000: 3) as the cases below illustrate:
In July 2001, Bachhan Singh, a 37-year-old laborer was found in Fatehabad
district, Haryana, working in the fields with his hands and legs chained to a tractor-
trailer.7 He had been severely beaten up by the owner of the farm for whom he had
worked as a bonded laborer for the last 20 years. His wife was working as a maid
in the same house. (CEC 2004: 38)
Shoba Gasti, a Dalit girl, was 12 when she was married to a Hindu goddess and
became a Devadasi. She thought that the ceremony was just a religious ritual but
soon she found out that her job was to sexually serve any man who would ask for
her. There was no option to reject any of them. The chances are small that she will
ever be able to marry and lead a normal life. The fact that someone else can turn
her into an object is still very painful to her (Roy 2006).
Pushpaben, like many other manual scavengers, used to ask for vadvu as a part
of fulfilling her caste duties. Vadvu is the act of going door-to-door and begging for
leftover scraps of food from others’ homes. Malnutrition is one, increasing depen-
dence on their employers as well as the reinforcement of the scavengers’ low status
are further implications of this custom (Navsarjan). It is difficult for Pushpaben to
find alternative employment as “the ascribed link between occupation and jati”
traps her community into that work, “[b]earing the taint of being sweepers in
perpetuum”. (Prashad 2000: xvi–xviii, 45)
Once bonded laborers attempt to assert their rights, “the whole landowning
community blocks access to local roads and the village well, would not let [the
bonded laborers] use the fields to go for toilet, pass orders to shop keepers, milk-
men, and grain mill owners, not to sell anything to them, and to [the laborers’]
own community not to cooperate with them, no landowner in the area would employ
them.”8

7 Although it is not the rule, there are repeated reports of bonded laborers found in chains
(Srivastava 2005: 13, 24, CEC 2004: 46, 54).
8 Unpublished Interview with Jai Singh, Director of “Volunteers for Social Justice”, Punjab,
conducted by the author in 2004.
14 Bonded Labor 199

How may Bachhan Singh have felt, having forcibly been deprived of his physical
freedom to that extent, knowing that he would also be seen in this state by his wife
and his children? Considering that “manhood” and fatherhood are attributed with
the ablity to control, can Bachhan Singh today still feel himself to be a “real” man
and father? What effect may it have had on Shoba Gasti’s self-respect and identity to
realize that she could be forced by any man to have sex with him, and that it was her
parents that had pushed her into that situation; to live as a single woman in a society
where unmarried women are considered shameful and inauspicious; to be asked by
her daughter about her job? Is it possible not to internalize a sense of inferiority if
one is forced to carry out the most stigmatized profession, to remove human excreta
(often with bare hands and an odor that follows everywhere), if one’s children avoid
any physical contact, if one is expected to beg for leftovers? What impact may it
have on a person’s feeling of self-reliance, one’s pride, if he is forced to contribute
to his own subjugation as happens in the case of socio-economic boycotts?

14.4.2 Self-alienation: “You Forgot Who You Were”

[The landlords] have bought our body, life and soul, and we have sold ourselves to them as
we have no other way to live. (Bonded laborer at Pendravan, in Kumar 1986: 1)

Self-alienation can take on various shapes. While, on the face of it, the following
cases appear to cover a wide range of unrelated experiences, they share one sig-
nificant commonality: the deprivation of human beings of their past, their present
and their future; the alienation from “who they were or, rather, who they could have
been”.
Dala Ram, a twenty five-year old Bhil was sold to a Stone Crusher Company
at the age of 4 years. Hari Ram, working in a quarry for more than 5 years, has
received no payment nor does he remember how he came there. The laborers there
did not know their exact place of origin as most of them were bonded from an early
age (CEC 2004: 40).
“Listless eyes, sunken belly and unable to speak above a whisper – that is
Ramdeen [. . .]. He was born in bondage, labored all his life for a pittance. Ramdeen
had to pay dearly for the Rs 550 and three mounds of rice taken by his father from
the landlord.” (Sharma 1999: 14)
A kamiya9 at times has to work for 24 h a day without any rest (Kumar 1994:
4). Shiv Narain of Singhanpur village in Chhattisgarh had got so used to this kind
of life “that he hardly ever had the time or reason to visualise a different life for
himself” (Dogra 1998: 6). To be at the master’s beck and call around-the-clock is a
quite general feature of bonded labor. “Even if we were eating our food or sleeping
and the master sent for us, we had to leave immediately”, released laborers recall
with resentment. (Dogra 1998: 2)10

9 “Kamiya” is a regional term for an agricultural laborer who enters bondage as a result of a loan
for his marriage.
10 A study on workers in the US has found that people greatly resent being ordered around and
“being treated like nothing, [. . .] like you was dirt, [. . .] like you are part of the woodwork”, that
200 T. Enhuber

Repeatedly one finds statements by bonded laborers expressing the notion of liv-
ing the life of an animal or worse than that (Pandit 2000: 60, 62). “Look at my
shoulders, the skin calloused like the back of a buffalo carrying earth for 40 years
now. Am I in any way different from those animals?” (Bonded laborer at Pendravan,
in Kumar 1986: 1)
These statements and observations strongly suggest that Dala and Hari Ram,
Shiv Narain, Ramdeen and the bonded laborer at Pendravan have been left with
little opportunity to design, live and become agents of their own lives, to nurture
their relationships, to cultivate their roots, to develop and live their potentials, and
to build up assertive community identities.
Yet, while one might still argue that, in the cases just mentioned, it is the condi-
tions that keep people low, there are other forms of domination that bluntly tell the
subordinate that they are low, inferior, subhuman, or dirt:
That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just
work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore.
Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up. (Sethe, a former slave,
one of the central characters in the novel Beloved; Morrison 1988: 251)11

Dirtying can also be found in the context of bondage where it is used as a device to
put the laborers and their communities in their place; we only need to remember
those instances such as being paraded naked, being (gang-)raped, etc. The sec-
ond aspect of Sethe’s experience, “forgetting who one was” may, however, also
be triggered by everyday forms of degradation. In some localities, Dalits are still
not supposed to dress decently (Sainath 1996: 211) as they are expected to position
themselves physically lower than caste Hindus when in the same place (Mendelsohn
and Vicziany 1998: 52). In several cases the name of the jati has become a “common
term of contempt and shame whenever it [is] used by others and [can] hardly avoid
carrying this freight with it whenever one use[s] it to identify oneself” (Isaacs 1964:
43). Some tribes such as the (often bonded) Katkaris are labelled by the govern-
ment as “Primitive Tribes” and enlisted by the police as “Criminal Tribes” (Datar).
Dalits and Adivasis are habitually called by their first name or by derogative terms
indicating their membership in a “polluting” caste, or are addressed like children or
with insults (Freeman 1979: 416; 1986: 156; Zelliot 2005: 35). Occasionally, they
and their ancestors have even been given names by their overlords that express their
menial or subhuman position:
Puchchi, a man from Tamil Nadu, is in his sixties. He has lived all his life with that name
which means insect. Another person is called Adimayee, slave. These names have even
been internalized by them. (Sainath 1996: 209)

is as if “you almost cease to exist”. (Sennet and Cobb 1973: 94, 97, 114–115, 139) In contrast to
those wageworkers in the US who can regularly call it a day after all, most bonded laborers have
to endure this lot without any break in which they had a chance to pursue their lives.
11 While the characters of Beloved are fictional, their statements may be understood as the essence
of the experience of former slaves upon whose testimonies Morrison based the novel.
14 Bonded Labor 201

It is how bonded laborers and their communities are being addressed or referred to,
the demonstrations of powerlessness they are confronted with, the way they are sup-
posed to perform in public, the fact that their individualities are simply not seen by
customarily being reduced to their profession or their jati, the general understand-
ing that the laborers’ sentiments do not count (if Dalits are at all perceived as beings
equipped with feelings), that constantly suggests the subordinates’ lowness and that
culminates in the perfidy to expect them to comply and to even self-identify with
their ascribed inferiority. It seems highly probable that those steady acts of cate-
gorization, outright degradation and dehumanization, of destruction of their social
roots and bonds, and of frustration of a positive self-identification and of personal
visions of a different life gradually result in the laborers’ alienation from themselves.

14.5 Indications of Violations of Dignity

How may these various acts of subjugation that bonded laborers and their commu-
nities face be interpreted within a framework of violations of dignity? In order to
determine violations of dignity it would, at first sight, seem appropriate to start with
a definition of dignity. For two reasons, however, I propose to approach the subject
from the other perspective. One consideration lies in the common experience of dig-
nity as something that is usually only felt in its absence or in any threat to it. The
second is to be sought in the objective of this chapter, namely to identify violations
of dignity by letting the material speak for itself; material in which, for obvious
reasons, positive references to dignity, or to garima,12 do not figure prominently.
Extracting from the previous discussion and from research on similar relation-
ships of domination the essence of those acts and conditions that are apt to provoke
a violation of dignity, one can say that these acts and conditions involve a person or
a group:

(i) being forced to act or being “acted upon” in a way that is perceived as
degrading, humiliating, defiling, embarrassing, dishonouring, shaming, be it
by society as a whole, by the dominating group or a dominating individual
within a relationship, by one’s primary community or any significant other or
by oneself; and/or
(ii) being deprived of the freedom of designing and determining one’s own life:
being cut off from one’s roots and one’s relationships; being prevented from
living one’s own potentials and one’s identity according to one’s values, from
developing oneself the way one would long to; being prevented from enjoying
some space for withdrawal and rest where one can simply be; being prevented
from expressing oneself; and/or

12 Whilethere are various “Indic” terms for dignity, the one that has recently come into abundant
usage among Dalit politicians, writers and scholars is garima.
202 T. Enhuber

(iii) being denied any recognition, acknowledgment, value, or rights, possibly even
being made to feel subhuman, as dirt, as an object or a means, or as non-
existent; as if nothing of what one is, feels, thinks, and does were of any
worth; and, thus, consequently, losing one’s self-reliance and self-esteem and
experiencing self-alienation.

While the second condition, denial of self-determination, may require the first
and/or the third, to possibly result in violated dignity, any degrading treatment or
forced self-humiliation or structural depreciation could, in contrast, suffice in itself.
To be sure, at this point of the discussion we can only speak of these manifesta-
tions of subordination within the context of bonded labor as indications of potential
violations of dignity; no more, no less.
From these observations we may now infer an understanding of dignity as an
(alterable) condition and capacity of an individual or a collective that touches upon
issues of self-identity, self-value, authenticity, integrity, humanity and civility, and of
belonging to (an existing or imagined) community, as well as on notions of honour,
grace, and pride; which results from an enjoyment of choice, freedom, and agency. I
would claim that someone may maintain his dignity as long as he is able to maintain
his self, that is, an internal sense of personal worth, a positive self-identity, a certain
measure of self-reliance and responsibility, his values and his humanity, a sphere of
privacy, etc. Dignity can be described as the ability to exert agency, to control, hold
onto, determine at least one aspect of life that cannot be manipulated by someone
else, or, to put it differently, one aspect that one is able to resist against, “ward-
ing off capitulation, [. . .] insisting upon the observance of a boundary between self
[possibly also one’s community, added by T. E.] and world” (Des Pres 1976: 202).

14.6 Dignity Defended, Violated, Regained, or Lost?

Or the Role of Identity

A variety of sources on bonded laborers and their communities but also findings
from other empirical fields indicate that it is, generally speaking, not an act or con-
dition of subjugation alone but rather its conjuncture with other factors that may
result in a person experiencing a violation or even a long-lasting loss of his dignity.
How could it otherwise be explained that, within seemingly comparable situations,
some people feel stripped of their dignity, while others (or the same persons at some
other time) are able to maintain it? For example, whereas manual scavenging today
commonly evokes a feeling of shame by those cleaning the latrines, historical docu-
ments of the Mehtars, a sweepers’ community, reveal that at a certain point in time
the latter “[took] pride in their [. . .] occupation” in a way that allowed them to “fash-
ion some dignity for themselves”, which appears to have been due to their ability
at that time to partly control the labor process (Prashad 2000: 5, 123). Remarkably,
even in a place where the most extreme and most systematic attempts were made
to dehumanize and de-individualize human beings, that is, in Nazi concentration
14 Bonded Labor 203

camps, we may find support for this claim of contextuality. While the reports by
former inmates bear testimony to an extent and severity of violations of human dig-
nity experienced that is beyond imagination, at the same time they give evidence
that, in certain instances, people were yet able to, at least temporarily and occasion-
ally, uphold or regain their dignity. From Maja Suderland’s analysis of the “debate”
between Jean Améry and Primo Levi, both camp survivors, as well as well-known
writers and intellectuals, we learn that both could, rarely enough but nevertheless,
draw on resources that served that very purpose; resources that had their origin in
their respective pasts and which carried great personal significance for them. For
Levi it was his education and his humanistic identity respectively, and in Améry’s
case his political identity, that they were able to revert to and thus resume a “per-
sonal continuity” that allowed them, momentarily, to experience dignity (Suderland
2004: 105–111, 131).
The previous findings make obvious that it might be difficult to grasp from the
outside whether – in a particular situation – a person has been deprived of his
dignity. Returning to the context of bonded labor, the intention of the present contri-
bution is, as emphasized before, to come as close as possible to an understanding of
the perception held by the respective bonded laborers themselves. For that purpose,
the ultimate authority to determine whether a given act of degradation amounts to
a violation or even loss of dignity, and to what extent, lies with them as the bear-
ers of that dignity. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons the authentic voice of
bonded laborers on that matter cannot easily be captured. Nevertheless, here and
there the literature on bonded labor does reveal authentic statements of bonded
laborers, indicating notions of dignity by references to experiences of “shame–
pride/honour”, “inferiority–superiority”, or “humiliation–self-respect”. Alas, these
are just scattered instances, unlikely to convey the multifariousness of how bonded
labor conditions are experienced and even less to shed much light on the particular
contexts of the respective laborers. Yet these original expressions, located within the
general social scenario that has been depicted at the beginning of this chapter, may
serve as a starting point, complemented by observations by social activists work-
ing closely with bonded laborers and by statements by other subordinates in similar
power-laden contexts.
The following discussion will also draw on the theory of psychological reactance
and learned helplessness theory, James Scott’s concept of the hidden transcript,
and Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved and the extensive literature that has developed
around it, both of the latter offering powerful findings on the long-lasting implica-
tions of slavery. They all provide valuable keys to an understanding of how human
beings deal with threats to, or loss of, their freedom – freedom broadly understood
as the capacity for control over one’s life. Having already identified the loss of free-
dom as a central indicator for potential violations of dignity, we may thus also be
able to derive from those theories and concepts how people may respond to threats
to their dignity. In particular, this chapter aims to analyze, first, under what condi-
tions acts of subordination are likely, or less likely, to be experienced as violations
of dignity and to what extent, and second, to identify resources that bonded laborers
may be (un)able to tap in order to keep or regain their dignity.
204 T. Enhuber

While it seems to be common sense “that those who must routinely knuckle under
to insults or physical beatings they consider unjust pay a heavy psychological price”,
findings in the area of social psychology draw a more differentiated picture (Scott
1990: 108–109). Shared by several theories is the assumption that human beings
like to view themselves as causal agents; they strive to maintain control over their
lives and to avoid any dependence as much as possible (Wortman and Brehm 1975:
280–283). Once this behavioral freedom is threatened or taken away, a person will,
according to reactance theory, experience some motivational arousal, or reactance,
i.e., an initiative to restore his freedom as long as he expects to have control over
the situation and does not consider the cost of resistance higher than the value he
ascribes to freedom (Wortman and Brehm 1975: 283, 327).
In some cases – usually where initiative has been taken and support given by
social movements, NGOs or state officials, and/or where bonded laborers or their
communities have had an experience of agency, self-assertion, and self-value13 – the
bonded laborers have resisted their oppression. One example is the sweepers of
Delhi before they were forcibly incorporated into the municipal authorities. When
they were mistreated or withheld wages by the householders, the collective of
sweepers refused to work in the neighbourhood; none of the filth got removed until
the offended sweeper got pacified by the householder (Prashad 2000: 3–10). It can
be assumed that it was that “ordinary luxury of negative reciprocity: trading a slap
for a slap, an insult for an insult” (Scott 1990: 22) that played a crucial role in main-
taining the sweepers’ dignity. Another case in point is that of the bonded agricultural
laborers in Maharasthra among whom, in the process of organizing, an expectation
to win control over their lives was generated, nourished by being told that their free-
dom was guaranteed by the law, by learning that other struggles for freedom – in
other places and successively in their own circle – had been successful, by develop-
ing a sense of community and experiencing mutual support and thus empowerment
in their “individual” conflicts with their employers and with dominant caste com-
munities. A social activist describes the release of the first bonded Adivasi by his
trade union as:

13 This experience may be grounded in a collective history of a dignified and glorious past or
an imagination of, and justification for, a positive future: a tradition of resistance, myths of an
originally higher social status (and thus some claim for a higher morality), a symbolic figure,
counter-ideologies, counter-beliefs to the Brahmanic tradition, or conversions to religions that
emphasize the equality of the believers. Some accounts of the latter may exemplify the digni-
fying effect that all of these sources of self-identification might carry. Where conversions have
been accompanied by a change of mind, they appear to have generated “a new sense of dignity
and self-worth” among the converts. Mahars who converted along with Ambedkar to Buddhism
experienced that “the [prior] sense of shame, inferiority and degradation was washed away”. A
prominent Buddhist intellectual said, “I have become a human being. [. . .] I am not lowborn or
inferior now. [. . .] The chains of Untouchability which shackled my feet have now been shattered.
[. . .] I am no longer the slave and menial servant of high-caste Hindus. I will never again accept
servile labor from the high-caste Hindus. [. . .] I have become a free citizen [. . .].” (Gokhale 1993:
182, Scott 1990: 117–118).
14 Bonded Labor 205

[. . .] a sudden eruption of a volcano; [the] relative outer calm had masked generations of
rage. From village after village tribal people started approaching us [. . .]. It was like the
force of dammed water breaking out and flooding everything in its way. I have always found
anger seething just below the surface of silence. People organise when they are convinced
that any alternative which includes death also is better than the present oppression. (Pandit
2000: 62)

In this sense, people who participated in this struggle decided to bear starvation and
physical violence rather than to continue complying with their own subordination;
“We will eat bitter roots and crabs but we will no more bow before the landlords.”
(A released bonded woman, cited in Pandit 2000: 61) This decision to take charge
of their lives regardless of the costs involved eventually helped them to regain their
dignity.
Obviously, in the context of bondage this kind of development is the exception.
In general, a bonded laborer would not expect to be able to control the situation due
to lack of social support (e.g., as a result of migration, of jati divisions, possibly
also of physical confinement) and to barred access to those valued goods (material
and immaterial) and relations with which he can positively self-identify and from
which he can derive self-esteem. Furthermore, and partly consequently, he would
also dread the consequences of any attempt at freedom since any form of defiance
would usually carry negative implications for himself and for his family, if not for
the entire community. In most cases the laborer’s fear of starvation (possibly of
the entire family), the loss of livelihood (through socio-economic boycotts) and of
housing, of physical violence, maybe even death, is greater than his urge for free-
dom. Particularly when considering that he would also have to interact with the
“powerful freedom threatener” in future, he would generally avoid any overt rebel-
lion (Wortman and Brehm 1975: 327, Miron and Brehm 2006: 11). As Scott puts
it, “[the] cruellest result of human bondage is that it transforms the assertion of
personal dignity into a mortal risk”. (Scott 1990: 37)
Yet, reactance theory tells us that even if this first option of open and direct
reactance is not available, or perceived not to be, bonded laborers may attempt to
restore their freedom by implication, i.e., by showing resistance in some other way,
which is called covert reactance (Wortman and Brehm 1975: 286). Scott’s “hidden
transcript” can give us an idea of what that might look like:
Providing the threat is sufficiently imposing, overt agreement and compliance [in the ‘public
transcript’] may prevail [as it is] often secured [. . .] by close surveillance to detect and
punish deviance, [. . .] but covert reactance will increase [emphasis added, T. E.], attempting
to neutralize and negate the public version. (Scott 1990: 109, 111)

While the public transcript may be understood as the sphere of open interaction
between subordinates and the dominant, its complement, the hidden transcript,
rather characterizes the discourse that takes place “offstage”, the responses and
rejoinders to that public transcript that escape direct observation by power-holders
(Scott 1990: 2, 4). The hidden transcript is nurtured by the “systematic frustration
of reciprocal action in relations of domination”. In its social sites “the unspoken
riposte, stifled anger, and bitten tongues created by relations of domination [can]
find a vehement, full-throated expression”, a “safe articulation of the assertion [and]
206 T. Enhuber

aggression [. . .] that is thwarted by the onstage power of the dominant”. (Scott 1990:
37, 111, 114, 120)
There are various dynamics by which the indignities of subordination may be
counterbalanced or even be fended off. For one, Scott suggests that the greater the
extrinsic reasons compelling the performance, the less the subordinate may consider
it representative of his “true self”. It is rather like a mask that he wears, having little
or no bearing on his self-conception (Scott 1990: 110) and thus, one could assume,
on his dignity. A further way to counteract humiliations is to put oneself above
the dominant, either in the sense of considering oneself morally superior, or by
denigrating the threatener through jokes, bad talk, etc. (Miron and Brehm 2006: 10).
Yet another device is tricking the dominant, e.g., by using attributions as a weapon:
if the dominant think that the subordinates are stupid the latter might just decide to
use it to their own advantage and play stupid. According to a proverb of Jamaican
slaves, “Play fool, to catch wise” (Scott 1990: 3), this might not only minimise
their work load but also give them deep satisfaction having been able to curtail the
power of the dominant over them, having made the dominant experience the limits
of their power, and, possibly, even having let them subtly know they hit back. Other
variations pursuing the same aim are spitting into the master’s food, ruining the
expensive saree (traditional cloth) in the laundry, or torturing the favourite pet of
the mistress as in Robert Darnton’s “The Great Cat Massacre”.
However, in order for an individual or a community to be able to sustain a hid-
den transcript, the subordinates need spaces outside the domains of the dominant
(Scott 1990: 123) in order to offset the latter’s constant attempts to keep them, indi-
vidually and as a group, at an inferior level, leaving long-lasting imprints on their
self-esteem and identities, and their relationships and their community fabric. These
spaces may be any kind of physical or symbolic sites (Scott 1990: 121) where com-
munity – or collective identity, for that matter – can be felt. These must be spaces
where the subordinates can live their lives, at least some part of the day or the year,
where they find some refuge that provides emotional and physical sustenance, where
they can join, rest, separate themselves from the values they have inculcated from
the dominant, nurture their “true self”, create a discourse of dignity and justice,
abandon those norms and concepts they have adopted “to ensure an equality of
suffering” (Jesser 2004: 82), overcome their traumata, heal each other, nurture a
collective memory and identity, gather strength, formulate strategies necessary for
emancipative struggles14 ; in sum, a space where dignity can be lived. Eventually,
the experience here may also embolden the laborers to seek dignity even onstage as
happened in Maharashtra.
To be sure, within the context of bonded labor social spaces of that kind are
scarce which is due to extremely long working hours that leave little or no energy
and time for social interaction; a high level of surveillance (e.g., restricted mobility
by being confined to, or prohibited to leave, the workplace, or by attempts to inhibit

14 For the discussion on space see also Bloom (2004: 26, 117), Harris (2004: 60), Jesser (2004: 75).
14 Bonded Labor 207

any meeting among the laborers); the absence of any secluded site where the labor-
ers can meet, or some device through which they could communicate unobserved by
the dominant; the possible situation of working isolated from each other (in remote
rural areas it is sometimes just one or two laborers working for a smallholder, simi-
larly in domestic services); or a lack of efforts to create and fight for a social space.
This last aspect might assume a central role, particularly if it has to be put down to
lack of social cohesion among the bonded laborers and/or between their communi-
ties and other subordinate communities. A frequent reason for that is the observance
of strict caste divisions (be it between distinctive jati or, in the case of an encounter
of local and migrant labor, the perception of distinctive, separate entities even within
the same jati/profession), to the extent that the practice of untouchability is even fol-
lowed among the Dalit communities against those at the very bottom of the casteist
order (Sainath 1996: 208). Various prohibitions such as of inter-dining and inter-
marriage constantly renew and perpetuate this “centuries-old divide, deeply rooted
as it is in the [collective] conscious”, impeding any socializing, and acting “as a
formidable barrier preventing the building of solidarity” (Mukherjee 2004: 460).
Within the logic of caste ranking and mobility, the advancement of others may,
furthermore, be seen as at one’s own expense (Prashad 2000: xiv). Beyond that,
and definitely not to be underestimated, may also be the fear of consequences as
well as the experience of shame that may hinder community members from reach-
ing out to each other. This overall scenario makes obvious that social space needs
to be fought for on different fronts, and has to be constantly created, built, and
defended.
We do not know whether the negotiations and negations within the hidden tran-
script and the existence of social spaces uncontrolled by the employers may help
the bonded laborers to actually maintain their dignity at the time of concrete acts of
degradation or whether they can “only” reconstitute their dignity some time after-
wards. One could assume that it may vary, depending on the particular context.
However, it seems that the more a subordinate has access to these kinds of spaces
the more he may succeed in coping with the indignities inflicted by the dominant.
However, when a person has had the previous experience of not being able to
control a certain kind of situation, he would have no expectation to be in a posi-
tion to restore his freedom in any similar situation (Wortman and Brehm 1975: 309,
Miron and Brehm 2006: 12). Once a comparable situation arises the person who
experienced defeat in the past would now not show any reactance but rather remain
passive (Wortman and Brehm 1975: 307–309). The theory of learned helplessness
even claims that the person may generalize his expectancy of powerlessness to other
situations (Hiroto and Seligman 1975: 327). This happens particularly if the indi-
vidual attributes some global cause (in the case of bonded laborers that could, for
example, be domination by higher castes, poverty, or one’s karma) to some negative
experience that is perceived as significant; equally if this experience had negative
consequences (e.g., miscarriage after a beating, ostracism after having been raped,
starvation due to a socio-economic boycott by the high caste employers and shop-
keepers). Or, if this negative experience has prompted the individual to attribute his
self with negative traits (e.g., having lost one’s womanhood or manhood, not being a
208 T. Enhuber

good parent, being a coward) or if the person lacks social support (Petermann 1999:
229). It thus seems that it is not the aversive situation per se but its conjuncture with
further factors that may render a person in a state of helplessness (Wortman and
Brehm 1975: 289); factors that, to be sure, may have their origin in the context of
bondage itself and that may leave long-lasting imprints on the self-perception and
the dignity of the individual.
Various social activists stress that not few oppressed have internalized a sense of
inferiority, after having been patronised, despised, discriminated against and shamed
since childhood, and, for that matter, for generations. For them, the “very thought of
challenging the oppressor, asking a question, saying ‘no’ to injustice opens a sense
of intense insecurity” (Pandit 2000: 7). The more important the stake, the greater is
the degree of a person’s helplessness (Wortman and Brehm 1975: 309) and, I would
claim, of the damage that is done to his dignity. The situation of the husband hiding
under the bed, not daring to protect his wife and the baby she carries, epitomizes
this kind of helplessness. What this man may have lost in that very moment is his
role as the head of the family, the role of the protector, his manliness, and the trust of
his family and community. Particularly when a child is violated, Scott claims that,
[. . .] the parents suffer [. . .] a devastating public display of their powerlessness to keep their
child from harm. They lose [. . .] the public claim to be parents, above all in the eyes of their
child and also in those of any onlookers. It is difficult to conceive a more damaging loss of
standing as a person. The impact seems to be seared in the memory of those who suffer it.
(Scott 1990: 113–114)

This appears to be generally valid when the audience is composed of those “before
whom one’s dignity, one’s standing as a person, is most important because [they
form] the social source for one’s sense of self-esteem.” (Scott 1990: 113–114,
Bouson 2004: 97).
It has been found that the higher the level of powerlessness, the stronger the anger
and shame that a person will develop. Anger (Wortman and Brehm 1975: 317),
presumably particularly in its combination with shame (Bouson speaks of “shame-
rage”), may develop energy towards “outhurting the hurter” (Bouson 2002: 148),
which might find some outlet in the hidden transcript through which some dignity
might be recuperated. It can be assumed, however, that extremely intense experi-
ences of shame offer no option of denial or negotiation and result in helplessness
and a severe damage to one’s dignity as the following might indicate. In the dis-
course on Morrison’s Beloved, Janoff-Bulman observes that persons “overpowered
by another” feel not only helpless but also “sullied and tarnished” in the process
(Janoff-Bulman 1992: 80). Bouson emphasizes that “deliberate infliction of injury
can induce unbearable and chronic feelings of shame” (Bouson 2004: 91); accord-
ing to Langer, humiliations suffered are often felt “worse than death”, indicating a
“toxicity”15 of the “humiliated memory [. . .] reanimating the governing impotence
of the worst moments” of a debilitating past (Langer 1991: 83–84). Herman argues

15 The term “toxicity” in this context was coined by Bouson (2004: 91).
14 Bonded Labor 209

that this may eventually even lead to a “contaminated identity”, preoccupied with
“shame, self-loathing, and a sense of failure”. (Herman 1992: 94)
In sum, the discussion makes obvious that violations of dignity feature regu-
larly within relations of bonded labor. The laborers would usually not consider it an
option to openly challenge any act of subjugation, and they would also, particularly
in cases of accumulated deprivation and degradation, not easily have access to those
resources that would allow them to negate or negotiate those violations. However,
the extent of the damage may vary considerably, depending upon whether a viola-
tion inflicted by the dominant may spill over to other relationships and thus infect the
experience of dignity in other spheres of the person’s life, possibly also his future, or
whether it may remain limited to that specific situation within which it occurred. The
outcome is contingent on the particular collective and individual identities, social
practices, and social spaces a person and his community have developed. Where the
interplay of those factors renders a supportive environment, bonded laborers may be
able to partly, temporarily, and occasionally keep or restore their dignity.
At an abstract level, the material suggests that dignity is not monolithic and static,
but complex and multi-dimensional. It may be comprehended, firstly, as a contin-
uum running from “intact” to “lost”; secondly as an array of various spatial as well
as temporal compartments. While dignity may be violated and lost in some com-
partments and/or at a certain point in time, it may be defended and upheld, nurtured
and enjoyed in others, and also restored later on.

14.7 Conclusion
This discussion has endeavoured to investigate how bonded labor, from a subjective-
psychological perspective, may impact upon human dignity. Studies and reports on
bonded labor indicate that everyday oppression, deprivation, and degradation factor
centrally in the lives of bonded laborers and their communities, from time to time
complemented by outright atrocities. It can be safely assumed that, in this process,
the dignity of large numbers of bonded laborers is violated everyday throughout
India. Yet, we cannot be absolutely sure in which particular situation a particular
bonded laborer may actually experience a violation of his dignity and to what extent.
I have argued that it is, generally, not the act of abasement per se but the concurrence
of several conditions that determines whether a bonded laborer will suffer, or be in
a position to ward off, violations of his dignity or, at least, limit the damage in terms
of time and reach: One important factor appears to be the “thickness” of deprivation,
degradation and annihilation that the laborer has been subjected to. What may tip
the scales, however, is the person’s prior experience of powerlessness in similar
situations, the significance the person attributes to the particular humiliation suffered
and the level of shame inflicted, the audience witnessing, the person’s access to any
social sites where a “life-beyond-control-by-the-dominant” can be lived, the fabric
and historicity of the person’s own and his community’s self-identity (and the extent
to which these are a result of the power structures that have been constructed by the
dominant in the first place), the person’s ability to maintain a personal continuity,
210 T. Enhuber

and the identity of the person that is at the forefront in a particular moment – the
shamed, dehumanized, objectified one, or a self-conscious and proud identity.
To be possibly able to hold on to one’s dignity in the face of repression does
not insinuate that human rights have not been violated. What needs to be acknowl-
edged, however, is that any person, in principle, is endowed with agency and with an
identity that encompasses more than the experience of subordination, no matter how
distant some aspects of that identity and how restricted that agency might be within
relations of bondage. To deny agency where it does exist, similarly as to assert it
where it does not, would deprive that person, once again, of his dignity.
Yet, in order to develop a genuine and differentiated understanding of, first, the
actual meaning of dignity for those in bondage, and second, of the circumstances
under which dignity within varied conditions of labor bondage may be violated or
upheld, we need to listen to many more stories bonded laborers have yet to tell.
While each of them may reveal a particular set of experiences, all of them together
should give us a clue to the socio-psychological dynamics that construct, nourish,
violate, sometimes sustainably destroy, and restore human dignity.

References
Antislavery International. 2007. Ritual slavery practices in India – Devadasi, Jogini and
Mathamma. http://www.antislavery.org/includes/documents/cm_docs/2008/r/ritual_slavery_
briefing_paper_1_august_2007.pdf. Accessed 3 Apr 2009.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1988. Putting hierarchy in its place. Cultural Anthropology 3(1): 36–49.
Barnes, Robert Harrison, Andrew Gray, and Benedict Kingsbury, eds. 1995. Indigenous peoples of
Asia. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies Inc.
Berreman, Gerald D. 1979. Caste and other inequities essays on inequality. Meerut: Folklore
Institute.
Bloom, Harold. 2004. Summary and analysis. In Blooms guides. Toni Morrison’s beloved, ed.
Harold Bloom, 16–48. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers.
Brooks Bouson, J. 2002. Quiet as it’s kept: shame, trauma, and race in the novels of Toni Morrison.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Brooks Bouson, J. 2004. Sethe’s best thing. In Blooms guides. Toni Morrisons beloved, ed. Harold
Bloom. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers.
Center for Education and Communication (CEC). 2004. Debt bondage in India. New Delhi: CEC.
Datar, Chhaya. Integrating Tribals in the Mainstream. Emerging Dissimilarities in the Status of
Tribal Women in Maharashtra. http://www.winaindia.com/chhaya.htm. Accessed 22 Aug 2009.
Des Pres, Terrence. 1976. The Survivor. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dogra, Bharat. 1998. Land and freedom struggle of released bonded laborers to obtain land in
Chattisgarh. Delhi.
Flood, Gavin. 2005. Introduction: Establishing the boundaries. In The Blackwell companion to
Hinduism, ed. Gavin Flood, 1–19. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Freeman, James M. 1979. Untouchable an Indian life history. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Freeman, James M. 1986. The consciousness of freedom among India’s untouchables. In Social
and economic development in India a reassessment, ed. Dilip K. Basu, 153–171. New Delhi:
Sage Publications.
Gatade, Subash. 2009. Dalits in a Hindu Rashtra. http://www.countercurrents.org/gatade040309.
htm. Accessed 24 Jun 2009.
Ghurye, Govind Sadashiv. 1980. The scheduled tribes of India. New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishers.
14 Bonded Labor 211

Gokhale, Jayashree. 1993. From concessions to confrontation. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.

Harris, Trudier. 2004. Images of slavery. In Blooms guides Toni Morrisons beloved, ed. Harold
Bloom, 59–70. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers.
Herman, Judith Lewis. 1992. Trauma and recovery. New York, NY: HarperCollins/Basic Books.
Hiroto, Donald S., and Martin E.P. Seligman. 1975. Generality of learned helplessness in man.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 31: 311–327.
Human Rights Watch. 1999. Broken people. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/India994.htm.
Accessed 19 Jun 1999.
Isaacs, Harold R. 1964. Indias ex-untouchables. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
Janoff-Bulman, Ronnie. 1992. Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma.
New York, NY: Free/Macmillan.
Jesser, N. 2004. Violence, home and community. In Blooms guides. Toni Morrisons beloved, ed.
Harold Bloom, 74–90. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers.
Keer, Dhananjay. 1962. Dr. Ambedkar, life and mission. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.
Kumar, Ajoy. 1994. From slavery to freedom. In Struggle for justice, ed. Mathew, P.D. Delhi:
Indian Social Institute.
Langer, Lawrence. 1991. Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Mendelsohn, Oliver, and Marika Vicziany. 1998. The untouchables. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Milner, Murray Jr. 1994. Status and sacredness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Miron, Anca M., and Jack W. Brehm. 2006. Reactance theory – 40 years later. Zeitschrift für
Sozialpsychologie 37(1): 9–18.
Morrison, Toni. 1988. Beloved. London: Picador/Macmillan Publishers.
Mukherjee, Mridula. 2004. Peasants in Indians non-violent revolution. New Delhi: Sage
Publications.
Navsarjan. I am not my Caste: Pushpaben. http://navsarjan.wordpress.com/stories-main/nadiad/.
Accessed 13 Aug 2009.
Oommen, T. K. 1990. Protest and change: Studies in social movements. New Delhi: Sage
Publications.
Pandit, Vivek. 2000. Fearless minds. Bombay: National Centre for Advocacy Studies.
Petermann, Franz. 1999. Nachwort. In Erlernte Hilflosigkeit, 3rd edn, Martin E.P. Seligman.
Weinheim: Beltz.
Prashad, Vijay. 2000. Untouchable freedom. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Ram, Nandu. 1995. Beyond Ambedkar. Essays on dalits in India. Delhi: Har-Anand Publications.
Roy, Kaushik G. 2006. Eyes wide open. Film and Television Institute of India. http://
creativecontent.unesco.org/media-library/product?usca_p=t&product_id=36856.
Accessed 17 Aug 2009.
Sainath, P. 1996. Everybody loves a good drought. Stories from India’s poorest districts. Delhi:
Penguin Books.
Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the arts of resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Sennett, Richard, and Jonathan, Cobb. 1993. The hidden injuries of class. New York, NY: Norton.
Sharma, Anita. 1999. Freed bonded labor: From flying pan into the fire. The Times of India,
9 Nov: 14.
Srinivas, M. N. 1966. Social change in Modern India. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Srinivas, M. N. 1992. On living in a revolution and other essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Srivastava, Ravi S. 2005. Bonded labor in India: Its incidence and pattern. In ILO special action
program to combat forced labor, working paper 43. Geneva: ILO Publications Bureau.
Suderland, Maja. 2004. Territorien des Selbst. Frankfurt: Campus.
Thapar, Romila. 2002. Early India: From the origins to AD 1300. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
212 T. Enhuber

Varadarajan, A., and Ambedkar, Prakash. 1993. Atrocities on Dalits, A plea for remedial
action. PUCL Bull. http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/Dalit-tribal/atrocities.htm. Accessed 2
Jul 2009.
Waite, Louise. 2006. Embodied working lives: Work and life in Maharashtra, India. Lanham:
Lexington Books.
Wortman, Camille B., and Jack W. Brehm. 1975. Responses to uncontrollable outcomes: An inte-
gration of reactance theory and the learned helplessness model. In Advances in experimental
social psychology, vol. 8, ed. Leonard Berkowitz. New York, NY: Academic Press.
Zelliot, Eleanor. 1996. The Dalit movement. Dalit International Newsletter, 1(1): 1, 4.
Zelliot, Eleanor. 2005. From untouchable to Dalit. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers.
 Part III
Conclusions for a Positive Account
of Human Dignity
Chapter 15
Human Dignity and Human Rights

Marcus Düwell

Abstract An analysis of violations of human dignity seems to offer an inductive

pathway to human dignity, that some find more promising than theory-guided elab-
orations of a positive account. This paper wants to stress the need to develop a
positive account of human dignity. It is impossible to determine which kind of
actions are violations of human dignity without a positive account. It is further-
more difficult to understand the relevance of those violations for a comprehensive
concept of human dignity without a positive approach. The paper aims at developing
an understanding of what one could expect from an account of human dignity in two
steps. In the first place some general features of a modern concept of human dig-
nity are described, such as the equality of dignity, the other-regarding prescriptivity,
the emphasis on the inherent worth of the individual and the overriding normative
claim of human dignity. The aim would be to show those elements that distinguish
disputes about human dignity from other debates about honour, social standing,
ideals of excellence and the like. In a second step the paper formulates a set of
questions that each theory of human dignity must answer: Who has human dignity?
What is the relationship between human dignity and human rights? What is the nor-
mative content of human dignity? What is the ontological status of human dignity?
And what kind of justification for human dignity can be expected? The list is not
complete but the paper aims to identify those questions to which each account of
human dignity should give an answer. Human dignity is the basic concept of our
moral and political order. Therefore a comprehensive understanding of human dig-
nity is only possible through the development of a positive account. Perhaps such
a positive account can not be developed and justified but that can only be decided
after a discussion of the questions raised above; and if those questions cannot be
answered then we have reasons to abandon the concept of human dignity altogether.
Whether or not human dignity is a meaningful, or meaningless and empty concept,
can only be decided through a discussion about success and failure of a positive
account.

M. Düwell (B)
Department of Philosophy, University of Utrecht, Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 215

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_15,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
216 M. Düwell

15.1 A Positive and a Negative Account of Human Dignity

The notion “human dignity” has appeared in a variety of discourses in the last
decennia. The history of the concept and its political, moral and legal function was
disputed in a variety of contexts, perhaps most extensively in bioethical debates. The
current volume deals with violations of human dignity. The assumption behind such
an approach could be that it would be neither appropriate to start with the contested
discussions of human dignity nor with philosophical conceptualizations but that an
analysis of concrete violations of human dignity would be the most promising way
to develop an understanding of the concept. One could assume that it is very diffi-
cult to agree whether or not the use of embryos or the allowance of euthanasia is a
violation of human dignity or not but that it is much more likely that we can agree
that rape, torture or absolute poverty are violations of human dignity. Therefore it
would follow a well established strategy in moral philosophy to start with an analy-
sis of less contested cases in order to develop a concept and to assess more contested
cases in the light of the so-developed understanding of the concept. There may be
heuristic reasons to use the analysis of those cases of violations as a kind of entrance
for an understanding of the concept and there is some historical evidence that the
experience of degradation and humiliation has been the reason why “human dignity”
became such an important political and legal concept. But there are several reasons
to assume that such an analysis is insufficient. And it is a mistake to think that the
analysis of violations of human dignity can be used as an inductive strategy for the
developing of a concept of dignity (as it is often assumed by followers of Margalit
1996). Here are some arguments for a reservation against such an inductive strategy:
First of all, in our actual understanding of the concept “human dignity” there are a
variety of presuppositions that are in various respects contested. It is, for example,
contested whether or not all members of the human species and all members of
the human species have to be treated as beings with dignity. An analysis of the
supposedly uncontested cases will not help to decide about those questions.
Secondly, in order to decide which cases are violations of human dignity, we
already presuppose a specific concept. Traditional religious thinkers for example
thought that one would compromise one’s own dignity by religiously unac-
ceptable behaviour. To exclude those cases from an analysis of dignity is only
acceptable if one has already a theoretically developed understanding of the
concept.
Thirdly, the use of human dignity in the context of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights is a concept that is deeply interrelated with the development of
modernity that emphasized the moral protection of each individual. It is difficult
to see how an inductive approach can relate to the historical dimension of the
concept.
Fourthly, although a variety of questions are contested about human dignity, there
are various legal and ethical traditions that understand human dignity as a very
fundamental concept; that means a concept that determines the position of human
beings in the world, that should provide a basis for the legal and moral status of
15 Human Dignity and Human Rights 217

human beings in general or should give us a reason why human beings have
human rights. It is not clear how this more fundamental relevance of human
dignity for the legal and moral framework in general can be disputed in an
inductive way.
Fifthly, an inductive approach will tend to have a bias towards a specific kind of
injustice. It will focus more easily on injustice that manifests themselves in indi-
vidual cases, meaning cases that have to do with face-to-face-relationships with
individual people instead of structural injustice of the political order. Such an
inductive approach will furthermore prioritise injustice that is already manifest
and visible instead of injustice that is not yet visible (for example our treatment
of future generations). I do not want to speculate at the moment on whether or
not such a bias is justified (which is possible) but it is at least necessary to offer a
theoretical justification for such a bias.
Sixthly, references to human dignity are contested in terms of the conceptual dimen-
sion, of whether or not a non-arbitrary meaning of the concept can be developed,
and the justificatory dimension concerning the extent to which the moral, political
and legal claim for protection of human dignity can be justified. It is difficult to
see how an inductive approach can help to clarify such questions of justification.
These six criticisms are far from complete. Depending on the expectations concern-
ing an inductive approach these criticisms will be more or less fatal. There may be
reasons to start a discussion about human dignity with an analysis of those actions
that are generally seen as violations of human dignity. But such a starting point
could only be a first heuristic step. Therefore a “negative approach” – as proposed
in this book – can only offer some heuristic tools and not an “approach” to human
dignity. If one would try to develop an “inductive” account of human dignity this
would make things even worse: Talking about a negative approach leaves at least
room for compatibility with a “positive account” while the notion of an “inductive
approach” would deny this possibility.
I have suggested so far that it is necessary to develop a positive account of human
dignity and that an inductive approach on the basis of analysing violations of dignity
offers no theoretical alternative. The development of a positive account of human
dignity is, however, confronted with several obstacles. It is not immediately evi-
dent what one could expect from such an account. Would any such account of
human dignity not simply reflect the general assumptions made in a specific eth-
ical approach? A debate about human dignity would have to relate to the general
plurality of approaches in moral philosophy. Furthermore one can wonder whether
the development of a positive account would not already presuppose some kind of
prior understanding of human dignity. How should one relate, for example, to the
general plurality of historical concepts of dignity?
One could begin by simply proposing a concept of human dignity based on a
specific ethical theory. Instead, I will consider some preliminary questions about
what one can expect from such a theory of human dignity. This kind of preliminary
debate is necessary in order to understand what kind of theories are on the table
(which is, at least, not self-evident) and what kind of questions are contested when
218 M. Düwell

discussing human dignity. My point of reference for this debate is the understanding
of human dignity as it was established in the context of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the process that followed from that. I do not assume that what
emerged post-World War II was a completely different concept of human dignity
(unlike Menke and Pollmann 2007); I assume that “our” concept of human dignity
is internally related to various debates in modern moral and political philosophy and
that this concept can only be understood against the background of those broader
moral and political orientations about the worth and rights of individuals (some
important studies concerning the prehistory of the concept are Haakonssen 1996,
Tierney 1997, Trinkhaus 1970, Tuck 1979).
To structure the debate the paper will proceed in two steps: In the first step I will
identify some common features of those concepts of human dignity that we can find
in the context of the human rights framework. In a second step I aim to identify those
questions to which all accounts of human dignity would have to find an answer.
The assumption would be that if those questions cannot be answered then there
are reasons to have doubts that human dignity can be used in moral and political
discourses. It is therefore not settled that a positive account of human dignity can
be developed and successfully decided upon. But whether or not that is the case can
only be decided after either answering the questions raised below or by showing
that it is impossible at all to answer the questions. To continue using the notion
without trying to answer the relevant questions is just dogmatism. But it is not less
dogmatic if philosophers are bashing the notion of dignity never having tried to
demonstrate the impossibility of a successful defence of the concept. To develop a
common agenda of questions – unavoidable questions – would be a necessary first
step for an unprejudiced discussion about human dignity.

15.2 Common Features of Positive Accounts of Human Dignity

15.2.1 Equality of Human Dignity

The Universal Declaration grants human dignity to “all members of the human fam-
ily” regardless of their other features, like race, gender, intelligence, faith, age, etc.
This means that dignity is not based on some contingent features of some human
beings (Gewirth 1992, Meyer 1989) relating to honor, rank or status. Even though
some authors claim that human dignity is a kind of democratization or universal-
isation of the contingent dignity of rank (e.g. Waldron 2009), even those authors
will agree that the concept at stake is an account of dignity that is not graduated by
features that human beings have in different degrees or that are the result of char-
acteristics or accomplishments. That is the fundamental differentiation between the
modern concept of human dignity and pre-modern concepts (although it is possible
that we find some elements of the modern concept even in pre-modern theories).
Two comments are, however, necessary here. First of all, it might be argued that
this concept necessarily rests on a specific prejudice that Peter Singer and others
tend to criticize as “speciesistic” (Singer 1993). “Speciecism” is a prejudice that
15 Human Dignity and Human Rights 219

favors the members of one biological species and it is unjustified in a similar way as
racism or sexism which favors the members of a specific race or gender. Singer has
been criticized (e.g. Steigleder 1991, Düwell 2009) for being very unspecific in his
use of the term “speciecism” since he does not distinguish between positions that
accept the brute fact that someone is a member of a biological species as a sufficient
reason to grant him a specific moral status (which is arguably a flawed argumenta-
tion) and those positions that holds that the members of the species homo sapiens
are morally special, a position that may be justified by very different arguments.
So it can be argued that for the justification of a specific moral status features like
communicability, (moral) agency, creativity or the like are of ultimate importance
and that those features are – so far – only familiar within the human species. These
positions would have to present an argument as to why even those members of the
species that do not have those features or only to a limited degree, would participate
in the moral protections of this specific status as well. These arguments are perhaps
flawed, problematic or wrong, but they are nevertheless not speciesistic in the sense
that they are based on a prejudice towards a specific biological species. Nearly all
philosophical positions will base human dignity on a feature that is argued to be
morally relevant, not on a brute biological fact. In any case, to grant human dignity
to all members of the human family is not necessarily a speciecistic position; human
dignity is not a speciesistic concept.
This debate leads to a further question. The extension in the protection of human
dignity is in some respects not uncontested. Nearly all legislation in the west-
ern world makes some distinctions in the way that legal protection is granted to
the early stages of human existence; some legal regulations are explicit in this
grading of protection whilst others only implicitly treat embryos differently from
born human beings. The beginning of protection by human dignity is in fact con-
tested. Furthermore, the extent to which we should grant dignity to some animals
is contested, especially to some apes (then it would not be “human” dignity but an
extension of equal dignity). This contested borderline in the extension of human dig-
nity is common to nearly all philosophical conceptualizations as well as to various
political debates about the topic.

15.2.2 The Other-Regarding Nature of Human Dignity

A second common feature of positive accounts of human dignity is that they aim to
regulate the relationship between humans and between humans and political insti-
tutions. This is different to the Renaissance account of human dignity for example,
which was in the first place interested in the cosmological position of the human
being and wanted to determine the place of the human being in relation to God,
angels and beasts. It is also different to some religious accounts of human dignity
that are concerned with the salvation of a human being, his religious positions or
generally his relationship to God. One can relate that to a more general distinction
in ethics. Ethical accounts can either be concerned about the excellence of human
beings (their perfection), as in perfectionistic theories (Hurka 1993), or they can be
220 M. Düwell

primarily concerned with other-regarding obligations. Of course, we can find both

aspects in one ethical theory as well: An ethical theory can deal with obligations
towards, or harm to other people and deal also with obligations towards, and harm
to oneself. Ethical theories can ground obligations towards others in perfectionis-
tic considerations, they can see ethical excellence as a result of a specific form of
fulfillment of moral obligations or they can strictly distinguish between both dimen-
sions. In any case both aspects can be distinguished and for this context it is only
relevant that a modern account of human dignity is formulating moral prescriptions
concerning the way we ought to treat human beings, independently of the specific
justification for those prescriptions.
The important point presently is that a positive account of human dignity should
deal with other-regarding obligations. In general these other-regarding obligations
are spelled out in the form of rights of human beings. That does not mean that
a positive account of dignity must only be a theory of rights but at least such an
account will provide an answer to the question of how we should treat fellow human
beings and, in general, that will have some consequences in terms of the moral
requirements of political institutions.

15.2.3 Dignity as Inherent Worth of the Individual

A positive account of human dignity will suppose that each individual has a kind
of moral status that implies that he cannot be substituted or replaced by other indi-
viduals in a morally relevant sense. This can be described as the inherent worth
of the individual, which forbids weighing the value of the individual in an algo-
rithm of goods and values; Kant would call this “absolute value”. Various scholars
object to talk about “values” here because “inner worth” or “dignity” is opposed to
the terminology of “values”. There are good reasons to be careful here: If we are
committed to an objective value-theory we seem to be committed to some kind of
moral realism. A moral realist seems to be committed to objective values that make
it especially difficult to understand the specific exclusivity that is ascribed by human
dignity. If we are, however, committed to a value-concept that in general assumes
that values can be weighed against each other, an idea of “absolute value” seems
to be odd in that context. The specific status of the “human” to which we ascribe
“worth” or “absolute value” cannot be understood as a value like other values; the
human being in its specific moral status must be seen in its capacity to create or
to perceive values, to follow moral norms, etc; it is the human being in its specific
moral capacities to which we ascribe the specific moral status of “human dignity”.
To talk about the “value of the individual” seems to neglect this difference between
“values” in general and the status of a “subject of valuation” and if the concept of
human dignity makes sense it seems to be related in one way or the other to this
subject-status. With this in mind, however, it is not principally problematic to talk
about the “value of the individual” (as noted above, Kant spoke about an “absolute
value”) if it is clear that this kind of value is a specific one.
15 Human Dignity and Human Rights 221

It is worth noting that giving specific worth to the individual must not necessarily
be identified with specific forms of social order or it need not necessarily be aligned
with the phenomenon that sociologists describe as “individualization”. It is not a
priori clear that respect for human dignity can only be realized in specific forms of
social order or political institutions or what kind of social order or political institu-
tions that would be. It is obvious that the normative content of human dignity will
have normative implications for political institutions and for the rights of the indi-
vidual but it is not conceptually evident that the appropriate institutions to protect
and promote “human dignity” are those Western political and social institutions to
which the concept “individualization” refers to. A theory of human dignity would
have to show which kind of institutions would be appropriate.
To talk about an “inherent worth” or “absolute value” that cannot be weighed
against other goods has, however, another problem. It could be understood as sug-
gesting that “human dignity” would be nothing other than a stop-signal in the
“weighing of goods”. That would mean that in general all goods and values could
be weighed against each other as long as human dignity is not infringed. This
understanding of human dignity would presuppose that human dignity marks only
a specific protected area of worth in relation to which weighing would be morally
unacceptable. This presupposes a specific idea of the relevance of human dignity for
the whole of our moral regulations and ethical convictions that is highly contested.

15.2.4 Overridingness
Human dignity in the context of the human rights framework is characterized by a
claim for overridingness. In one sense or the other an account of dignity will artic-
ulate a normative consideration that “trumps” other considerations. To say that an
action violates human dignity but it is morally permissible to do it, is odd. One can
dispute whether or not an action is a violation of human dignity but if it is a violation,
than it will outweigh other possible considerations. In this respect one could wonder
whether the normative content of the concept “human dignity” is co-extensive with
the content of the concept of “morally right”. For some theories that may be the
case if those theories include “enabling a life in dignity for all” as the ultimate and
exclusive justification for other-regarding moral norms. In this case, “human dig-
nity” would have the same meaning as “morally right actions with regard to others”.
In that sense human dignity will always demand respect and will trump conflicting
prudential, aesthetic and religious considerations. I am not defending the position
that it is co-extensive but I think that it seems at least not eo ipso conceptually
impossible.
This is different if one sees violations of human dignity as a specific kind of
morally forbidden action that is distinct from other morally forbidden actions. In this
sense torture, rape, genocide, etc, are violations of human dignity whereas lying or
stealing are morally wrong actions towards other people but not violations of human
dignity (important here is the conceptual distinction and not the examples as such).
222 M. Düwell

In that case it would be morally obligatory to avoid violations of human dignity first
and foremost; in a case of conflict of duties, the respect for human dignity would
always be more important than other moral obligations.

15.2.5 To Sum Up
For the time being I would therefore summarize my considerations concerning a
modern concept of human dignity as follows: Such an account will ascribe the
status of human dignity to all human beings equally (the borderline question has
still to be discussed); human dignity will be the source of prescriptions concern-
ing other-regarding behavior (generally formulated in terms of rights) and normally
accompanied by prescriptions about morally acceptable political institutions; it will
say something about the worth of each individual; and respecting human dignity is
seen as more important than other possible considerations. These elements are cer-
tainly not sufficient for a positive account of human dignity but they are sufficient
to distinguish theories about human dignity from very different theoretical disputes
about personal excellence, rank and ideals. To formulate those elements does not
mean, however, that a positive account of human dignity can successfully be devel-
oped and justified. Up until now I have not argued that it is possible that we can
develop a positive account; perhaps it can even be demonstrated that it is impossible
to defend such a positive account, which would be fatal for the concept of “human
dignity” altogether. But if an account of human dignity could be developed it would
include at least these elements.

15.3 Questions for a Positive Account of Human Dignity

In the following section I will pose some questions to which one can assume any
account of human dignity would have to give an answer. These questions have to
do with the basic content of human dignity and the scope of its application; the
questions deal with the basic requirements for a non-arbitrary application of the
concept. I assume that these questions are also central questions for scholars who
want to argue that human dignity is a meaningless, useless or empty concept. Only
if it can be demonstrated that it is impossible to answer these questions in a non-
arbitrary way, is it justified to denounce the concept of human dignity as empty or
meaningless.

15.3.1 The Subject of Human Dignity

The question of which beings deserve the status ascribed by “human dignity”
is strongly contested. This question seems, however, to be odd insofar as the
formulation already seems to answer the question: all human beings (This formu-
lation recalls the debate about speciecism mentioned above). Nevertheless, for the
15 Human Dignity and Human Rights 223

applicability and justification of the concept of human dignity, there are at least two
further questions to be answered: To whom do we have to ascribe this status? And
why do we have to do so? To start with the second question: It is necessary to offer
some kind of justification for the selection of beings that deserve a kind of abso-
lute moral protection or respect, after all this respect can imply a possibly strong
restriction of one’s own liberty. If respecting human dignity is of such high moral
importance then there is no alternative but to give justification for this respect. But
each kind of justification will refer to some kind of feature of a being that fulfills a
role in the justification of why this respect is morally required. If we could not offer
a feature that is relevant for the fact that we owe respect to a being, we would not
be able to understand to whom we owe respect. In that context different features are
on the table, such as rationality, personhood, being in the image of God, vulnera-
bility, sensitivity, etc. It is not impossible that an ethical theory will offer a variety
of relevant features (e.g. Nussbaum 2006) for the ascription of human dignity; there
is then the need to explain the relationship (equal importance, hierarchical order,
lexical order, etc) between those features. It is furthermore possible for theories to
differentiate between the reasons why a specific feature is morally relevant and the
pragmatic or empirical criteria that are relevant for the practical applicability of
human dignity. If, for example, a feature like personhood or being in the image of
God is a relevant feature for the status of a being with dignity there remains the
problem that we cannot empirically test whether or not a being is a person or an
image of God. It would even be a fundamental misunderstanding of personhood if
we would assume that personhood would be an empirically testable feature. If, how-
ever, respect for human dignity is morally so important, then there are good reasons
to have an applicable practical criterion (or criteria) for ensuring the protection of
beings with dignity. These criteria could be: membership of the human species,
being born a human being, showing some kind of mental activity, etc. Furthermore,
it is contested to what extent features like rationality and personhood have actually
to be realized in order to grant the status of human dignity (potential personhood
could be sufficient as well).
It is highly contested to what extent we have to grant the same moral protec-
tion, as follows from human dignity, to (at least some) animals as well. The notion
“dignity of the creature” (Balzer et al. 1998, Baranzke 2002) that was introduced
in the Swiss Constitution must be mentioned here. This term does not only grant
dignity to animals but to plants as well (in the theological tradition “creature” is a
term that means everything that is created by God; that is everything beside God).
Nussbaum refers as well to dignity of animals (Nussbaum 2006). It is, however,
unclear what the normative implications are if a being has dignity. For Nussbaum
it is, for example, not forbidden to kill animals or to experiment upon animals (e.g.
Nussbaum 2006: 371), and nor did Switzerland forbid the use of animals or plants
for all kind of economic and scientific purposes. It seems therefore that the notion
“dignity of the creature” means something different. One can, however, expect that
scholars who are using this concept clarify the relationship between “dignity of the
creature” and “human dignity” otherwise the whole discussion is nothing more than
a linguistic confusion.
224 M. Düwell

One distinction could be helpful in this context. Some scholars distinguish

between a full moral status and some moral status. A being that has “full moral
status” would enjoy the protection of all rights while a being that has “some moral
status” would morally be worthy of protection (that is, more than just a “thing”) but
it would not have the same status as beings that have the entire set of rights. In the
context of this distinction “human dignity” would normally imply “full moral sta-
tus”. In the Swiss debate and similar conceptualizations it seems that animals and
plants are understood as beings worthy of some kind of moral protection whilst not
necessarily having the status of beings with dignity.

15.3.2 The Relationship Between Human Dignity

and Human Rights
In the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we find the assump-
tion that there is an internal relationship between having human dignity and having
human rights. In several documents we find the idea that human dignity is the basis
of human rights, as in Articles 21 and 23 of the Universal Declaration where it is
stated that “everyone [. . .] is entitled to realization [. . .] of the economic, social
and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity”, and that these are rights “ensur-
ing [. . .] an existence worthy of human dignity”. In the literature this relationship is
often neglected or not explained. We find at least the following concepts:
(1) Human dignity is seen as only another label for “the entire set of human rights”;
the difference would just be a linguistic one. This approach makes it impossible
to assume that human dignity could be the basis of human rights and a discus-
sion about human dignity would add nothing to the general discussion of human
rights.
(2) Human dignity might be understood as a term for the most basic human rights.
In this sense human dignity would be violated if the most fundamental liberties
and rights were at stake. This approach would additionally leave the relation-
ship between human dignity and the entire concept of human rights unexplained
and this concept of human dignity could not be the basis of human rights. Many
scholars interpret Kant’s formula of humanity in that direction; it is argued that
the formula forbids only the complete instrumentalization of a person. It is over-
looked in this interpretation that the formula of humanity has a much broader
and more fundamental dimension since it prescribes that humanity (rational
nature) has to be treated as “end in itself”. To see rational nature as “end in
itself” is, however, not only relevant as a constraint against severe violations of
human beings, but rather it is basic for the understanding of Kant’s whole con-
cept of moral philosophy. The whole concept of rational obligations as such,
that there is something like a moral ought, has to do with our rational nature.
Therefore the formula of humanity has a much broader meaning than is assumed
in this interpretation.
(3) Some bioethical scholars see human dignity as a mid-level-principle that has
to be weighted against other mid-level principles (Kemp et al. 2000). This
15 Human Dignity and Human Rights 225

approach is an attempt to use the methodology of Beauchamp/Childress’

four-principle-approach with the introduction of four different principles. This
approach is far from all traditional conceptualizations of human dignity and has
no theoretical tools to explain the relationship to the human rights-framework.
This debate is, however, very significant for the use of the notion “human dig-
nity” in bioethics. Very often references to human dignity are made alongside
other concepts like “integrity” or “autonomy” without making an attempt to
explain the internal relationships. I would see this approach as a symptom of
conceptual confusion.
(4) Human dignity is understood as “the right to have rights”. This concept of
“human dignity” refers to some reflections of Hannah Arendt in her analysis
of totalitarianism. In the context of the 2nd World War many refugees lost their
citizenship and with it all legal protection. Here, to claim a “right to have rights”
is a claim for a right to citizenship for each human being and with this citizen-
ship, the protection that a political and legal community would grant. Of course,
the first “right” in the “right to have rights” must be of another kind than the
“rights” that come with citizenship. This concept of human dignity emphasizes
the rights-orientations of human dignity. But it leaves the content of the human
rights unexplained. Hanna Arendt herself had strong reservations about human
rights terminology. One can doubt that this approach will offer a full account of
human dignity.
(5) Human dignity as the basis of human rights. This idea is formulated in the con-
text of the human rights framework itself. This would imply that human dignity
is something other than human rights; it would not just be another name for the
entire set of human rights but possessing human rights would be the normative
consequence of having human dignity. The foundational function in relation to
human rights is central to this concept of human dignity. In this context, the
normative consequences of human dignity would have to be explained in terms
of human rights. One can doubt whether “human dignity” here has a distinct
normative content beyond the human rights. The specificity of human dignity
would have to be seen in the foundational function in relation to the rights and
not in a specific normative content. If one were to assume that “human dig-
nity” has normative elements that go beyond the human rights themselves, those
elements would have to be explained within the whole framework of human
rights.

15.3.3 The Normative Content of Human Dignity

In light of this last point, discussion about the normative content of human dignity
has to take place in relation to the content of human rights. That content is con-
tested (see, for example, Donnelly 2002, Griffin 2008). Relevant in this context is
the distinction between negative and positive rights: negative rights are rights not
to be hindered in exercising one’s freedom; positive rights are rights to be sup-
ported in the exercise or development of one’s capacities (in that connection see
226 M. Düwell

Shue 1980, Gewirth 1996: 31–70). While the negative rights protect the negative
liberty of human beings, the positive rights support humans in the development of
their capacities. It is worth mentioning that the protection of negative rights also pre-
supposes active measures to ensure them (political institutions, etc). So, these two
rights are not distinguished along the line of non-interference or active measures.
The main debate here is to what extent there are positive duties to support people
(welfare rights, cultural rights, etc) and whether or not we can speak about “rights”
in this context, since political institutions have only limited power to enforce these
“rights”. A minimalistic concept would see human dignity violated only if the most
basic rights are at stake. For a concept that sees human dignity as the basis of human
rights it makes much more sense to see human dignity not only as a concept that
refers to a (or the most basic) part of human rights but as a foundation of the con-
cept of human rights as such. It is especially contested to what extent the granting
of welfare rights is a consequence of respect for human dignity.
One possibility would be to see the relevance of human dignity, not so much
in the protection of specific normative goods, rights or values but in develop-
ing an understanding of the content and systematic approach of the human rights
framework. There are at least four questions that arise here:

(1) Where are the limits of the further developments of human rights? Many
scholars are speaking of a proliferation of human rights, which refers to the
tendency to broaden the human rights framework by the introduction of new
human rights. Furthermore there are severe demands to broaden the framework
even more and to introduce new aspects into the human rights framework that
answer new challenges. A notable example is inclusion of an intergenerational
dimension in the framework; up until now the debates about human rights and
sustainability have hardly been interrelated. If there were no rationale behind
this development and no reason for a limitation of this development, than the
whole framework of human rights would be compromised.
(2) This broadening of the human rights framework forces us to understand the
inner hierarchy between the human rights. It is virtually impossible to give
all rights the same importance. But it would compromise the framework if
processes of weighing between the rights were just a question of political
negotiations.
(3) A central question is whether the normative content of human dignity can be
completely spelled out in terms of human rights. There are several dimensions
that, at least according to the intuitions of a lot of people, are morally rele-
vant but for which it is difficult to think about in terms of human rights. These
dimensions seem, however, to be very prominent examples for the use of human
dignity. We can think about examples where human beings are accused of com-
promising their own dignity (prostitution, dwarf-throwing), or, for example, the
status of the cadaver where it is difficult to construct a right but that seems not
to be a morally neutral thing. We touch here several aspects that seem to be
related to symbolic representations of our dignity where people feel humiliated
or disrespected by actions that can hardly be constructed as rights violations.
15 Human Dignity and Human Rights 227

It seem to be precisely these aspects of human dignity that is part of the rea-
son why the whole concept has become so contested, as being a garbage-notion
where everything can be covered as being morally relevant where no reasonable
argument is at hand. It is the challenge for a theory of human dignity to discuss
whether these symbolic dimensions can be theoretically elaborated and to what
extent such symbolic elements can justify limitations in the exercise of rights
by other human beings.
(4) The provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights seem in the first
place to aim to establish a specific political order that is appropriate to ensure
basic liberties and fundamental rights. In the course of Western history the
development of the human rights framework was accompanied by the develop-
ment of specific institutions, like the nation state and democracy. If the human
rights framework was, not only in its historical genesis, but also in its justi-
fication necessarily intertwined with those institutions then its validity would
necessarily depend on the future of those institutions. If in the future, for exam-
ple, nation states as we know them would be abandoned, then the normative
authority of the human rights framework would end as well. In the last decades
we have seen a lot of changes of political institutions in the context of globaliza-
tion. It is very likely that diverse economic and ecological challenges, together
with new technological possibilities, will be a reason for fundamental changes
in the international political order in the next decades. It is very likely that these
changes will affect the concrete formulation of human rights. Nevertheless,
it is not evident that the core idea behind human rights will have to be
abandoned.

15.3.4 The Ontological Status of Human Dignity

We speak about human dignity as if it were a property of humans like having blue
eyes and black hair. That raises the question whether for the ascription of human dig-
nity some kind of specific ontological assumptions are necessary; such as if human
beings would have this dignity as a property. Some theological concepts see dignity
as a gift that humans have because it is given by God. Others see human dignity
as the articulation of a demand for a specific kind of respect that we owe towards
human beings. The formulation that we “have” human dignity would then articulate
the conviction that this moral demand for respect is not constituted in the act of
ascribing human dignity. To “have” human dignity means that we owe this respect
to human beings in a categorical sense, which means that the validity of this demand
does not depend upon specific laws or specific social practices of respect. Different
theories offer different reasons why we have the obligation to respect human dignity.
But it seems to be common to all concepts that the ascription of “human dignity”
articulates the demand for universal and categorical respect. This seems to be onto-
logically neutral; in any case each account of human rights will have to give an
explanation about ontological presuppositions.
228 M. Düwell

15.3.5 The Justification of Human Dignity

If respect for human dignity is categorically obligatory for us, one can wonder what
kind of justification is needed to demonstrate the validity of this demand. The form
of the justificatory theory seems to depend on the kind of demand that “human dig-
nity” lays upon us. Pluralistic value-theories will have difficulties with the concept
because they only know a plural set of values (something similar would be true for
a theory of plural prima facie duties). Human dignity could than not be understood
as one of those values that would have to be weighted against other values. A theo-
logical approach would either have to give a strong metaphysical argument for our
respect for human dignity (for example, in a thomistic tradition of natural law) or
would see the moral demand as grounded in a decision of God to just give us this
specific moral status. For a thomistic natural law theory it would be necessary to
show that the relevant justification would be compatible with the idea that human
dignity would have a substantial relation to the human rights framework (against the
thomistic tradition). The “divine command theory” (as grounding the moral obliga-
tions in a decision of God) would just abandon the justificatory task in a decisionistic
manner.
For a contractarian approach it would be necessary to show that the idea of a
social contract would be able to justify a categorical obligation. A strategy that
relies on the self-interest of the contracting parties would have difficulties in viewing
human dignity as a categorical demand. Kantian types of transcendental argumenta-
tions ground respect for human dignity, in some way, as rationally necessary; as an
obligation that follows from our rational nature or as a result of our agency.
To avoid any justification of human dignity seems to be impossible given the fact
that the validity of the claim is factually contested, in the context of concrete appli-
cations (like in bioethics) as well as in intercultural contexts. The kind of theory that
is necessary for a justification of human dignity would have to provide an answer to
the question of why we should see ourselves as obliged to respect human dignity. An
appropriate theory would in the first place have to be evaluated in light of a meaning
of the concept. If human dignity articulates a categorical claim for respect then the
justificatory theory would have to provide us with an argument that is sufficient to
show that we owe this kind of respect to other human beings.

15.4 Expectations of a Positive Account of Human Dignity

The list of contested questions is clearly not complete. One could be pessimistic as
to whether it is possible at all to develop a positive account given all of these ques-
tions that must be answered. I do not share this pessimism. But, first of all, it would
be important for the discourse on human dignity that it were accepted that we have
to make some effort to develop an understanding of that concept and it is therefore
necessary to gain an overview of the relevant questions and the spectrum of possi-
ble theoretical solutions. To start with an analysis of “violations of human dignity”
presupposes already that most of the conceptual questions have been answered. But
15 Human Dignity and Human Rights 229

if human dignity were to be a principle for the foundation of human rights (as I am
tempted to think), then it is not very likely that the analysis of violations will be the
appropriate way for conceptual clarification.
Human dignity is such an important concept because it has not only to do with
some specific parts of moral demands and the political order. It is much more likely
that human dignity has to do with the human rights concept as such. Human dignity
is the categorical demand for structuring the social and political order in a way that
respects the worth of the individual. To develop such a concept, to discuss its norma-
tive implications and to discuss the different possibilities of justification is a central
task for moral philosophy. This has aimed only to show what kind of questions each
serious philosophical attempt about human dignity would have to answer.

References
Balzer, Philipp, Klaus Peter Rippe, and Peter Schaber. 1998. Menschenwürde vs. Würde der
Kreatur. Begriffsbestimmung Gentechnik Ethikkommissionen. Freiburg: Alber.
Baranzke, Heike. 2002. Würde der Kreatur? Die Idee der Würde im Kontext Der Bioethik.
Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.
Donnelly, Jack. 2002. Universal human rights in theory and practice, 2nd edition. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Düwell, Marcus. 2009. Equality speciecism and sanctity of life. On some philosophical presup-
positions of Peter Singer’s practical ethics. In Peter singer under fire, ed. Jeffrey A. Schaler,
395–418. Chicago: Open Court.
Gewirth, Alan. 1992. Human dignity as basis of rights. In The constitution of rights. Human dignity
and American values, eds. Michael J. Meyer and William A. Parent, 10–28. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Gewirth, Alan. 1996. Community of rights. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Griffin, James. 2008. On human rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haakonssen, Knud. 1996. Natural law and moral philosophy. From Grotius to the Scottish
enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hurka, Thomas. 1993. Perfectionism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kemp, Peter, Jacob Rendtorff, and NielsMattson Johansen, eds. 2000. Bioethics and biolaw, vol.
II: Four ethical principles. Copenhagen, Rhodos: International Science and Art Publishers.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Menke, Christoph, and Arnd Pollmann. 2007. Philosophie der Menschenrechte zur Einführung.
Hamburg: Junius.
Meyer, Michael J. 1989. Dignity rights and self-control. Ethics 99: 520–534.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2006. Frontiers of justice disability, nationality species membership.
Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Shue, Henry. 1980. Basic rights. Subsistence, affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2nd edition.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Singer, Peter. 1993. Practical ethics, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steigleder, Klaus. 1991. Die Abenteuer der Bioethik – Ein kritischer Vergleich der
Ethikkonzeptionen H. Tristram Engelhardts und Peter Singers. In Ethik ohne Chance?
Erkundungen im technologischen Zeitalter, 2nd edition, eds. Jean-Pierre Wils and Dietmar
Mieth, 225–246. Tübingen: Attempto.
Tierney, Brian. 1997. The idea of natural rights. Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company.
Trinkaus, Charles. 1970. In our image and likeness: Humanity and divinity in Italian humanist
thought, 2nd edition. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
230 M. Düwell

Tuck, Richard. 1979. Natural rights theories: Their origin and development. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Waldron, Jeremy. 2009. Dignity rank and rights. Tanner Lecture on Human Values. http://www.
law.nyu.edu/news/waldron_tanner_lectures
Chapter 16
Dignity and Preservation of Personhood

Samuel J. Kerstein

Abstract This paper sketches a partial account of human dignity. The account is
Kantian in the loose sense of having been inspired by some of Kant’s views. But it
contrasts sharply with a traditional Kantian account. The paper tries to isolate some
shortcomings of the traditional account – in particular that it condemns as morally
impermissible certain actions of heroic self-sacrifice as well as certain actions of
privileging the young over the old in the distribution of scarce, life-saving resources.
The new account attempts to avoid such implications while preserving some of the
traditional account’s attractive features. According to the new account, dignity is
preeminent and unconditional value, possessed by all and only persons, that is,
beings who have certain psychological capacities, including autonomy. An agent’s
action expresses respect for persons’ dignity if, without treating anyone merely as a
means, he or she aims in performing it to maximize persons’ preservation. The paper
distinguishes between two dimensions along which person preservation might be
maximized and suggests how to weigh each of these dimensions in decisions about
whom to try to preserve.

16.1 Introduction
This paper sketches a partial account of human dignity. According to the account,
dignity is preeminent and unconditional value, possessed by all and only persons,
that is, beings who have certain psychological capacities, including autonomy. An
action respects persons’ dignity roughly if it maximizes their preservation with-
out treating anyone merely as a means. The account is Kantian in the loose sense
of having been inspired by some of his views. But it contrasts sharply with what
we shall call the traditional account – one associated with the historical Kant. The
paper begins by setting out the traditional account and trying to isolate some of its

S.J. Kerstein (B)

Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 231

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_16,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
232 S.J. Kerstein

philosophical shortcomings. The new account sketched here attempts to avoid these
while preserving some of the traditional account’s attractive features.1

16.1.1 The Traditional Account

The traditional account has a basis in Kant’s texts, but this paper focuses neither on
the extent of that basis nor on whether the account represents the best interpretation
of Kant on dignity.2
Kant uses “humanity” interchangeably with “rational nature” (Kant 1996a
[1785]: 439). He suggests that having humanity involves having certain rational
capacities, among them the capacities to set and pursue ends and to conform to
self-given moral imperatives purely out of respect for these imperatives (Hill 1992:
38–41). For Kant, rational nature is a threshold concept. If one has the set of
capacities that are constitutive of it, one has it, no matter how well- or ill-developed
those capacities may be.
According to Kant, all and only beings with rational nature have dignity. Any
human being who did not possess rational nature would not have dignity; and any
non-human being who did possess rational nature would have dignity.
To say that humanity has dignity is to say that it has a value with three main
features. First, it is value that attaches to something that exists rather than to some-
thing that needs to be brought about. An appropriate reaction to the value of the
sort humanity possesses is to honor, cherish, or preserve it, rather than to produce
more of it. Second, humanity has unconditional worth (Kant 1996a [1785]: 428).
That means it is good in every possible context in which it exists. It is good no
matter how it came to exist or what the effects of its existence may be. Moreover,
if something is unconditionally good in this sense, then neither what it affects nor
what happens to it can at all diminish its goodness (Kant 1996a [1785]: 393–394).
Finally, to say that humanity has dignity is to say that it has incomparable worth:
It has no equivalent for which it can be legitimately exchanged (Kant 1996a [1785]:
434–436, Kant 1996b [1797]: 434–435, 462). Humanity can never be legitimately
sacrificed for or replaced by something with mere price. Not even all the riches
of Silicon Valley would truly compensate for the killing of one rational agent.
Moreover, since humanity possesses incomparable worth, it cannot even be legit-
imately sacrificed for or replaced by something else with such worth (Hill 1992:
47–49). It makes no sense to say that in some context one or more instances of
humanity have more or less value than one or more other instances of humanity. In
Kant’s view, everything that lacks incomparable worth, including human happiness
and well-being, has mere price. In sum, all and only extant beings who have rational
nature possess dignity: unconditional and incomparable value.

1 The new account is based on an account of respect for persons originally developed and defended
in Bognar and Kerstein (2009).
2 For rival interpretations, see, for example, Dean (2006) and Sensen (2009).
16 Dignity and Preservation of Personhood 233

Kant suggests that the special value of rational nature forms the basis for a ver-
sion of the categorical imperative, namely the Formula of Humanity (FH): “So act
that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other,
always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (Kant 1996a [1785]:
429). According to one prominent interpretation of this principle, it amounts to a
command always to act in a way that expresses respect for the worth of humanity,
in one’s own person as well as that of another (Wood 1999). Let us call this princi-
ple RFH, since it is a specification of Kant’s Formula of Humanity that invokes the
notion of expressing respect for humanity’s value. Any action that fails to express
respect for humanity’s value does so at least in part by suggesting an inaccurate mes-
sage regarding what this value is, according to the interpretation. So, for example,
an account of what makes (or purportedly makes) an attempt at suicide wrong would
necessarily include the notion that it expresses a false message, namely that some
person, presumably the one trying to kill himself, does not have dignity. Moreover,
if an action expresses such a message, then it expresses disrespect for the value of
humanity and is morally impermissible.
The traditional account, which incorporates RFH and the notion of dignity upon
which it is based, has several features many of us find attractive. For example, an
individual’s dignity does not vary with his wealth, social status, or achievements.
Any being who has the capacities requisite for possessing dignity has no less (and
no more) dignity than anyone else. Moreover, RFH seems to capture a core of deon-
tology. It would forbid an action that aimed to maximize the preservation of dignity
by killing one innocent person in order to preserve the lives of two. For such an
action would suggest that the value of persons is not incomparable.

16.1.2 Shortcomings of the Traditional Account

But the traditional account faces some serious difficulties. One well-known prob-
lem concerns the status of some beings who seem not to have rational nature, for
example, very young children. If they indeed fail to have rational nature, then they
have mere price, according to the account. But how, then, is our treatment of them
subject to constraints? Instead of pursuing these familiar questions, let me here high-
light briefly two less well-known challenges, which I develop at length elsewhere.
The challenges emerge from cases of killing oneself to save others and cases of
having to choose to whom to distribute a scarce, life-sustaining resource.3
Cases of what many of us take to be heroic self-sacrifice pose problems for RFH
(Kerstein 2009a). Here is a narrative accompanying the award of a military honor,
the Silver Star, to a United States army private killed while on patrol in Northeast
Bagdad:

3 As Kerstein (2009a) tries to show, other sorts of cases also pose difficulties for the traditional
account. It seems to condemn as morally impermissible cases of what many of us take to be
legitimate killing in self-defense and legitimate withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment.
234 S.J. Kerstein

PFC [i.e., Private First Class] McGinnis was manning the [machine gun] on the Platoon
Sergeant’s [vehicle]. His primary responsibility was to protect the rear of the combat patrol
from enemy attacks. Moments after PFC McGinnis’ vehicle made [a] turn traveling south-
west, a fragmentation grenade was thrown at [it] by an unidentified insurgent from an
adjacent rooftop. He immediately yelled “grenade” on the vehicle’s intercom system to alert
the four other members of his crew. PFC McGinnis made an attempt to personally deflect the
grenade, but was unable to prevent it from falling through the gunner’s hatch. His Platoon
Sergeant, the truck commander, was unaware that the grenade physically entered the vehi-
cle and shouted “where?” to PFC McGinnis. When an average man would have leapt out of
the gunner’s cupola to safety, PFC McGinnis decided to stay with his crew. Unhesitatingly
and with complete disregard for his own life he announced “the grenade is in the truck”
and threw his back over the grenade to pin it between his body and the truck’s radio mount.
When the grenade detonated, PFC McGinnis absorbed all lethal fragments and the concus-
sion with his own body killing him instantly. His early warning allowed all four members
of his crew to position their bodies in a protective posture to prepare for the grenade’s blast.
As a result of his quick reflexes and heroic measures, no other members of the vehicle crew
were seriously wounded in the attack. His gallant action and total disregard for his personal
well-being directly saved four men from certain serious injury or death. (Arlington National
Cemetery Website 2008)

Many of us believe that PFC McGinnis’ action was not only morally permissible,
but also morally admirable. Yet RFH implies that it was wrong. According to the
narrative, PFC McGinnis’ action of throwing his back over the grenade showed
“total disregard for his personal well-being” and “complete disregard for his own
life.” The narrative implies that McGinnis intentionally allowed himself to be killed
in order to save his comrades, or at least that in order to save them, he did something
which, as he was aware, would have as a virtually certain consequence the elimi-
nation of his own humanity. Either way, his action failed to express respect for the
incomparable worth of his humanity. It sent the message that its value was not as
great as the value of that of the four other soldiers taken together. So, according to
RFH, PFC McGinnis’ action was wrong.4
A second difficulty with the traditional account of dignity emerges from consider-
ation of the following example (Bognar and Kerstein 2009). We have one indivisible
life-saving drug and two patients who desperately want it: a 20 year old and a 70
year old. It is our job to allocate the drug, so our giving it to one person or the other

4I consider and try to rebut several objections to this conclusion in Kerstein (2009a). But note
that in the “casuistical questions” Kant raises after he discusses the duty not to commit suicide, he
asks: “Is it murdering oneself to hurl oneself to certain death (like Curtius) in order to save one’s
country? – or is deliberate martyrdom, sacrificing oneself for the good of all humanity, also to be
considered an act of heroism?” (Kant 1996b [1797]: 423–424). If we take the respect-expression
approach to FH, then in my view such a self-sacrificial act does turn out to be “murdering oneself”
and thus to be morally impermissible. In the “Notes on the lectures of Mr. Kant on the metaphysics
of morals” taken by Johann Friedrich Vigilantius, we read: “It is permissible to venture one’s life
against the danger of losing it; yet it can never be allowable for me deliberately to yield up my
life, or to kill myself in fulfillment of a duty to others; for example, when Curtius plunges into
the chasm, in order to preserve the Roman people he is acting contrary to duty [. . .]” (Kant 1997
[1793]: 629).
16 Dignity and Preservation of Personhood 235

would not simply be an act of beneficence. Each person has a claim on the drug
in the relatively weak sense that it would be wrong for us to refrain from giving it
to her on morally arbitrary grounds (for example, because we did not like her skin
color or her home town). Finally, neither patient is morally responsible for her need
of the drug in any way that would affect her claim on it. The patient who does not
get the drug will die. If the younger person gets the drug, she will thrive for decades;
if the older person gets the drug, he will thrive for a couple of years but then die of
natural causes.
Many of us are convinced that the younger patient should get the drug. One might
suggest that she should get it on the grounds that the older patient has already had
a full human life, that is, his “fair innings.” But giving it to her on that basis would
send a message contrary to the notion that humanity has dignity, as it is defined in
the traditional account. For it would suggest that an instance of rational nature that
has endured long enough to constitute a full life has less value than an instance that
has been around for a shorter time. But this suggestion contradicts the notion that
the value of humanity is unconditional.
What resource-distributing action in this difficult scenario would accord with
RFH? It seems that flipping a fair coin to decide to whom to give the life-saving
drug would do so. For this action would send the message that each patient is valu-
able; each is worthy of having an equal chance to be saved. And this action would
also suggest that the longer existence (or, alternatively, the greater quantity of well-
being) to be had by the younger patient fails to make her more valuable than the
older one. The action does not seem to run afoul of the notion that persons have
dignity. But, again, it does run afoul of a widespread view that the younger person
should get the drug.
Some might agree with the assessment offered here of what RFH implies in these
cases, yet insist that these implications are not implausible. Nothing I can say in this
brief paper would be likely to move them from this position. Others might agree with
my view that these implications are implausible, and yet claim that we are forced to
embrace them. For Kant and/or contemporary Kantians have arguments that ratio-
nally compel us, or at least those of us who believe ourselves to have any good
ends or any reasons for our actions, to hold all persons to have dignity (Korsgaard
1996). Elsewhere I have defended the view that such arguments fail (Kerstein 2001,
Kerstein 2002). Even if a Kantian argument establishes that we must hold persons
to be valuable in every possible context in which they exist – and I do not know
of one that really does this – how would we arrive at the conclusion that we must
hold them to have incomparable value? That a being with rational nature has uncon-
ditional value fails to entail that nothing, including no other such beings, however
many, have more value than it does.
Rather than relying on questionable a priori arguments, I adopt a much more
modest approach to defending an account of dignity. I try to reach a reflective equi-
librium between our particular considered judgments of what constitutes respecting
or violating dignity and general principles specifying what dignity is, as well as any
constraints on our treatment of beings who have it.
236 S.J. Kerstein

16.1.3 Beginnings of a New Account

Let me now try to sketch an account of human dignity, or, more precisely, a sufficient
condition for respecting human dignity, that will not fall prey to the difficulties illus-
trated in the two examples. The account is intended to suggest a fruitful direction
for further work, not to be complete in itself.
According to the account, to say that a being has dignity is to say that it has a
special worth. A being has this special value or worth in virtue of having certain
psychological capacities: the capacity to perceive and understand the world, to form
projects, to reflect and deliberate on these projects, and so on. Chief among these
capacities is autonomy: the capacity “to direct one’s life in accordance with val-
ues that one reflectively endorses” (McMahan 2002: 256). Let us call the beings
who have these capacities persons. On this account, persons and persons alone have
dignity.
The special worth possessed by persons has several main features. Each person
who has the capacities just mentioned possesses worth equal to that of every other
person, no matter how well- or ill-developed the capacities may be. Echoing the
Kantian account described above, this worth is unconditional: Neither what the per-
son affects nor what happens to him can at all diminish it. Moreover, the worth of
persons is preeminent: Nothing that is not a person has worth equal to that of a per-
son. But the worth of persons is not incomparable. The account does not rule out
the possibility that two persons have greater value than one. That is not to say, how-
ever, that the value of persons is a value to be maximized, for example, by taking
whatever measures are necessary to bring as many exemplars of it as possible into
existence. Dignity attaches only to extant persons. It is a value in virtue of which
they are to be respected. Respecting this value involves refraining from treating per-
sons merely as means. And respecting it can involve trying to preserve the value.
According to this account, an agent’s action expresses respect for persons’ dignity
if, first, in performing it he does not treat anyone merely as a means and, second, the
action is of a sort which, it is reasonable for the agent to believe, would maximize
persons’ preservation. Here “reasonable belief” is, of course, an epistemic rather
than a moral notion. It is reasonable for an agent to believe something if, given the
facts as he perceives them in light of his education, upbringing, and so forth, he
would be justified in believing it.
In order to flesh out the account, let me say more about two things: what treating
someone merely as a means amounts to and what it means to aim to maximize the
preservation of persons, starting with the latter.
We can preserve persons along two dimensions.5 First, we can preserve a person
by extending the period of time in which a being has the capacities that make up
personhood. Let us call preserving persons along this dimension preserving “person
years.” Second, we can preserve persons by maintaining them in existence. Let us

5 The account of maximizing person preservation that follows stems from and is defended in greater
detail in Bognar and Kerstein (2009).
16 Dignity and Preservation of Personhood 237

call doing so preserving persons along the “person numbers” dimension. If we save
five people for 3 years, then on the person years dimension we preserve 15 years,
while on the person numbers dimension we preserve five people. Reflective common
sense values the preservation of persons along these two dimensions, I believe.
But what might it mean to maximally preserve persons? There can, of course,
be cases where maximizing preservation along one dimension fails to do so along
the other. For instance, suppose we can save one person for 20 years or five persons
for 2 years each. Choosing to save the one person would best preserve personhood
along the person years dimension; choosing the five people would best preserve
personhood along the person numbers dimension. How should we proceed?
Here is a suggestion. We begin by determining the proportion between the values
possessed by the two sets of persons on each dimension. The set that contributes the
higher value to the proportion on a given dimension is “favored” on that dimension.
We then determine which proportion along the person years and person numbers
dimensions is greater. We preserve the set of persons that is favored in the proportion
that yields that higher number.
Returning to the example above illustrates the procedure. We have to choose
between saving one person for 20 years or five persons for 2 years each. The one
person has a higher value on the person years dimension, but the group of five has
a higher value on the person numbers dimension. On the person years dimension,
the proportion between the values is 20/10 (2/1). Thus, the one person is favored.
In contrast, the proportion on the person numbers dimension is 5/1. On this dimen-
sion, the larger group is favored. The second proportion is equivalent to a number
(5) which is greater than that yielded by the first proportion (2). So, according to
this method, we should preserve the group of five persons.6
This procedure does admittedly yield controversial results in some cases. For
example, suppose we could save one person for 20 years or two people for 5 years
each. On the person years dimension, the proportion between the values is 20/10
(=2) in favor of the one, while on the person numbers dimension the proportion is
2/1 (=2) in favor of the two. So the procedure would entail that we be indifferent
about how to proceed. In order to avoid any unintended bias, we should then pre-
sumably decide whom to save on the basis of a coin flip. But some believe that we
ought simply to save the two. In general, people seem to value preservation along
both dimensions, although they may give somewhat more weight to the person num-
bers dimension. How much more weight is a question that empirical studies might
help to resolve. There is a growing literature on the relative weight people place on
extending lives and saving them (Nord 1999). This literature should be considered
in the course of formulating a weighting scheme.
According to the account I am sketching, certain actions which, it is reasonable
for an agent to believe, will maximize persons’ preservation express respect for

6 A complete weighting scheme would, of course, need to take into account the uncertainty of a
choice regarding person year and person number preservation.
238 S.J. Kerstein

persons’ dignity, namely those actions that do not treat anyone merely as a means.
But what does it mean to treat someone merely as a means?
Here I outline a simple account of treating someone merely as a means. It is
meant to be suggestive rather than sufficient as it stands. A person treats someone
as a means – or, equivalently, uses the person as a means – if she intentionally does
something to the person’s body or mind in order to realize one of her ends and she
intends the person’s body or mind to contribute to her end’s realization.7 A person
does not treat an individual as a means unless she intends the individual’s presence
or participation to contribute to the end’s realization (Scanlon 2008: 106–107).
An agent treats a person merely as a means – or, equivalently, uses the person
merely as a means – if it is reasonable for her to believe that something she has
done or is doing to the person renders that person unable to consent to her treating
him as a means to her aim. A person is unable to consent to someone’s treating him
as a means if he has no opportunity to alter or forestall the action by withholding
his agreement to it (O’Neill 1989).
For example, consider the well-known “transplant case” in which a healthy per-
son goes to the hospital for a checkup. By harvesting his organs (and, in the process,
killing him) we could save six patients who would otherwise die. If, without giv-
ing the healthy person any opportunity to opt out of our using him to save the six,
we harvest his organs, we treat him merely as a means. Or consider a terminally ill
patient whose remaining life would be very painful. As long as the patient remains a
person, she has dignity. However, it would be a mistake to think that respecting this
value in her would involve trying, by whatever method, to preserve her personhood.
Trying to preserve it by, for example, deceiving or coercing her into taking a drug
to help her body fend off infection would violate the mere means constraint.
At this point it is natural to be concerned with two issues.8 First, should we
regard the mere means constraint as absolute? I think not. If the only way to pre-
serve millions of persons were to use one individual merely as a means, doing so
would be morally permissible, I believe. But then where should we place the thresh-
old for overriding the mere means constraint? I do not address this difficult question
here. Second, in some cases a person is justified in coercing, forcefully defend-
ing herself against, or deceiving another person, or so many of us believe. But the
simple account I presented implies that in some of these cases the person treats
the other merely as a means and thus, presumably, acts wrongly. A more complex
account of treating others merely as means would, I believe, enable us to avoid such
implications.9

7 For a more restrictive account, see Kaufmann (Chapter 5, this volume).

8 Important challenges to the plausibility of constraints on treating others merely as means are to be
found in Parfit (forthcoming), Scanlon (2008), and Schaber (2009). I believe, but obviously cannot
here try to establish, that these challenges can be met.
9 Here is what a more fully specified account of treating others merely as means would look like:
Suppose an agent uses another. She uses him merely as a means if it is reasonable for her to believe
that something she does to the other renders him unable to consent to her using him, unless it is
also reasonable for her to believe either that she is using the other in order to prevent him from
16 Dignity and Preservation of Personhood 239

Let us now return to the cases that prompted us to propose that an agent’s action
expresses respect for persons’ dignity if in performing it he does not treat any-
one merely as a means and his action is of a type that, it is reasonable for him
to believe, would maximize persons’ preservation. PFC McGinnis was not using
another merely as a means in jumping on the grenade; he was not using another at
all. And since he presumably had the opportunity to avert his own use of his body
to absorb the impact of the grenade – after all, it was he himself who chose to put
his body to this use – he was not using himself merely as a means. Moreover, he
did the kind of thing which, it was reasonable for him to believe, would maximize
persons’ preservation, both on the person numbers and person years dimensions. So,
in harmony with the considered moral judgments of many, the account implies that
he acted in a morally permissible way.
But let me hasten to make two points. First, some people (although very few,
in my experience) tend to have more orthodox Kantian leanings in cases such as
this. According to them, PFC McGinnis has failed to respect his own dignity.10 And
I have not here provided any argument that would prompt them to abandon this
judgment. Second, let me emphasize that I am proposing a sufficient condition for
respecting the dignity of persons, not a necessary condition for doing so. Respect
for the dignity of persons does not require the sort of self-sacrificing action PFC
McGinnis performs, in my view.
In the case of the life-saving drug that has to be distributed to a 20 year old or
a 70 year old, the new account implies that our giving it to the 20 year old would
respect the dignity of persons. This allocation is obviously of a type that, it is reason-
able for us to believe, would maximize the preservation of persons. On the person
numbers dimension, both courses of action would have the same result. But on the
person years dimension, saving the 20 year old would be favored by a wide margin.
Moreover, in giving the drug to the 20 year old, we would not be using the 70 year
old merely as a means. In fact, we would not be using him at all; for his presence
or participation would play no role in our effort to distribute the drug to the 20 year
old. Of course, someone might object that, in effect, we treat the 70 year old as if
he wasn’t even there. Does not respect for his dignity require that he get at least
some chance at getting the drug? I do not think so. I believe that our refraining from

intentionally doing something that renders someone unable to consent to his (the other’s) using
him, or that if, before using the other in a particular way in order to attain her end, the agent were
able, without rendering her action ineffectual, to inform him of her intention to do so and she did
inform him of it, the other would voluntarily consent to her using him in this way. For further
discussion, see Kerstein (2009b).
10 Perhaps they would appeal to Kant’s own account of treating oneself merely as a means and
suggest that since PFC McGinnis did that, he failed to respect his own dignity. It is not easy to
discern what treating oneself merely as a means amounts to, according to Kant. For one attempt
see Kerstein (2008). Of course, given the account of treating someone merely as a means that I
have sketched, it is hard, although not in my view impossible, to think of cases in which a person
treats himself merely as a means.
240 S.J. Kerstein

treating him merely as a means as well as our giving his person years just as much
weight as those of the 20 year old would exempt us from the charge of failing to
respect him.

16.1.4 Some Remaining Issues

The new (but admittedly incipient) account of dignity I have proposed shares some
of the advantages of the traditional Kantian account. Just like its predecessor, the
new account has an egalitarian bent. It implies that a person’s dignity does not rise
or fall with his wealth, social status, or accomplishments. And the new account
also captures a central feature of deontology by incorporating a constraint against
treating persons merely as means.
But let me close by considering a couple of issues that would need to be
addressed in order to flesh out the new account. (Of course, it faces many other
challenges as well.) The first issue is easy to discern with the help of an example.
Suppose that it is a government official’s job to distribute healthcare resources. He
can either preserve one person’s life with the help of a sophisticated and very expen-
sive operation, or he can use the money to help victims of an annoying skin disease –
one that has no impact on their length of life, but does cause mild pain and, in
many, significant embarrassment. According to the partial account I have sketched,
it would be respectful of the dignity of persons if the official saved the one. But the
account does not itself entail that it would be wrong to help the thousands instead.
A full account would have somehow to come to terms with the question of whether
it would be.
It is not obvious how best to answer this question. One might hold that respecting
the dignity of persons requires not only performing actions that respect the capaci-
ties that give them this value, but also performing ones that promote the successful
exercise of these capacities. According to this view, for example, respecting the spe-
cial value of a person can require not only that we preserve her autonomy (i.e., her
capacity to direct her life in accordance with values that she reflectively endorses)
by, say, saving her life, but also that we further the projects she autonomously pur-
sues, say, by removing obstacles to their accomplishment. If a person autonomously
pursues a career that requires her frequently to perform in public, then a skin ail-
ment that brings her embarrassment might pose a significant obstacle to her success.
But it is not obvious how to weigh promoting the successful exercise of autonomy
with the bare possession of it. Is there a threshold number of people like the one just
described who could be helped by the treatment of the skin disease that, if reached,
would render it legitimate for the government official to opt for treating that disease
rather than for saving the life of the one?
A further set of questions concerns the status of beings who are not persons in
the sense defined above, for example, human embryos, fetuses, infants, and severely
disabled adults, as well as non-human mammals. If, as I have suggested, all and only
persons have dignity, then these beings lack it. Of course, Kant holds that if beings
fail to have the value he calls “dignity” then they have mere price. But that does not
16 Dignity and Preservation of Personhood 241

compel us to maintain that if beings fail to have the value we call “dignity,” they
have mere price. It is open to us to insist that they nevertheless have a special value
and that their treatment is subject to moral constraints. And we need not conclude
that these constraints derive their force from the rights or interests of extant persons,
for example, that constraints on the treatment of an infant derive solely from the
rights or interests of the infant’s parents or other persons who might care about him.
The challenge is to make precise just what special value these beings have and just
which constraints govern their treatment.

References
Arlington National Cemetery Website. 2008. Ross A. McGinnis: Specialist, United States Army.
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ramcginnis.htm. Accessed 19 Mar 2009.
Bognar, Greg, and Samuel J. Kerstein. 2009. Saving lives and respecting persons. Unpublished
Manuscript.
Dean, Richard. 2006. The value of humanity in Kant’s moral theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
Hill, Thomas E., Jr. 1992. Dignity and practical reason in Kant’s moral theory. Ithaca/NY: Cornell
University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1996a [1785]. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals, trans. Mary Gregor In
Immanuel Kant: Practical philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1996b [1797]. The metaphysics of morals, trans. Mary Gregor In Immanuel Kant:
Practical philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1997 [1793]. Lectures on ethics, trans. Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kerstein, Samuel J. 2001. Korsgaard’s Kantian arguments for the value of humanity. Canadian
Journal of Philosophy 31: 23–52.
Kerstein, Samuel J. 2002. Kant’s search for the supreme principle of morality. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Kerstein, Samuel J. 2008. Treating oneself merely as a means. In Kant’s ethics of virtue, ed. Monika
Betzler, 197–214. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Kerstein, Samuel J. 2009a. Death, dignity, and respect. Social Theory and Practice 35:505–530.
Kerstein, Samuel J. 2009b. Treating others merely as means. Utilitas 21: 163–180.
Korsgaard, Christine. 1996. The sources of normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McMahan, Jeff. 2002. The ethics of killing: Problems at the margins of life. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Nord, Erik. 1999. Cost-value analysis in health care: Making sense out of QALYs. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
O’Neill, Onora. 1989. Between consenting adults. In Constructions of reason. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Parfit, Derek. On what matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Scanlon, Thomas. 2008. Moral dimensions: Permissibility, meaning, blame. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Schaber, Peter. 2009. Using people merely as means. Unpublished manuscript.
Sensen, Oliver. 2009 Kant’s conception of human dignity. In Kant-Studien 100:309–331.
Wood, Allen W. 1999. Kant’s ethical thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 17
Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility
of Human Dignity: A Human Rights Approach

Arnd Pollmann

Abstract After 1945, we were confronted with the need for a new conception of
human dignity, since totalitarian mass destruction had proven the fundamental vio-
lability and fragility of dignity. This chapter will argue that human dignity can no
longer be seen as an “inalienable value” that we cannot lose, but as a precarious
capability for basic human flourishing – and more specifically, as a potential for
embodied self-respect that needs to be protected by corresponding human rights.
Therefore, dignity is the explicit reason or “purpose” behind the proclamation of
human rights today: as necessary legal conditions for living a life in embodied
self-respect. And as a consequence, philosophy should not make the mistake of
extrapolating from categorical human rights, held by all human beings just by being
human, to a likewise categorical possession of dignity. Instead, it is because human
beings do not have equal human dignity from the start that they all have equal human
rights.

17.1 Introduction

A vast number of books and articles have been published on human dignity in the
last few years,1 but only recently has it been photographed: Günter Pfannmüller and
Wilhelm Klein (2008) have traveled around the world for more than 6 years taking
pictures of “threatened life forms” such as warriors, hunters, shepherds, sachems,
monks and market-women in Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Tibet, Myanmar and Bhutan.
Pfannmüller and Klein avoided producing ethnological “kitsch” by shooting their
portraits in front of a color-neutral background, within a transportable studio-box,

A. Pollmann (B)
Institute of Philosophy, Otto-Von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
1 This is just a selection of important contributions: Beyleveld and Brownsword (2001), Kretzmer
and Klein (2002), Stoecker (2003), Wetz (2005), Tiedemann (2007), Malpas and Lickiss (2007),
President’s Council on Bioethics (2008).

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 243

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6_17,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
244 A. Pollmann

in order to transcend the exotic context in which the persons portrayed lead their
everyday lives. Looking at those pictures, each reveals the unique and individual
but at the same time human and universal “countenance” of the people and faces
portrayed, as they were looking into the camera – most of them for the first time –
self-confidently and unpretentiously.

The title of the photobook shall remind the viewer of Article 1 of the German
Basic Law2 and could be translated as follows: “Untouchable. On human dignity.”
More than any philosophical paper I have read before, these photographs make a
case that I will try to put into words in the following article: Human dignity should
not be seen – as it is in the most common view – as an “inherent value” or “inalien-
able dowry” of all human beings that can never be lost under any circumstances.
Instead, human dignity should be interpreted as a fragile potential for “embodied
self-respect” – a potential that has to be fulfilled and self-actualized by the persons in
question themselves under occasionally precarious life conditions (Pollmann 2005).
Or to put it differently: Human dignity is misunderstood when it is presupposed to be
an already “inborn” and, therefore, indefeasible value. In contrast, it must be taken
as a highly vulnerable and, therefore, threatened capability to lead a life worth living

2 “The dignity of the human being is untouchable. To respect and protect it is the compulsory task
of all state power,” Article 1 (1) Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz)
from 1949 [my translation, A.P.].
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 245

in self-respect. And from this position it follows that violations of human dignity –
such as humiliation (Chapters 3 and 4), instrumentalization (Chapter 5), degradation
(Chapter 6), debasement (Chapter 7), torture (Chapter 8), rape (Chapter 9), slavery
(Chapter 14) or poverty (Chapters 11 and Chapter 12) – should be reinterpreted as
attacks on the person’s abilities and options to gain and express self-respect in social
life.
I will proceed in five steps, and the first step will be an historical review:
Although the triumphal procession of human dignity, especially in international
human rights law, can only be traced back to the second half of the twentieth cen-
tury, the very notion of dignity is obviously much older (17.2). The most remarkable
philosophical puzzle today is that there are at least four competing, but seldom dif-
ferentiated, conceptions of this one main concept of dignity, and, as I will show,
only one of these four conceptions will make sense of universal “human rights” to
have one’s dignity protected (17.3). In order to prove this, different interpretations
of the “grounding” relationship between human dignity, on the one hand, and human
rights, on the other, can be given. And, here again, only one of four interpretations
seems to be the correct one, although it is the most unpopular (17.4). I will then
propose my own view of the substantive content of human dignity, which will be an
explanation of the idea of embodied self-respect (17.5). These considerations will
lead us to a crucial but persistently ignored philosophical insight: One must differ-
entiate between “possessing” and “protecting” human dignity. Not all human beings
already possess the same dignity, I will argue, but that is why they all have exactly
the same rights to its protection (17.6).

17.2 Four Historical Episodes

If we take a closer look at the use of the term human dignity in philosophical and
legal debates, we become aware of a striking contradiction: On the one hand, most
interpreters assume that dignity is something “inherent”, something that cannot be
lost, for it is a kind of “natural”, “inborn” and, therefore, “inalienable” worth or
value simply given by being human. And, as a result, human beings simply have dig-
nity, just because they belong to the human species. But on the other hand, it cannot
be denied that there are, in fact, fundamental and violent attacks on human beings
causing damage to, or even loss of, dignity. People who are humiliated, debased,
exploited, discriminated, tortured or raped do not seem to be mistaken to describe
these vicious experiences as “violations” of their dignity. The philosophical ques-
tion then is: How is it possible to deprive someone of something that is inborn or
inalienable in principle? Or when it comes to the legal question of basic consti-
tutional rights: Why should something that we cannot lose anyway be protected
by the state and its authorities? If all human beings already have human dignity
in an inalienable way, why should state institutions have the compulsory task of
protecting it?
As it will be shown later, this puzzle rests on confusion between the ideas
of “possessing” and “protecting” human dignity. But in order to clarify this
246 A. Pollmann

puzzle we have to start with the historical roots of this confusion. As a brief
philosophical history of the term “human dignity” reveals (Menke and Pollmann
2007: ch. 5 and 6, Bayertz 1996, Wetz 2005), this history must be reconstructed
in at least four major steps – resulting in very different conceptions of human
dignity.
(a) Roman Antiquity: In Roman antiquity the Latin term “dignitas” was reserved
for high-ranking persons in public life bearing special responsibilities, gaining spe-
cial benefits or extraordinary accomplishments. Persons in exalted social positions
with very important functions or duties – like statesmen, politicians or generals –
were awarded a high reputation explaining not only their fame but also their dignity.
One will find this use of the term, for instance, in the writings of Cicero. Although
Cicero is also said to be the first author who talked of a very special kind of dignity
that all human beings seem to have in common (Cancik 2002), by far the most pop-
ular use of the term at that time singled out specific “dignitaries” from amongst the
masses.
(b) Christianity: It was Christian theology of the middle ages that explicitly gave
the term a universalistic shift. The ancient idea of a special dignity that only privi-
leged persons would have was generalized by transferring this idea to the exalted
role the human being was said to play in the realm of nature as the “pride of
god’s creation”. From now on, every human being just by being human – that
means despite all individual differences – was supposed to simply have a dignity on
divine, natural and metaphysical grounds, a dignity that other creatures in this world
would not have for only human beings were created in “god’s image” (Soulen and
Woodhead 2006).
(c) Early Modernity: In Italian Renaissance, especially with Pico della
Mirandola, and later with the Enlightenment movement, above all with Immanuel
Kant, this already universalized notion of dignity was more and more secularized by
“freeing” it from theological implications. Not that Pico or Kant were not Christian
in their religious beliefs, but their philosophy made an important distinction: They
were both convinced that as human beings we do not owe our dignity to the fact
that we reflect a divine splendor but because we ourselves are capable of something
great: of “reason” and “moral autonomy”. And therefore we are god-like and worthy
of exaltation (for Pico: Trinkaus 1995: ch. 10, for Kant: Hill 1992).
(d) After 1945: Things changed profoundly after 1945 – at least from a human
rights perspective. The hubris, or self-idolatry, of the renaissance and enlighten-
ment notion of humanistic dignity as quasi-godly autonomy was turned almost into
its opposite by the monstrous experiences of fascist barbarism and Stalinist terror.
Something must have been wrong with moral autonomy for something like this
to become possible. It was only then, after the Second World War, that what can
be called the human rights notion of dignity appeared: From now on, all human
beings were said to have special rights to the protection of their dignity, since total-
itarian inhumanity had proven the extreme violability of these rights and also the
fundamental fragility of human dignity – to the point of its total extermination.
It is primarily this notion of human dignity that we can find in the human rights
declarations and treaties adopted by the United Nations (UN) after 1945 (Menke
and Pollmann 2007: part III, Dicke 2002).
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 247

To say that it is “primarily” this notion of human dignity that was implemented
in the UN human rights treaties is to concede that the three former interpretations of
dignity are also still in use today. As we will see in the following part of this paper,
some interpreters still stick to the ancient particularistic notion of dignity, while
others are convinced that only theological groundings of dignity will work, whereas
a third group still relies on humanist or Kantian accounts (see, e.g., the discussions
in Bayertz 1996, Malpas and Lickiss 2007). Nevertheless, from a human rights per-
spective, a deep and fundamental break has to be bookmarked within the history of
dignity. European totalitarianism brought about a fundamental, decisive turn within
modern human rights thinking – a turn towards dignity. It was not until 1945 that,
what we can call, the political presence of human rights in the light of human dignity
began. It goes without saying that there had been philosophical reflections on both
human rights and human dignity before, but to state that they are intertwined is a
rather new idea (Menke 2007). For more than 200 years the human rights discourse
got along without the founding idea of dignity, whereas for more than 2000 years
the talk of dignity did not imply that the idea of equal rights could be derived from
it. It is the experience of a human catastrophe so monstrous that shocked the history
of both human rights and human dignity to its very foundations, and against which
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 is targeted (see Morsink
1999). In its preamble we are reminded of the “barbarous acts which have outraged
the conscience of mankind”. Therefore the global commitment to human dignity,
as well as the new international human rights regime, was grounded on some kind
248 A. Pollmann

of worldwide promise that things like this would never happen again (Johnson and
Simonides 1998).

17.3 Four Different Conceptions of Dignity

Following a discussion of a famous methodological essay by Walter Bryce Gallie

(1956), we have to differentiate between philosophical “concepts” and “concep-
tions”: Central terms like “truth”, “art”, “freedom” or “justice” stand for basic
philosophical notions (concepts) that are “essentially contested”, as Gallie says –
since we will always find many different and even disparate substantial interpre-
tations (conceptions) of these main philosophical ideas that the discussion will
not agree on. “Dignity” also seems to be such an essentially contested concept,
and, in direct accordance to the four stages of its history that we have just recon-
structed, there are at least four different conceptions of its substantial meaning. In
other words: There might already be an almost global consensus on the worth of
the “dignity” concept as such, but by far no common use of the term. This can
be demonstrated by referring to recent debates in bioethics on the dignity of the
human embryo (Beyleveld and Brownsword 2001, Stoecker 2003, Damschen and
Schönecker 2003, President’s Council on Bioethics 2008). These discussions have
been centered on two main sets of problems (Pollmann 2005): Firstly, who does in
fact count as a member of that group of beings who are supposed to already have
dignity as well as corresponding basic rights? Does every human being participate
in that group and from the very beginning? Or should we interpret dignity as some
sort of a salient feature that has to be accomplished and can only be ascribed to spe-
cial human beings that we call “persons”? Secondly, is it true that the term “dignity”
stands for an inalienable and “absolute” worth that cannot or must not be graded, a
worth that everyone has in exactly the same and equal way? That means, should we
really say that a 14-day old embryo has exactly the same human dignity as a grown-
up adult? Or can, or even must, we distinguish – legally and morally – between
different “degrees” of having dignity?
In the first set of questions we are confronted with the problem of distinguishing
between human beings in the “full” sense (persons) and “other” human forms of life,
where only the first may then have dignity. In the second set of questions, we have to
face the fact that the dignity of two different human beings could be accomplished
or realized only to a different degree or extent, even if every human being already –
without exception – would participate in human dignity from the very beginning. A
combination of these two sets of problems leads us to four different conceptions of
dignity. And somehow surprisingly,3 these four conceptions correspond directly to
the four main historical interpretations given above.

3 The explanation for this is quite simple: The three older conceptions have “survived” and are still
in common use today.
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 249

(a) Achievement: The first group of interpreters, often following a path-breaking

legal study on the sociological function of constitutional rights by Niklas Luhmann
(1965), seems to simply adopt the ancient use of the term by assuming that a person
can only be awarded dignity when she lives a public life worthy of social respect.
She has to play social “roles” and, therefore, gain the status of dignity as a kind
of earned merit. So dignity must be understood as deriving from social “achieve-
ments” that have to be made in social life, retained by certain social efforts and
defended against interpersonal offenses as well as self-inflicted forfeits (Brennan
and Lo 2007). From there it follows, firstly, that not all human beings can have dig-
nity, but only “persons” who can achieve this special status. So the human embryo
obviously does not belong to the group of those who possess dignity. And it fol-
lows, secondly, that all persons do not have dignity in exactly the same way, but
only “more or less” depending on the degree of factual achievement.

(b) Dowry: The opposite group of interpreters, which is indeed the biggest one,
is convinced that dignity is given from the very beginning of every human life and
in each case in exactly the same non-graded way. This assumption is grounded on a
premise, which was, and still is, characteristic of theological or metaphysical con-
ceptions of dignity: Grading different forms of life or periods of human development
must be forbidden since it would miss the divine, natural or metaphysical worth of
the human life form as such. Therefore, dignity has to be understood as some kind
of a gift or “dowry” by human nature – a natural gift that even the human embryo
can count on. Whether in a given case a theological, metaphysical, anthropological,
250 A. Pollmann

or even biological argument is presented, they all agree on the premise that every
human being has dignity from the very beginning and in exactly the same way – just
by being human (Lee and George 2008).
(c) Capacity: The third group of interpreters is influenced by, and committed to,
the Enlightenment notion of dignity. Not all human beings, but only persons with
a special property or “capacity” can have dignity. This position wants to draw a
morally significant line between certain “pre-forms” of human life, on the one hand,
and those stages of human development, on the other, in which typical characteris-
tics of human persons come into existence. In the Kantian tradition, for instance,
one might think of the capacity for moral rationality and autonomy (Shell 2008).
For other thinkers, less demanding properties are relevant: such as a “capacity to
suffer pain” or a “conscious interest in living” that a 12-week embryo might not
yet have (e.g. Hoerster 2002). This view explicitly denies that every human being
already has dignity “from the start”, but, nevertheless, when a human being becomes
a person, she also gets her full, non-graded dignity.
(d) Potential: The fourth group does agree with the second by assuming that,
indeed, every human being already participates in human dignity. But at the same
time it is conceded that we can differentiate between different degrees of its realiza-
tion. The central argument here is that although every human being – as a member
of humankind – has an individual “potential” to live a life in human dignity, the
question whether we really are able to fully unfold this potential or capability is
dependent upon the concrete circumstances of our life. In other words: How far
a human being will be able to actually realize his capability of dignity is always
dependent upon decent or humane life conditions (Pollmann 2005, Nussbaum
2008). Therefore, human beings live in dignity sometimes “more” and sometimes
“less”, and that is why human dignity should not be seen as a natural gift that
every one simply has and cannot lose anyway but rather as a fragile possibility,
a possibility of human flourishing (Kass 2008).

Dignity Accomplished Given

Graded Achievement (Roman Potential (after 1945)

antiquity)

Non-graded Capacity (early modernity) Dowry (Christianity)

17.4 Four Relations Between Dignity and Rights

All four epochal uses of the term “dignity” are in philosophical, but also common
use today. And depending on whether we interpret dignity as an achievement, a
dowry, a capacity or a potential, we seem to be led to different decisions: what
members of humankind will belong to the “inner circle” already possessing dig-
nity and also corresponding human rights? All human beings? Only persons? Not
all persons? What makes this decision even more complicated is the fact that the
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 251

conceptual relation between possessing human dignity, on the one hand, and claim-
ing corresponding human rights, on the other, is quiet unclear. The central question
here is: What particular philosophical role does human dignity play within the realm
of human rights? And the other way around: What exactly is the conceptual func-
tion of human rights for preserving human dignity? Constitutional and international
lawyers debating this question (Meyer and Parent 1992, Kretzmer and Klein 2002)
have shown that – again – four different alternatives must be distinguished when it
comes to explaining and interpreting this interrelation.
(a) The Ground of Human Rights: The first interpretation rests on the assump-
tion that the idea of dignity is the normative basis from which human rights can
be derived. Following this interpretation, dignity is not itself a human right but the
justificatory “ground” from which to deduce and proclaim concrete human rights.
It is because human beings have dignity or equal worth that they also have special
human rights (Gewirth 1982). So dignity must be understood as a presupposition for
having human rights – as their necessary, but also sufficient condition. And human
rights are indispensable imperatives deriving from human dignity. For that reason,
human dignity and human rights must be seen as two sides of the same coin: A per-
son has either both of them or she has none. Yet still dignity and rights are not the
same since the role of dignity for having concrete rights is about the same as that of
the foundations of a house on which its walls rest and rely upon (see Dicke 2002).
252 A. Pollmann

(b) A Special Human Right: Following a second interpretation, human dignity

should not be taken as primordially grounding the idea of human rights but rather as
a right in itself – even though a very special one – for this right tells the legal system
what the most important human good is that needs protection in constitutional and
international law (see Benda 2000). This can be seen as a historical insight due to
the barbarism of the twentieth century: However important all the other rights may
seem – like rights to liberty and security, to freedom of speech and religion, or even
to life – they are all of less importance compared to the top-priority right to the
protection of dignity. Therefore, dignity should not be seen as the “first” reference
point to human rights but rather as their “last”: Whatever state authority might do
to its citizens, whatever reasons there might be to restrict or even suspend one or
the other basic legal claim, there is at least one human right that simply must not be
violated in any way – and that is the right to have one’s own human dignity protected
(Klein 2002).
(c) Dignity as the Sum of Human Rights: The third interpretation takes the notion
of dignity as the aggregate or “sum” of human rights. For the latter are taken as
simply spelling out in detail what it would mean to live a life in dignity. In con-
sequence, the Universal Declaration is to be interpreted as a “list” of necessary
aspects of human dignity. Or to put it differently: If you had an idea of the real-
ization of human rights, you would at the same time have a detailed picture of a
life in dignity. Both would not just be two sides of the same coin, but strictly the
same: Dignity is the sum of human rights. This interpretation goes along with a
provocative reading of the relation between dignity and rights. However rich in tra-
dition and well-established the term “dignity” might be, as a legal reference point
it is dispensable or even superfluous for it does not add anything to the idea of
human rights (Macklin 2003). There is nothing more to the idea of human dignity
than human rights – and the other way around – and that is why the older human
rights declarations of the eighteenth century were able to get along without dignity
(Maritain 1943).
(d) Dignity as the Purpose of Human Rights: The fourth interpretation starts by
sharing important intuitions of the three others. Similar to the first one, it states
that dignity is the decisive normative reference point in relation to human rights,
but like the second interpretation, it also claims that the protection of dignity is a
right in itself that claims something special. In addition, it indeed follows the third
interpretation by conceding that human rights could get along without the notion
of dignity; it could, but then, it is said, we would no longer stick to the specific
and contemporary interpretation of human rights after 1945 – as a constitutional,
but also international law shield against arbitrary rule and totalitarianism (Menke
2007). As a result, the historical commitment to human dignity that we can find in
the relevant legal documents should be seen as some sort of a “second preamble” or
as the explicit reason, why we proclaim all other human rights today: as necessary
legal conditions for living a life in dignity.4 In consequence, human dignity is the
goal or “purpose” of human rights. And in accordance with the fourth conception of

4 This should not be confused with the central, but somehow opposite, premise of the first
interpretation, that human dignity is the necessary condition for human rights.
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 253

dignity mentioned above, the realization of human rights would help the realization
of a human potential to dignity (Pollmann 2005, Nussbaum 2008, Kass 2008).

17.5 Embodied Self-Respect

In each part of this chapter, four different alternatives have been presented concern-
ing the historical roots (17.2) substantive meaning (17.3) and legal function (17.4)
of human dignity. In each case I will follow the fourth interpretation:5 First, I adopt
the historical postwar view that the common use of the dignity notion profoundly
and decisively changed with the year 1945. I then assume that human dignity should
be seen as a potential that needs to be carried out and realized. And for that reason,
human rights shall be seen as implemented with the purpose of legally protecting
this fragile potential for human flourishing. But even if the reader were to unre-
sistingly follow me in that, a question remains: Do we already have an answer to
the central philosophical question of what the special content of human dignity is?
Or to put it differently: What exactly is shown or portrayed in the photographs by
Pfannmüller and Klein (2008) reproduced here?
Let us consider more precisely the argument that I have just sketched: That
human rights are meant to guarantee the legal preconditions of human dignity obvi-
ously means more than just the protection of “mere” living. As cynical as it may
sound, arbitrary imprisonment (Chapter 10), bonded labor (Chapter 14), extreme
forms of humiliation (Chapters 3 and 4), rape (Chapter 9) and even torture (Chapter
8) can be in accordance with bare survival or viability. Human rights call for life
of a “higher” quality. And it is exactly this higher form of life that is suggested
by the idea of a human life “in dignity”. Still, what is the concrete substance of
that idea? The postwar notion of human dignity sketched above rests on the uni-
versalistic assumption that simply every human being, from whatever country or
culture she may come or whichever language she speaks, is a highly vulnerable
being that is dependent on the legal and social protection of her dignity. And as long
as we – from whatever country or culture we might come or whichever language we
speak – all use the term “human”6 for identifying certain rights and a certain dignity
as universal, we presuppose common human characteristics, claims and also inter-
ests in moral respect and legal protection that help us justify corresponding rights
(Höffe 2007: part 3). For that reason, we should now focus on the question of what
kind of common characteristics, claims and interests we can universally presuppose.
For there must be certain or typical human traits and interests that give us reason to
speak of a dignity of the “human” being. But what particular features might these
be? A number of potential characteristics, claims, and interests are listed below. The
ascending order of these potential candidates reflects the extent to which they are
contested in contemporary debates on dignity. The notion of dignity as “embodied
self-respect” that I will propose should bring all those characteristics, claims, and
interests together. Although I cannot go into detail here, I believe that all of these are
important common features when it comes to a substantial picture of human dignity.

5 What I cannot demonstrate here is that every other combination seems possible but less plausible.
6 Although, of course, in different languages.
254 A. Pollmann

(a) Basic Characteristic: When we first ask for the primordial or basic charac-
teristic that makes us all count as actual, or at least as potential, holders of human
dignity, one response is simply the fact of being human as such. The almost trivial
premise is therefore: Our mere belonging to the human species7 is, by definition,
already sufficient to qualify us, at least potentially, as the owners of human dig-
nity and, therefore, as addressees of human rights protection. In other words: Being
human “by nature” is enough to be a possible candidate for human dignity (Lee and
George 2008).
(b) Equality: It is not just the simple fact of being human that makes us count as
candidates for dignity but the normative claim that we all should count as human
beings in the same way. Critics of that claim could indeed be convinced that,
although we are all human beings, some of us might still be of different moral
worth: e.g. if men were of higher value than women; if believers would count
more than atheists; if adults were of more worth than embryos, etc. But the notion
of human dignity seems to imply the opposite as it is closely connected to the
idea of “equality” (Menke and Pollmann 2007: ch. 6) – either in the sense of an

7 Some animals might also have dignity, but, by definition, no human dignity.
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 255

equal possession of human dignity or at least in the sense of an equal right to its
protection.8
(c) Respect: The distinctive form of social recognition that we claim to be enti-
tled to when we mutually adjudge moral or legal equality to other persons, we call
“respect” (see the discussion in: Dillon 1995). From this it follows that social respect
is egalitarian from the beginning and should be terminologically distinguished from
“esteem” due to individual and special efforts or personal achievements (Honneth
1995: part II). When a person sees herself respected as an “equal beneath equals”
she is treated decently or in a humane way; that means treated as a being of equal
worth and from human “flesh and blood” – and not as a mere thing, machine or
animal (Margalit 1996: part II).
(d) Self-Respect: From the experience of mutual respect may result a very special
form of personal self-relation that is of vital importance for the idea of dignity. This
kind of self-relation reflects equal social recognition into the “inner world”. And we
usually call this particular form of incorporated social appreciation “self-respect”.
Persons gain self-respect in social relations if they feel convinced that they are really
equal beneath equals; that they are – as human beings – exactly of the same worth
as every other human being (Margalit 1996, Statman 2000).
(e) Expression of Self-Respect: Whereas self-respect is first and foremost an inner
self-relation, people want to authentically express or “embody” self-respect in social
life. What counts here as a representative expression of self-respect is mainly the
outward appearance of a person or how she acts and behaves in public; a behaviour
that can obviously be sometimes more and sometimes less in accordance with her
inner conviction of equal worth (see Spaemann 1987). What other people do ascribe
to this person, if they ascribe incorporated self-respect, is “dignified demeanor”,
“spine” or an “upright posture”. And it is in this respect that people sometimes
complain that a particular person has lost or “forfeited” her own dignity by acts of
self-degradation (Kass 2008).
(f) Vulnerability: It is this very important fact that people want to express and
embody self-respect in public life that makes them assailable and vulnerable. People
need decent life conditions to live a life in dignity (Margalit 1996, Nussbaum
2008). So if people “vegetate” in deep inhuman or derogatory circumstances, such
as involuntary pain, poverty, slavery or tyranny, how can they maintain their self-
respect? How should a person even gain – far less express – her self-respect in
social life if her existence is devastating or if other people “kick” her although
she is already down? Typical forms of such disrespect are called “discrimination”,
“instrumentalization”, “debasement”, and above all “humiliation” (Statman 2000).9
If we sum up these six important characteristics, we see quite a disturbing picture:
Although the protection of human dignity can be seen as a universal good that is in
all human being’s interest, just because we are human (a) and, furthermore, equally
human (b), this human interest in protection of dignity can only be satisfied if other

8I will come back to this crucial difference in the last part of this paper.
9 See also the contributions to Part I of this volume.
256 A. Pollmann

people do respect our equal worth as human beings (c). Moreover, this interest will
only be fully satisfied if the person in question is guided by a strong feeling of
self-respect (d) and when she is capable of expressing and embodying self-respect
in public life (e). That again presupposes that she must have adequate and decent
life conditions so that a life in dignity – one in “embodied self-respect” – becomes
available (f). This quite complex conception of dignity might seem disturbing, since
it appears to imply the assumption that human dignity might be some kind of an
“attitude” based on self-respect. Accomplishing and keeping dignity would also be
an undertaking of one’s own responsibility. But that is in fact the way human dignity
should be seen: A concrete loss of dignity can be the result of social disrespect or
humiliation, but finally, as I will show in the next two steps, it has to be interpreted
as a lack or absence of self-respect.

(g) Personal Responsibility: Although other people as well as state authorities are
obliged to respect our dignity, it is obvious that they often do not do so, and then it
comes to minor or major attacks on our self-respect. Being confronted with devas-
tating life conditions, it might sometimes be hard to uphold our dignity, but however
vigorous or serious these attacks might be, it is almost never strictly impossible to
resist them (Margalit 1996). Even under tyranny, torture or in the Nazi concentra-
tion camps, some people have been able to withstand humiliation and to keep their
embodied self-respect and, therefore, their dignity.10 From this it follows: Whether
we keep or lose our dignity is – at least also – due to our ability and power to
preserve it (Pollmann 2005, Spaemann 1987).

10 Ina TV interview, a holocaust survivor once answered the question of how she managed to
survive the concentration camp as follows: “Because I never lost my dignity.”
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 257

(h) Lacking Causality: Therefore, we have to concede that there are no simple
causal or “automatic” relations between interpersonal attacks on human dignity
and its factual loss. People might often be victims of massive assaults and rights
violations, and there is always a high risk of losing dignity due to a withholding
of recognition. Human rights violations are human rights violations because they
attack our self-respect.11 Nevertheless, no other person will be able to completely
deprive us of our dignity as long as we do not give up our self-respect. Here we find
the truth of the stipulation in Article 1 of the German Basic Law: “The dignity of
the human being is untouchable”. Embodied self-respect cannot be lost if we refuse
to give it up. In the end, we all have to keep our own dignity, and however cruel it
may sound, our dignity cannot be stolen without some kind of forced “cooperation”,
since, for the humiliation to be effective, people somehow have to “agree” that they
themselves are not of equal worth (Margalit 1996: ch. 7). To put it briefly: There is
no loss of dignity without a loss of embodied self-respect (Pollmann 2005).
At this point we have to avoid a misunderstanding that seems likely: The argu-
ment just sketched does not imply that the victims themselves are in part – let alone
completely – to blame for their loss of dignity. Although they have to contribute to
its preservation, it is not their “fault” if they lose their self-respect due to aggres-
sive assaults by others. For psychological, social, or physical reasons, some persons
might simply have more strength or mental power than others to preserve their
self-respect (see Honneth 1995). This, of course, does not mean that these persons
themselves are fully “in charge” of safeguarding their own dignity. It is true that a
person will only be able to live a life in dignity if aggressive others do not affect the
quality of her life so seriously that a loss of self-respect becomes inevitable. Acts of
disrespect, discrimination, or humiliation are still vicious threats to personal dignity
since they constrain the social leeway of a life in embodied self-respect (Spaemann
1987).

17.6 Possessing and Protecting Dignity

Every human being can be regarded as equal insofar as we can presuppose that
they all have the same fundamental human interest to live a life in dignity. But at
the same time, people are different in the extent to which they are able to factually
realize their potential for embodied self-respect. Therefore, we must concede that
not all human beings – and not even all persons – will have full dignity, but, as
equal human beings, all participate in human dignity and will have corresponding
interests in legal protection. At this point, a decisive but often ignored difference
has to be marked: We have to distinguish between the problem of whether people
actually possess dignity and to what extent from the related, but divergent, question

11 Although most of the contributions to this volume will not really share this double assumption
of “personal responsibility” and “lacking causality”, most of the violations that are discussed here
can still be reconstructed as attacks on self-respect.
258 A. Pollmann

of whether we all have exactly the same rights to its protection. In the end, such
dignity rights only become reasonable and meaningful as human rights if we strictly
distinguish between these two aspects. But why is that?
From reasons I have sketched in the third part of this chapter, human rights should
be seen as legal guarantees or shields for human dignity, for the latter is not the pri-
mordial “ground” for human rights but their aspired “purpose”. Human rights, it was
said, shall allow us space to live an upright life in embodied self-respect – without
discrimination, degradation, humiliation, etc. All human beings already participate
in that potential for embodied self-respect, but not all human beings are allowed to
fully realize it. That is why all need human rights. In other words: Since human
dignity is a fragile good, it is dependent on legal protection, and claiming universal
human rights simply means that everybody should have the opportunity to live in
embodied self-respect – at least as best as possible.12 We can presume, by proxy,
that all human beings, even if they are not seen to count as “persons”, do have a vital
interest in humane and decent social treatment, and that is why we can also presume
a common or universal interest in the legal conditions for realizing dignity – as long
as the latter is taken as a capability for embodied self-respect that all human beings
want to make the most of.
This human rights conception of dignity as a human potential combines plausible
intuitions of the three other conceptions – achievement, dowry, personal capacity –
by avoiding their particular disadvantages; what is in fact convincing about the
achievement-conception is the premise that human dignity has to be accomplished
and realized in real life. But it would be wrong to assume that people themselves
are fully responsible for the respect or merits they obtain in public life. In contrast,
most violations of dignity are the result of vicious treatment by others, which the
achievement-conception misses. The correct intuition of the dowry-conception is
the claim that all human beings have an equal worth just by being human – an equal
worth that we cannot deprive them of by any plausible or compelling reasons. But
this claim to equality is not itself what we call the dignity of the human being, for the
latter would mean a life in which equal respect could be individually expressed and
literally embodied in social life. Finally, a reasonable observation of the capacity-
conception is the fact that, predominantly, those who are persons will have the best
chance of realizing their potential to embodied self-respect. However, the conclusion
that, therefore, only persons could reclaim corresponding rights would be misguided
and wrong. For people who already live a life in full dignity might need those rights
least of all.

12 Although I cannot go into detail here, this means something different for grown-up adults,
embryos, the mentally-ill, disabled, comatose or even dead people. That is why the popular, but
wrong claim that all these human beings are “born” with the same dignity should be reinterpreted
as a normative claim about the opportunities all human beings should have, not as a description of
what capacities they actually have (Brennan and Lo 2007).
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 259

This important point helps us to avoid a second major misunderstanding that can
be called the “ought-implies-can-fallacy”. That would be the mistaken view that a
person can only have certain rights to the protection of her dignity, if, and only if,
she can effectively use these rights. From this false perspective it would then fol-
low that, for instance, embryos, the mentally-ill, comatose, or dying people would
not posses rights, e.g. to freedom of expression, movement, peaceful assembly or
political participation. But why should that be the necessary consequence? Let us
consider a concrete counter-example and think of a healthy adult who is kept impris-
oned in her own house by a tyrannical spouse. She will not have the chance to give
her vote on Sunday’s federal election, that is true, but would one say that she there-
fore does not have a human right to vote? Of course not. She does have this right.
Its possession is completely independent from her actual capability to use it. And
so it is in general: All human beings simply have these rights just by being human –
and this goes in particular for those who are “not yet” (like embryos), “not at the
moment” (like comatose or imprisoned), not “fully” (like the mentally-ill), or “not
anymore” (like the dying) able to live a life in dignity and fully use corresponding
rights.
This leads us to a solution to the terminological contradiction I started with:
Why should the legal system declare the protection of something that human beings
cannot lose anyway? One should not make the mistake of extrapolating from uni-
versal and categorical human rights – which indeed all human beings have just by
being human – to a likewise universal and categorical possession of dignity. Instead,
every human being has human rights because we are all deeply vulnerable and able
to realize and embody our dignity only to different extents. We can even lose our
self-respect and dignity, so legal protection is needed particularly where the dignity
of a human being is in acute or severe danger. Once again: Not all human beings,
260 A. Pollmann

and not even all persons, have full dignity, but due to the moral and also political
claim13 that they should all count as legally equal, they all have the same univer-
sal rights, which have to be respected, protected and fulfilled. To state it briefly:
Because human beings do not already have equal human dignity, they all have equal
human rights.

References
Bayertz, Kurt. 1996. Human dignity: Philosophical origin and scientific erosion of an idea. In
Sanctity of life and human dignity, ed. Kurt Bayertz, 73–90. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
Benda, Ernst. 2000. The protection of human dignity: Article 1 of the Basic Law. SMU Law Review
53: 443–453.
Beyleveld, Deryck, and Roger Brownsword. 2001. Human dignity in bioethics and biolaw.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Brennan, Andrew, and Yeuk-Sze Lo. 2007. Two concepts of dignity: Honour and self-
determination. In Perspectives on human dignity: A conversation, eds. Jeff Malpas and Norelle
Lickiss, 43–58. Dordrecht: Springer.
Cancik, Hubert. 2002. ‘Dignity of Man’ and ‘Persona’ in stoic anthropology: Some remarks on
cicero, De Officiis 1 105–7. In The concept of human dignity in human rights discourse, eds.
David Kretzmer and Eckart Klein, 19–39. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Damschen, Gregor and Dieter Schönecker, eds. 2003. Der moralische Status menschlicher
Embryonen: Pro und contra Spezies-, Kontinuums-, Identitäts- und Potentialitätsargument.
New York, NY: de Gruyter.
Dicke, Klaus. 2002. The founding function of human dignity in the universal declaration of human
rights. In The concept of human dignity in human rights discourse, eds. David Kretzmer and
Eckart Klein, 111–112. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Dillon, Robin S., ed. 1995. Dignity, character, and self-respect. New York, NY: Routledge.
Gallie, Walter Bryce. 1956. Essentially contested concepts. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
56: 167–198.
Gewirth, Alan. 1982. Human rights: Essays on justification and applications. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Hill, Thomas E. 1992. Dignity and practical reason in Kant’s moral theory. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Höffe, Otfried. 2007. Democracy in an age of globalisation. Dordrecht: Springer.
Hoerster, Norbert. 2002. Ethik des Embryonenschutzes: Ein rechtsphilosophischer Essay. Stuttgart:
Reclam.
Honneth, Axel. 1995. The struggle for recognition: The moral grammar of social conflicts.
Cambridge, MA: Polity.
Johnson, M. Glen, and Simonides, Janusz. 1998. The universal declaration of human rights: A
history of its creation and implementation 1948–1998. Paris: UNESCO.
Klein, Eckart. 2002. Human dignity in German law. In The concept of human dignity in human
rights discourse, eds. David Kretzmer and Eckart Klein, 145–160. New York, NY: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Kretzmer, David and Eckart Klein, eds. 2002. The concept of human dignity in human rights
discourse. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

13 For
a discussion of the central philosophical problems of further justifying this fundamental
human rights claim see Menke and Pollmann (2007: ch. 2).
17 Embodied Self-Respect and the Fragility of Human Dignity 261

Lee, Patrick, and Robert P. George. 2008. The nature and basis of human dignity. In Human dig-
nity and bioethics, ed. President’s Council on Bioethics, 409–433. http://www.bioethics.gov/
reports/human_dignity/human_dignity_and_bioethics.pdf. Accessed 13 Jun 2009.
Leon R. Kass. 2008. Defending human dignity. Human dignity and bioethics, ed.
President’s Council on Bioethics, 333–349. http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/
human_dignity_and_bioethics.pdf. Accessed 13 Jun 2009.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1965. Grundrechte als Institution: Ein Beitrag zur politischen Soziologie. Berlin:
Duncker & Humblot.
Macklin, Ruth. 2003. Dignity is a useless concept. British Medical Journal 327:
1419–1420.
Margalit, Avishai. 1996. The decent society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Maritain, Jacques. 1943. The rights of man and natural law. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.
Menke, Christoph. 2007. From the dignity of man to human dignity: The subject of rights. In
Values and norms in the age of globalization, ed. Ewa Czerwinska-Schupps, 83–94. Franfurt,
Main: Lang.
Menke, Christoph, and Arnd Pollmannn. 2007. Philosophie der Menschenrechte. Zur Einführung,
Hamburg: Junius.
Meyer, Michael J. and William A. Parent, eds. 1992. The constitution of rights: Human dignity and
American values. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Morsink, Johannes. 1999. The universal declaration of human rights: Origins, drafting, and intent.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2008. Human dignity and political entitlements. In Human dignity
and bioethics, ed. President’s Council on Bioethics. http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/
human_dignity/human_dignity_and_bioethics.pdf. Accessed 13 Jun 2009.
Pfannmüller, Günter, and Wilhelm Klein. 2008. Unantastbar. Von der Würde des Menschen.
Frankfurt, Main: Zweitausendeins.
Pollmann, Arnd. 2005. Menschenwürde nach Maß. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53:
611–619.
Shell, Susan M. 2008. Kant’s concept of human dignity as a resource for bioethics. Human dig-
nity and bioethics, ed. President’s Council on Bioethics, 333–349. http://www.bioethics.gov/
reports/human_dignity/human_dignity_and_bioethics.pdf. Accessed 13 Jun 2009.
Soulen, R. Kendall and Linda Woodhead, eds. 2006. God and human dignity. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans.
Spaemann, Robert. 1987. Über den Begriff der Menschenwürde. In Das Natürliche und das
Vernünftige, 77–106. München: Piper.
Statman, Daniel. 2000. Humiliation, dignity and self-respect. Philosophical Psychology 13,
523–540.
Stoecker, Ralf, ed. 2003. Menschenwürde: Annäherung an einen Begriff. Wien: Öbv & Hpt.
Tiedemann, Paul. 2007. Menschenwürde als Rechtsbegriff. Eine philosophische Klärung. Berlin:
BWV.
Trinkaus, Charles Edward. 1995. ‘In our image and likeness’: Humanity and divinity in Italian
humanist thought. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Wetz, Franz Josef. 2005. Illusion Menschenwürde: Aufstieg und Fall eines Grundwerts. Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta.
Index

A and positive approach (positive account),

Agamben, Giorgio, 89, 96, 144–146 41, 220
Agency, 4, 40, 49, 53, 87, 89–90, 95, 109, 113, social, 33, 35, 68, 70, 80–82, 152
202, 204, 210, 219, 228 traditional Kantian account of (Kant),
Améry, Jean, 15, 146, 156, 203 240
Autonomy, 11, 34, 39–41, 44, 46–47, 49, 53, Discrimination, 33, 51, 54, 73, 120–122,
78–79, 82, 90–93, 95, 108–110, 119, 124–125, 134, 140, 177–178, 196, 255
121, 125, 130–131, 163, 225, 231, 236, Disrespect, 41, 49–50, 54, 143, 160, 226, 233,
240, 246, 250 255–257
Dworkin, Ronald, 10, 74, 77, 82, 175–176
B
Basic goods, 154, 157, 159–160, 162–165, 169 E
Body, 10, 38, 50–51, 53, 85–96, 104, 126, Embodiment, 86, 88, 94–96, 195, 244–245,
145–146, 199, 239 253–257
Butler, Judith, 37–38, 45–46, 48, 54, 137 Equality/inequality, 35, 50, 68, 80, 82,
119–122, 130, 161, 165–168, 179, 195,
C 204, 218–219, 254–255, 258
Community, 77, 86–89, 92–93, 96, 114–115, European Convention on Human Rights
124–125, 137–138, 141, 144–146, (ECHR), 68–75, 124, 126
185–187, 193–198, 200–202, 204–209 Exclusion, 44, 48, 53–54, 86–89, 91, 96,
Concentration camps, 15, 40, 45, 88–91, 93, 133–148, 170
139, 143–145, 202–203, 256
Corporeality, 50, 53, 85, 91, 94–95 F
Cruelty, 15, 48, 53, 108, 143 Freedom, 38–41, 44, 46, 53, 78–79, 121,
176–177, 179, 187, 192–193, 198–199,
D 201–205, 225
Debasement, 74–75, 140–143, 145, 147
Decency, 9, 162–163, 166–168, 170 G
Degradation, 67–83, 91, 140–143, 147, 198, Gewirth, Alan, 10, 113, 218, 226, 251
200–201, 203–204, 207, 209, 255 Goffman, Erving, 16, 134
Degrading treatment/punishment, see Group humiliation, 22–27, 29–32, 34–35
Degradation
Dehumanization, 22, 34, 71, 85–96, 106, 135, H
143–145 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 38–46,
Dignity 48, 51
and inductive turn, inductive approach, Honneth, Axel, 23, 41–43, 49, 54, 112, 134,
11–13, 216–217 140, 166, 255, 257
and negative turn, negative approach, 2, Honor, 27, 32–33, 41, 43–44, 50–51, 54, 119,
10–11, 47 125

P. Kaufmann et al. (eds.), Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization, 263

Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy 24, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9661-6,

C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
264 Index

Human being, 8, 22, 27, 29–30, 32–34, 38–41, 113, 135, 140, 143, 145, 147, 153,
43, 68, 74, 80, 82, 88, 92–96, 131, 165–166, 168–169, 216, 255–257
135, 137, 140, 144–147, 152, 176, 192, Misrecognition, 41, 52, 54, 133–148
199, 202–204, 216–220, 232, 244–246,
248–251, 253–260 N
Humanity, 8, 33, 40, 86–88, 93, 95–96, National Socialism, 11–12, 40, 45, 54, 86,
135–138, 143, 145, 202, 232–235 88–90, 135, 139, 143–147, 153, 202,
Human rights 256
and group rights, 25, 32 Nazism, see National Socialism
and private life, 120–121, 124–125, 131 Nobility/universal nobility, 8, 13–14, 16, 82
of women, 119–132 Nussbaum, Martha, 10, 71, 77, 162–163, 223,
Humiliation, 21–35, 37–54, 71, 74–78, 89, 250, 253, 255
91–92, 125–126, 129, 135, 140,
143–148, 153, 167–171, 195, 198, 206, O
208, 255–258 Objectification, 89, 91–92, 94, 96
Humiliation, collective (collectives), 22, 26,
29, 32 P
Pain, 15, 47–48, 52–53, 86, 91–94, 104–107,
I 114, 123–125, 127, 147, 152–154, 250,
Identity, 15, 27–30, 41–42, 54, 87, 90–91, 93, 255
121–122, 134–135, 138, 142, 165, 169, Person preservation, 236
191–210 Poverty, absolute, 33, 51–52, 151–157,
Individuality, 87, 91, 136, 138, 142–143, 147, 160–165, 168
201 Poverty, relative, 33, 51–52, 151–152, 156,
Inhuman, see Dehumanization 159–171
Inhuman treatment/punishment, see Power, 40, 52–53, 73, 86, 91, 94, 105,
Degradation 110–111, 113, 131, 136–142, 186–187,
Instrumentalization, 57–65, 224, 255 197–198, 203, 205–206, 209, 256–257
Insult, 24, 27–30, 32, 34, 44–46, 50, 54, 60, Powerlessness, 44, 53, 91, 105, 108, 201,
88, 105–106, 140–143, 147, 200, 204 207–208
International human rights jurisprudence, Private/public, 131
120–121
R
Rank/equal rank, 8, 13–14, 46, 68, 70, 80–82,
K 195, 218, 222, 246
Kant, Immanuel, 1, 8–11, 13, 34, 39–40, Rape, 26, 30, 45, 93, 113, 119–132, 155, 196,
59, 61, 95, 173, 220, 224, 231–235, 200, 207
239–240, 246 Rawls, John, 77, 161, 166–167
Raz, Joseph, 23, 78–79, 165
L Recognition, 23, 33, 38, 41–54, 90–91, 93–96,
Labor 112, 133–148, 157, 202, 255, 257
bonded, 176, 181, 191–210 Respect, 15, 22, 26–30, 32–35, 39–44, 46–47,
exploitation, 173–188 58–60, 67, 71–72, 74, 81, 96, 109,
forced, 89, 91, 174, 176–178, 181–183, 151–157, 160–163, 180, 183, 221–223,
193 226–228, 232–240, 243–260
standards, 174–176, 178–180, 182, 184,
187–188, 194 S
Levi, Primo, 89–91, 144, 203 Scanlon, Thomas, 61, 112, 157, 238
Loss of humanity, see Dehumanization Scarry, Elaine, 52–53, 89, 91–94, 109, 147
Luhmann, Niklas, 14–15, 249 Self (the)
-alienation, 192, 198–201
M -control, 24, 27, 44, 53
Margalit, Avishai, 2, 15–16, 22–23, 27, 32–33, -esteem, 42–43, 145, 153, 169–170, 185,
41–43, 47–48, 50–51, 53–54, 76–77, 202, 205–206, 208
Index 265

-respect, 15, 22, 27–30, 32–33, 42–43, 46, To use people merely as a means, see
48, 151–157, 160–163, 168–171, 199, Instrumentalization
203, 243–260
Sen, Amartya, 161–162, 169, 188 U
Shame, 15, 45, 89, 125, 202–204, 207–210 Using poeple, see Instrumentalization
Shoah, 145
Singer, Peter, 152, 162, 218–219 V
Slavery, 40, 91, 113, 116, 173, 175–177, Value (preeminent), 231, 236
180–182, 192–193, 203, 255 Violence, 37–38, 48, 51–53, 89–90, 93, 96,
Social death, 45–46, 54, 133, 146 105, 120–122, 124, 127, 129–131,
Status (social or moral), 11, 14, 23, 58–59, 146–147, 155, 181–182, 194, 205
63–65, 68, 82, 96, 137, 192, 195–197, Vulnerability, 37–54, 95, 127, 145, 173, 182,
204, 216, 219–224, 228, 233, 240, 249 223, 255
Struggle to death, 38–41, 44, 46, 51
T W
Torture, 1, 4, 12, 15, 31–32, 37, 48, 50–53, 67, Waldron, Jeremy, 14, 75, 81–82, 114, 218
69, 71, 80, 86–87, 89, 91–96, 101–116, Worth (inherent), 215, 220–221, 245
119–128, 131, 147, 153, 156, 221, 253
To treat people merely as a means, see Y
Instrumentalization Young, Iris Marion, 169–170