human dignity rights and the common good essay

Human Rights and Common Good: Introduction

John M. Finnis, HUMAN RIGHTS AND COMMON GOOD: COLLECTED ESSAYS VOLUME III, Oxford: OUP, 2011

Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 29/2011

Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper No. 11-32

17 Pages Posted: 24 May 2011 Last revised: 19 Aug 2011

John Finnis

University of Oxford

Date Written: February 24, 2011

This Introduction to my Human Rights and Common Good: Collected Essays Volume III (Oxford University Press 2011), published in the United Kingdom in early April, and in the United States in early May 2011, introduces the volume’s 22 published and unpublished essays, and follows the volume’s division into six Parts: Human Rights and Common Good: General Theory; Justice and Punishment; War and Justice; Autonomy, Euthanasia, and Justice; Abortion, IVF, and Justice; and Marriage, Justice, and the Common Good. The first half of the Introduction is, in effect, a brief new essay on the general theoretical issues involved in human rights and in laws and other articulations of such rights. After a discussion of conceptual issues, the argument moves to a vindication of rights against sceptical doubts about them. This involves an extension of the Introduction to Volume II, by a revisiting of what is involved in one’s unity and identity as a human person. Indeed, the Introduction, like the volume, intersects with the Introductions to, and contents of, each of the other volumes in the five-volume set, which is published just before the second edition of Natural Law and Natural Rights, reformatted to accompany the set and incorporating a 65-page Postscript. The Collected Essays are I Reason in Action, II Intention and Identity, III Human Rights and Common Good, IV Philosophy of Law, V Religion and Public Reasons. Each volume includes the index for the set, and the author’s bibliography.

Keywords: philosophy of law, moral and political philosophy, theology, religious ethics, Catholic Church

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

John M. Finnis (Contact Author)

University of oxford ( email ).

University College Oxford, OX1 4BH United Kingdom

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The Common Good

In ordinary political discourse, the “common good” refers to those facilities—whether material, cultural or institutional—that the members of a community provide to all members in order to fulfill a relational obligation they all have to care for certain interests that they have in common. Some canonical examples of the common good in a modern liberal democracy include: the road system; public parks; police protection and public safety; courts and the judicial system; public schools; museums and cultural institutions; public transportation; civil liberties, such as the freedom of speech and the freedom of association; the system of property; clean air and clean water; and national defense. The term itself may refer either to the interests that members have in common or to the facilities that serve common interests. For example, people may say, “the new public library will serve the common good” or “the public library is part of the common good”.

As a philosophical concept, the common good is best understood as part of an encompassing model for practical reasoning among the members of a political community. The model takes for granted that citizens stand in a “political” or “civic” relationship with one another and that this relationship requires them to create and maintain certain facilities on the grounds that these facilities serve certain common interests. The relevant facilities and interests together constitute the common good and serve as a shared standpoint for political deliberation. [ 1 ] When citizens face various questions about legislation, public policy or social responsibility, they resolve these questions by appeal to a conception of the relevant facilities and the relevant interests. That is, they argue about what facilities have a special claim on their attention, how they should expand, contract or maintain existing facilities, and what facilities they should design and build in the future.

The common good is an important concept in political philosophy because it plays a central role in philosophical reflection about the public and private dimensions of social life. Let’s say that “public life” in a political community consists of a shared effort among members to maintain certain facilities for the sake of common interests. “Private life” consists of each member’s pursuit of a distinct set of personal projects. As members of a political community, we are each involved in our community’s public life and in our own private lives, and this raises an array of questions about the nature and scope of each of these enterprises. For example, when are we supposed to make decisions based on the common good? Most of us would agree that we are required to do so when we act as legislators or civil servants. But what about as journalists, corporate executives or consumers? More fundamentally, why should we care about the common good? What would be wrong with a community whose members withdraw from public life and focus exclusively on their own private lives? These are some of the questions that motivate philosophical discussions of the common good.

This article reviews the philosophical literature, covering various points of agreement among traditional conceptions of the common good, such as those favored by Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, J.J. Rousseau, Adam Smith, G.W.F. Hegel, John Rawls and Michael Walzer. It also covers some important disagreements, especially the disagreement between “communal” and “distributive” views. It concludes by considering three important topics in the literature: democracy, communal sharing, and competitive markets. In order to understand the issues, it is helpful to start by distinguishing the common good from various notions of the good that play a prominent role in welfare economics and welfare consequentialist accounts of political morality.

1. First Contrast: Welfare Consequentialism

2. second contrast: public goods, 3. why does political philosophy need this concept defects in a “private society”, 4.1 a shared standpoint for practical reasoning, 4.2 a set of common facilities, 4.3 a privileged class of common interests, 4.4 a solidaristic concern, 4.5 a nonaggregative concern, 5. common interests (i): joint activity, 6. common interests (ii): private individuality, 7. the common good perspective: communal or distributive, 8. the common good in politics: democracy and collective decision-making, 9. the common good in civic life: burden sharing and resource pooling, 10. markets, competition and the invisible hand, 11. conclusion: social justice and the common good, other internet resources, related entries.

The common good belongs to a family of concepts that relate to goodness rather than rightness (Sidgwick 1874). What makes the common good different from other concepts in this family is that it is a notion of the good that is understood to be internal to the requirements of a social relationship. In any community, the common good consists of the facilities and interests that members have a special obligation to care about in virtue of the fact that they stand in a certain relationship with one another. In a family, for instance, the family home is part of the common good because the familial bond requires members to take care of the home as part of a shared effort to care for one another’s interests in shelter and safety. In a university, the climate of academic freedom on campus is part of the common good because the special relationship among members of the university community requires them to care for this climate as part of a shared effort to care for one another’s interests in teaching, learning and inquiring.

The common good differs from the various notions of the good that play a foundational role in welfare consequentialist accounts of political morality. Among the notions in the latter category, we can include: the sum of pleasure over pain, total satisfaction of rational desire, aggregate welfare adjusted for distributive considerations, welfare prioritarianism, equality of welfare (in certain formulations), Pareto optimality, and so on. Unlike the common good, these notions make no essential reference to the requirements of a social relationship. They set out fully independent standards for the goodness of actions, motivations and states of affairs, and the independent character of these standards allows them to serve as foundational elements in a normative theory that has a consequentialist structure. [ 2 ]

According to classical utilitarianism, for example, the correct course of action is the optimal course of action as judged from the standpoint of an impartial concern for the pleasures and pains of all sentient creatures (Sidgwick 1874). Suppose that a relationship consists of a set of requirements for how people who stand in the relationship should act towards one another—e.g., parents should feed their children, parents should clothe their children, children should defer to their parents’ judgment, etc. According to classical utilitarianism, an agent should perform the action that satisfies the requirements of a relationship only when her doing so would result in the greatest sum of pleasure over pain. The notion of the good here—i.e., the sum of pleasure over pain—is defined independently of the requirements of any relationship, so it sets out a criterion for goodness that can tell us, among other things, when it would be good for people to comply with any particular relational requirements.

Some welfare consequentialist notions of the good incorporate a distributive element—e.g., welfare prioritarianism—and this feature may make it more plausible to see these notions as internal to the requirements of a relationship. For example, some may think that welfare prioritarianism could be internal to the family relationship, where the relationship is understood to require family members to perform the action that is optimal from the standpoint of the worst off member of the group. But keep in mind that even more distributionally sensitive notions of the good, such as welfare prioritarianism, retain other features of a consequentialist understanding of goodness that make it difficult to see how these notions could be internal to a relationship in the relevant sense.

Take agent neutrality. Insofar as welfare prioritarianism is a genuinely consequentialist notion, it says that the correct course of action is the course of action that is optimal as judged from a standpoint that does not change with the position of the agent or the relationships that the agent happens to stand in (Williams 1973; Nagel 1986; cf. Sen 1993). Understood in this way, welfare prioritarianism does not require an agent to perform the action that is optimal from the standpoint of the worst off member of her own family. Instead, it requires an agent to perform the action that is optimal from the agent neutral standpoint of, say, the welfare of the worst off person in the world or the average welfare of all those in the class of people who are worst off in their respective families. If people have reason to pay special attention to the worst off member of their own families, on this view, it is because a pattern of reasoning along these lines leads to the highest level of welfare for the worst off person in the world or the highest average welfare for those in the relevant class.

Because it is an agent neutral notion, welfare prioritarianism may require parents to harm their own children if circumstances arise such that doing so would bring about the best result from the standpoint of the welfare of the worst off person in the world or the average welfare of those in the relevant class. A parent might be required to act this way, even when lowering the welfare of her own child would lead to only a slightly higher level of welfare for the other people affected. These implications are clearly at odds with our ordinary understanding of the agent relative character of relational requirements.

The upshot is that welfare consequentialist accounts of political morality are not based, at the most fundamental level, on conceptions of the common good. They are based instead on notions of the good that are understood to be prior to and independent of any social relationship. Nonetheless, it is worth stressing that a welfare consequentialist account of political morality may incorporate a conception of the common good as part of a more specific account of the ethical obligations of citizens in public life. After all, a certain pattern of agent relative motivation among citizens may be the optimal pattern as judged from the standpoint of aggregate welfare (or some other suitably agent neutral perspective). John Stuart Mill sets out a theory along these lines in Considerations on Representative Government (1862). On his view, citizens should take an active interest in the public affairs of their community and social institutions should be designed to generate this pattern of motivation among citizens. The reason for this is that an orientation among citizens towards the common affairs of their community is part of the best political arrangement overall, as judged from the standpoint of the principle of utility. [ 3 ]

Another important contrast to draw is between the common good and a public good. In economic theory, a public good is a particular type of good that members of a community would not possess if they were each motivated only by their own self-interest. [ 4 ] Here is an example. Imagine that the residents in a town could enjoy a mosquito free summer if most every resident treats her lawn with a bug spray. The spray costs money, but every resident would be better off having paid for the spray and enjoying life without mosquitoes. If most every resident sprays her lawn, everyone in the town will enjoy the benefit, even those residents who do not spray their lawns. But there is no feasible way to exclude the nonsprayers from enjoying the benefit.

The problem posed by a public good is that the optimal course of action for each individual, from the standpoint of her egoistic rationality, is for her not to contribute to the provision of the good, even though everyone would be better off if they all did so (see Olson 1965). Take any resident in the town I just described. From the standpoint of her own self-interest, she should not spray her lawn: If the other residents spray their lawns, she would get the benefit without paying the cost. And if the other residents do not spray their lawns, she would save herself the cost of spraying her lawn. It follows that as long as residents are moved only by their own self-interest, they will not produce the good of a mosquito free summer.

In both academic and nonacademic discussions, people often confuse the common good with a public good or a set of public goods. But it is important to keep the two ideas distinct. The facilities that make up the common good resemble public goods because they are often facilities that are supposed to be open and available to everyone (e.g., a public library). This means that it is not possible to exclude those who do not contribute from enjoying the benefits. Nonetheless, the facilities that make up the common good are conceptually different from public goods because these facilities may not be a net benefit for each member of the community. The facilities that make up the common good serve a special class of interests that all citizens have in common, i.e., the interests that are the object of the civic relationship. But each citizen will have various private interests in addition to these common interests, so for any particular citizen, the private interests affected by some facility may be more important from the standpoint of her egoistic rationality than the interests that belong to the special class of common interests. As such, the facility may not be a net benefit to her.

Consider the case of a public library. Suppose that a certain library is part of the common good in a political community because it serves an interest in the privileged class of common interests. Suppose the relevant interest is an interest in guaranteed access to the storehouse of human knowledge. Some individual X owns a bakery. Her bakery is profitable, but it would be even more profitable if people were not able to read certain cookbooks at the library and so could not make her carrot muffins at home. X has an interest in guaranteed access to the storehouse of human knowledge, but she also has an interest in her bakery’s profitability. If her private interest in a muffin monopoly is more important from her egoistic perspective than her interest in guaranteed access to the storehouse of human knowledge, then she is actually worse off because of the public library. [ 5 ] In this case, the public library is part of the common good, but it is not a public good because there is someone in the community who is worse off in virtue of the library’s existence.

Before moving on, note that people sometimes use “the public good” to refer to something other than the technical notion of a public good in economic theory. In academic and nonacademic discussions, people sometimes use “the public good” in a way that is more or less synonymous with “the common good”. This use of the term was especially prevalent among political philosophers, roughly from the 16 th century to the 19 th century. For example, in the Second Treatise of Government (1698), John Locke defines political power as the right to make binding laws and the right to mobilize the community in defense of these laws, where both of these powers are

to be directed to no other end , but the Peace , Safety , and publick good of the People. (1698 [1988: 353]).

Here Locke uses the term “public good” to refer to interests that are common to all members of a political community (e.g., the interest in bodily security and property), where members have a relational obligation to care for these common interests. The “public good” in this sense basically refers to the common good, though philosophers who use the term “public good” typically favor a thinner conception of the political relationship and a more limited view of the powers of government.

Why does political philosophy need the concept of the common good? What’s the rationale for having this concept in addition to other concepts, such as welfare, justice, or human rights? To understand the importance of the common good, it is helpful to think about the moral defects in a private society.

A private society is a society whose members care only about their lives as private individuals (Tocqueville 1835–1840; Hegel 1821; Rawls 1971; see also Dewey 1927). Members are not necessarily rational egoists—they may care about their family and friends. What is central is that their motivational horizons do not extend beyond the people and projects that are the focus of their personal lives. [ 6 ] As an individual in a private society, I might be interested in acquiring a better home for my family or improving the local school for my children and the other children in my neighborhood. I might even vote in national elections insofar as the results could affect my home or my local school. But I take no interest in national elections insofar as the results affect citizens I don’t know, those in other states or provinces. And I take no interest in national elections insofar as the results affect the basic fairness of my society’s laws and institutions. Having withdrawn into private life, I care about the common affairs of the community only insofar as these touch my private world.

Many philosophers believe that there is something morally defective about a private society. One type of defect bears especially on the case of a private society that consists of rational egoists. As I noted in the last section, a community of rational egoists will not perform the actions necessary to generate public goods. Since these goods are desirable, the absence of public goods may be suboptimal, both from the standpoint of aggregate welfare and from the standpoint of each member’s egoistic rationality. [ 7 ] So there are good instrumental reasons for people to create a public agency—i.e., a state—that can use taxes, subsidies and coercive threats to draw people into mutually beneficial patterns of cooperation. [ 8 ]

The common good, however, points to a different kind of defect in a private society. The defect in this case extends to all forms of private society, not just to a society of rational egoists, and the defect is noninstrumental. The defect in this case is that the members of a political community have a relational obligation to care about their common affairs, so the fact that they are exclusively concerned with their private lives is itself a moral defect in the community, whether or not this pattern of concern leads to a suboptimal outcome.

To appreciate the point, think about the various public roles that people may occupy in a liberal democracy (see Hegel 1821; Dewey 1927; J. Cohen 2010: 54–58). Most obviously, citizens act in a public capacity when they occupy positions as legislators, civil servants, judges, prosecutors, jurors, police officers, soldiers, school teachers, and so on. They also act in a public capacity when they participate in the political process, voting in elections and taking part in policy discussions in the public sphere (Habermas 1992; Mill 1862; Rawls 1993 [2005]). And many philosophers argue that citizens act in a public capacity—or at least in a partly public capacity—when they act as executives in large business enterprises (McMahon 2013; Christiano 2010); as high-ranking officials in colleges and universities (Scanlon 2003); as journalists, lawyers, and academics (Habermas 1992, e.g., [1996: 373–9]); as protesters engaged in civil disobedience (Rawls 1971); and as socially conscious consumers (Hussain 2012).

When citizens occupy public roles, political morality requires them to think and act differently than they would if they were acting as private individuals. If you are a judge in a criminal trial, you might stand to benefit personally if the defendant were found guilty. But political morality does not allow you to decide cases as if you were a private individual, looking to advance your own private objectives. As a judge, you are required to make decisions based on the evidence presented at trial and the standards set out in the law. These legal standards themselves are supposed to answer to common interests. So, in effect, political morality directs you to think and act from the standpoint of a shared concern for common interests.

Citizens who occupy public roles may also be required to make personal sacrifices. Consider an historical example. During the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon ordered the Attorney General of the United States, Elliot Richardson, to fire the Watergate special prosecutor in order to stop an investigation into Nixon’s abuses of power. Rather than carry out Nixon’s order, Richardson resigned his position. Many would argue that Richardson did the right thing, and that, in fact, he had an obligation to refuse Nixon’s order, even if this resulted in a significant setback to his career. As Attorney General, Richardson had an obligation to uphold the rule of law in the United States, a practice that serves common interests, even if this meant significant sacrifices in terms of his career aspirations.

Now consider the following possibility. Imagine that we are living in a liberal democracy with a full array of social roles in which people act in a public capacity. But imagine that our society is a private society: citizens care only about their own private affairs. In order to ensure that various public roles are filled, our institutions create private incentives for people to take on these responsibilities. High salaries draw people into positions as judges and legislators, and mutual surveillance gives these people private incentives to carry out their duties. Suppose that our institutions are well structured and private incentives are adequate to fill all of the important public positions. Is there anything missing in our society? Does our society suffer from a moral defect of some kind?

Philosophers in the common good tradition believe that the answer is yes: there is something morally significant that is missing from our society. What is missing is a genuine concern for the common good . No one in our society actually cares about shared facilities, such as the rule of law, or the common interests that these facilities serve. Citizens fill various public roles simply for the sake of the private benefits that they get from doing so. According to a common good conception of political morality, this lack of concern for the common good is itself a moral defect in a political community, even if private incentives lead people to fill all of the relevant positions.

A central challenge for theorists in the common good tradition is to explain why a genuine commitment to the common good matters. Why should it matter whether citizens actually care about the common good? Some philosophers in the tradition cite a practical problem. Even in a well-designed arrangement, circumstances are likely to arise where social institutions do not provide people with an adequate private incentive to act in a publicly oriented way. For example, political morality may require public officials to stand up for the rule of law, even in situations where this will damage their careers. Or political morality may require citizens to protest against an unjust law, even if this means a private risk of being jailed or blacklisted. Political morality may even require citizens to run the risk of losing their lives in order to defend the constitutional order against a foreign threat (see Walzer 1970; Rousseau 1762b [1997: 63–4]). In each of these cases, no matter how well designed institutions are, citizens may not have an adequate private incentive to do what political morality requires, so a genuine concern for the common good may be essential.

A different explanation—perhaps the most important one in the common good tradition—stresses the idea of a social relationship. Think of the relationship between parents and their children. This relationship requires not only that the people involved act in certain ways towards one another, but also that they care about one another in certain ways. For instance, parents are required not only to feed and clothe their children, perhaps to avoid getting fined by the Department of Child and Family Services. Parents are also required to care about their children: they must give their children’s interests a certain status in their practical reasoning. Many philosophers argue that our relation to our fellow citizens has similar features. The political bond requires not only that we act in certain ways, but also that we give the interests of our fellow citizens a certain status in our practical reasoning. It would be unacceptable, on this view, for citizens to fulfill certain public roles purely for the sake of private incentives. A Supreme Court justice, for example, must care about the rule of law and the common interests that this practice serves. If she were making consistent rulings just to cash her paycheck every two weeks, she would not be responding in the right way to her fellow citizens, who act for the sake of common interests in doing things such as voting, following the law, and standing ready to defend the constitutional order. [ 9 ]

Many philosophers believe that there is something morally defective about a private society, even one in which private incentives move people to fill all of the important public roles. A conception of the common good provides us with an account of what is missing from the practical reasoning of citizens in a private society, and it connects this with a wider view about the relational obligations that require citizens to reason in these ways.

4. Central Features of the Common Good

According to a common good conception of political morality, members of a political community stand in a social relationship with one another. This relationship is not as intimate as the relationship among family members or the members of a church. But it is a genuine social relationship nonetheless, and it requires members not only to act in certain ways, but also to give one another’s interests a certain status in their practical reasoning. This basic outlook leads most conceptions of the common good to share certain features.

The first feature that most conceptions share is that they describe a pattern of practical reasoning that is meant to be realized in the actual thought processes of the members of a political community. A conception of the common good is not just a criterion for correct action, such that citizens would satisfy the conception so long as they performed the correct action, regardless of their subjective reasons for doing so. The point of a conception of the common good is to define a pattern of practical reasoning, a way of thinking and acting that constitutes the appropriate form of mutual concern among members. In order to satisfy the conception, the activities of the members of the community must be organized, at some level, by thought processes that embody the relevant pattern. [ 10 ]

Most conceptions of the common good identify a set of facilities that citizens have a special obligation to maintain in virtue of the fact that these facilities serve certain common interests. The relevant facilities may be part of the natural environment (e.g., the atmosphere, a freshwater aquifer, etc.) or human artifacts (e.g., hospitals, schools, etc.). But the most important facilities in the literature are social institutions and practices. For example, a scheme of private property exists when members of a community conform to rules that assign individuals certain forms of authority over external objects. Private property, as a social institution, serves a common interest of citizens in being able to assert private control over their physical environment, and so many conceptions include this institution as part of the common good.

A conception of the common good will define a privileged class of abstract interests. Citizens are understood to have a relational obligation to create and maintain certain facilities because these facilities serve the relevant interests. The interests in the privileged class are “common” in the sense that every citizen is understood to have these interests to a similar degree. [ 11 ] The interests are “abstract” in the sense that they may be served by a variety of material, cultural or institutional facilities. A wide variety of interests figure prominently in the literature, including: the interest in taking part in the most choiceworthy way of life (Aristotle Pol. 1323a14–1325b31); the interest in bodily security and property (e.g., Locke 1698; Rousseau 1762b); the interest in living a responsible and industrious private life (Smith 1776); the interest in a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties (Rawls 1971 and 1993); the interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive positions in society (Rawls 1971); and the interest in security and welfare, where these interests are understood as socially recognized needs that are subject to ongoing political determination (Walzer 1983).

Most conceptions of the common good define a form of practical reasoning that fits the model of solidarity. Many social relationships require a form of solidarity among those who stand in the relationship. Solidarity here basically involves one person giving a certain subset of the interests of another person a status in her reasoning that is analogous to the status that she gives to her own interests in her reasoning (see, e.g., Aristotle NE 1166a1–33). For example, if my friend needs a place to sleep tonight, friendship requires that I should offer him my couch. I have to do this because friendship requires that I reason about events that affect my friend’s basic interests as if these events were affecting my own basic interests in a similar way. A conception of the common good typically requires citizens to maintain certain facilities because these facilities serve certain common interests. So when citizens reason as the conception requires, they effectively give the interests of their fellow citizens a status in their reasoning that is analogous to the status that they give to their own interests in their reasoning.

An example will make the idea more intuitive. According to Rousseau, a properly ordered political community is “a form of association that will defend and protect the person and goods of each associate with the full common force” (1762b [1997: 49]). Citizens in this community are united by a solidaristic form of mutual concern that is focused on (among other things) their common interests in physical security and property. This form of mutual concern requires each citizen to respond to an attack on the body or property of a fellow citizen as if this were an attack on her own body and property. When extended over all members, this form of mutual concern requires the whole community to respond to an attack on any individual member as if this were an attack on every member. In this sense, “the full common force” stands behind each person’s physical security and property. Or, as Rousseau sometimes puts it, “one cannot injure one of the members without attacking the body, and still less can one injure the body without the members being affected” (1762b [1997: 52]). [ 12 ]

A closely related feature is that most conceptions of the common good do not take an aggregative view of individual interests. The aggregative view treats the satisfaction of individuals’ interests as commensurable values, and it directs citizens to maximize the sum of these values. Because it focuses on the aggregate, the aggregative view may require citizens to impose a debilitating condition on some of their fellow citizens when this would generate sufficient gains for others.

Solidarity rules out the aggregative view. Starting with an appropriate view of her own interests, solidarity requires each citizen to give certain interests of her fellow citizens a status in her reasoning that is similar to the status that she gives to her own interests. This way of thinking does not allow citizens to abandon the interests of any of their fellow citizens for the sake of aggregate gains. For instance, solidarity would not allow citizens to subject some of their fellow citizens to slavery, even if this might produce substantial benefits for others, because enslavement would involve a failure on the part of each citizen to give the interests of each of her enslaved comrades the right status in her reasoning.

Let’s turn now to some of the ways that conceptions of the common good differ from each other. One way has to do with how they define the privileged class of common interests that are the object of the political relationship. We can divide the important views in the literature into two main categories: (a) joint activity conceptions and (b) private individuality conceptions .

A joint activity conception defines the privileged class of common interests as interests that members have in taking part in a complex activity that involves all or most members of the community. Among those who endorse this kind of view are ancient philosophers, such as Plato ( Republic ) and Aristotle ( Politics ), secular natural law theorists such as John Finnis (1980), and most natural law theorists in the Catholic tradition. Aspects of the joint activity view are also important in the work of communitarian thinkers such as Charles Taylor (1984) and, to a lesser extent, Michael Sandel (2009). The most important and influential view is Aristotle’s.

Aristotle holds that members of a political community are not just involved in a military alliance or an especially dense network of contractual agreements ( Pol. 1280b29–33). Members are also involved in a relationship that he describes as a form of friendship ( NE 1159b25–35). This friendship consists in citizens wishing one another well, their being aware of the fact that their fellow citizens wish them well, and their taking part in a shared life that answers to this mutual concern ( Pol. 1280b29–1281a3). In caring about one another and wishing one another well, what citizens care about in particular is that they and their fellow citizens live well, that is, live the most choiceworthy life. [ 13 ]

The most choiceworthy life, on Aristotle’s view, is a pattern of activity that fully engages and expresses the rational parts of human nature. This pattern of activity is a pattern of joint activity because, like a play, it has various interdependent parts that can only be realized by the members of a group together. The pattern is centered on an array of leisured activities that are valuable in themselves, including philosophy, mathematics, art and music. But the pattern also includes the activity of coordinating the social effort to engage in leisured activities (i.e., statesmanship) and various supporting activities, such as the education of citizens and the management of resources.

On Aristotle’s view, a properly ordered society will have an array of material, cultural and institutional facilities that answer to the common interest of citizens in living the most choiceworthy life. These facilities form an environment in which citizens can engage in leisured activities and in which they can perform the various coordinating and supporting activities. Some facilities that figure into Aristotle’s account include: common mess halls and communal meals, which provide occasions for leisured activities ( Pol. 1330a1–10; 1331a19–25); a communal system of education ( Pol. 1337a20–30); common land ( Pol. 1330a9–14); commonly owned slaves to work the land ( Pol. 1330a30–3); a shared set of political offices ( Pol. 1276a40–3; 1321b12–a10) and administrative buildings ( Pol. 1331b5–11); shared weapons and fortifications ( Pol. 1328b6–11; 1331a9–18); and an official system priests, temples and public sacrifices ( Pol. 1322b17–28).

Aristotle’s account may seem distant from modern sensibilities, but a good analogy for what he has in mind is the form of community that we associate today with certain universities. Think of a college like Princeton or Harvard. Members of the university community are bound together in a social relationship marked by a certain form of mutual concern: members care that they and their fellow members live well, where living well is understood in terms of taking part in a flourishing university life. This way of life is organized around intellectual, cultural and athletic activities, such as physics, art history, lacrosse, and so on. Members work together to maintain an array of facilities that serve their common interest in taking part in this joint activity (e.g., libraries, computer labs, dorm rooms, football fields, etc.). And we can think of public life in the university community in terms of a form of shared practical reasoning that most members engage in, which focuses on maintaining common facilities for the sake of their common interest. [ 14 ]

Private individuality conceptions offer a different account of the privileged class of common interests. According to these views, members of a political community have a relational obligation to care about their common interest in being able to lead lives as private individuals. Citizens each have an interest in being able to shape their lives through their own private choices about what activities to pursue and what associations to form. Choices are “private” in the relevant sense when citizens are not required to consult with anyone in making these choices and they are not required to reach a decision through any form of shared deliberation. [ 15 ] Among the philosophers who endorse this kind of view are many important thinkers in the liberal tradition, including John Locke (1698), J.J. Rousseau (1762b), Adam Smith (1776), and G.W.F. Hegel (1821). More recent figures who endorse this kind of view include John Rawls (1971) and Michael Walzer (1983).

A sophisticated example of a private individuality conception is Rawls’s. On Rawls’s view, members of a political community have a relational obligation to care for the interests attached to the “position of equal citizenship” which all citizens share (1971 [1999: 82–83]). These interests are (a) the interest in a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties and (b) the interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive positions in society. Rawls uses the term “the common good” to refer to the sum total of social conditions that answer to the interests attached to the position of equal citizenship (1971 [1999: 217]). Understood in this way, the common good consists, inter alia , of: a legal order that provides citizens with the liberty of expression, the liberty of conscience and the other liberal freedoms; a democratic system of government that provides citizens with political liberties, such as the liberty to vote, hold office and participate in collective rule-making; a system of courts to enforce the rule of law; as well as police protection and national defense to protect the basic liberties. The common good also consists of legal protections for free choice of occupation; mass media mechanisms that gather and disperse information about job possibilities; a transportation system to give people access to work; and a system of education (whether public or private) that ensures conditions in which people with similar talents and motivations have similar prospects, regardless of their class or family background.

Rawls’s conception has the core features of a private individuality view. The facilities that answer to the common interest in equal liberty and fair opportunity put citizens in a position to join or withdraw from various activities and associations as private persons who can make their own independent choices. For example, the liberty of conscience gives citizens the legal right to join or leave a religious association based on their own private beliefs. They need not consult with other citizens about these choices or make these choices as part of a wider deliberative process that involves other citizens.

Rawls’s view takes the common good to consist partly in a system of bodily security, private property and civil liberty. In this way, his view resembles Rousseau’s, which also focuses on these common interests. Where Rawls’s view differs from Rousseau’s is that it extends the privileged class of common interests to include an interest in a wider set of basic liberties and an interest in a fair opportunity to reach the more attractive positions in society. These interests involve a more extensive array of institutions and social conditions, especially when it comes to education, communication, and economic redistribution. But it is worth emphasizing that neither Rawls nor Rousseau incorporates a full account of distributive justice into their conceptions of the common good. [ 16 ] I will say more about this in the next section.

One of the most important differences among different conceptions of the common good has to do with how they take private and sectional interests to factor into determining the relational obligations of citizens. Here we can distinguish two main types of views: (a) communal conceptions of the common good and (b) distributive conceptions of the common good.

Members of a political community have a relational obligation to care for certain interests that they have in common. A “communal” conception of the common good takes these interests to be interests that citizens have as citizens, where the status of being a citizen and the interests attached to this status are both understood to be prior to the various statuses and interests that make up each member’s identity as a private individual. When citizens engage in social deliberation about their laws and institutions, a communal conception typically directs them to abstract away from their private interests and the sectional interests they may have as members of one subgroup or another and to focus instead on their common interests as citizens.

For example, imagine that citizens are considering changes to trade rules in their society. They may be inclined to assess proposals in terms of how attractive these are from the standpoint of their sectional interests as members of a certain profession or participants in a certain industry. But a communal conception of the common good directs citizens to set these interests aside and assess proposals in terms of how well they answer to common civic interests, such as the interest in national security or the interest in a productive economy. [ 17 ]

A “distributive” conception of the common good differs from a “communal” conception in that it does not direct citizens to abstract away from their private and sectional interests in the same way. A distributive conception starts with the idea that citizens belong to various groups with distinct sectional interests. These interests make partly competing claims on the material, cultural and institutional facilities in a community. The distributive conception incorporates a distributive principle that determines how social facilities should answer to these sectional interests, and the conception says that members have a relational obligation to maintain a set of facilities that answers to everyone’s sectional interests in the way that the distributive principle prescribes.

As an example of a distributive view, consider the view held by many philosophers, which defines the common good in terms of Rawls’s difference principle (see, e.g., J. Cohen 1996 [2009: 169–170]; see also section 8 below). According to this view, we can think of citizens as belonging to various subgroups, each consisting of all those born into a certain “starting position” in social life. Citizens in each group share certain choice-independent characteristics, such as their class position at birth and their level of innate talent. Group members have sectional interests in better life prospects (as measured in terms of primary goods), where these interests make partly competing claims on the basic structure of society. The difference principle says that social institutions should answer to the interests of each group equally, with the caveat that institutions should incorporate whatever inequalities would serve to maximize the prospects of the least advantaged group. Citizens are then understood to have a relational obligation to maintain a scheme of institutions that attends to everyone’s sectional interests in the way that the difference principle prescribes.

The disagreement between communal and distributive conceptions of the common good is perhaps the most important disagreement among different conceptions, and it raises some important questions about the nature of the political relationship. Let me make two general points.

The first has to do with the moral underpinnings of the communal view. It is helpful to think of communal accounts of the common good as appealing to a certain conception social life (e.g., Rousseau 1762b; Hegel 1821; Walzer 1983). According to this conception, citizens form their various private and sectional interests within the framework of a more fundamental effort to maintain certain social conditions together. The political bond is prior to their private interests in a certain way, so the political relationship may sometimes require citizens to set their private interests aside in order to act collectively to maintain the relevant social conditions. Perhaps the clearest example of this is national defense (see section 9 below). When defending the constitutional order against a foreign threat, political morality requires citizens to act collectively in defense of common interests, without organizing their efforts in a way that answers specifically to their competing private interests in different levels of protection.

An analogy may help here. Members of a family each have distinct interests as private individuals—e.g., in developing their talents, pursuing relationships, cultivating career prospects, and so on. At some level, the household must be organized in a way that answers to these private interests. But there are some matters where the familial relationship requires members to act together in a way that sets their competing private interests aside. If the family home is on fire, members are required to save the home, without special regard for how resources are being deployed in ways that are more likely to save one member’s room rather than another’s. In certain domains, members are supposed to act from a communal point of view that focuses on common interests that are essential to their social bond, rather than their distinct and potentially competing interests as private individuals. Communal conceptions of the common good see the political relationship as having a similar character. [ 18 ]

The second point is that—surprisingly—Rawls himself favours a substantially communal rather than distributive conception of the common good. In A Theory of Justice , he does not define the common good in terms of his full conception of social justice. He defines it instead in terms of the “principle of common interest”. This principle assesses social institutions from the position of equal citizenship. As he says, “as far as possible, the basic structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship” where this position “is defined by the rights and liberties required by the principle of equal liberty and the principle of fair equality of opportunity” (1971 [1999: 82–83]). Rawls thinks that a wide variety of policy questions can be settled by appeal to the principle of common interest, including “reasonable regulations to maintain public order”, “efficient measures for public health and safety”, and “collective efforts for national defense in a just war” (1971 [1999: 83]). [ 19 ]

Social deliberation, on Rawls’s view, should unfold, as far as possible, within a framework of reasoning that focuses on interests that are common to all citizens, where the difference principle enters the discussion mainly when the appeal to common interests alone could not properly decide an issue. But why should political deliberation unfold in this way? Why does Rawls think that, “as far as possible, the basic structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship”?

One possible rationale has to do with the kind of solidarity that citizens realize through their shared status as “citizens”. When members of a society reason in terms of the principle of common interest, they set their private and sectional interests aside whenever possible in order to focus on their common interests as citizens. Setting their sectional interests aside (e.g., as members of the least advantaged group, the second least advantaged group, the third least advantaged group, etc.), citizens treat their shared interests as “citizens” as being more fundamental than their distinct and potentially competing interests as private individuals. Each citizen effectively tells her fellow citizens, “What unites us is more important than what divides us”. Bringing the status of “citizen” to the center of how citizens relate to one another in public life is particularly important for Rawls because mutual recognition on the basis of this shared status is important to his account of how a just social order will prevent envy and positional competition from undermining the basic liberties (1971 [1999: 476–9]).

A closely related idea has to do with mutuality (section 4.4 and 4.5 above). When members of society reason in terms of their common interests in liberty and opportunity, they assess policies from a standpoint that does not distinguish between one citizen and another. They each accord the interests of their fellow citizens the very same status in their reasoning that they accord to their own interests. When citizens do their parts in a social arrangement that answers to common interests, and they do so on the grounds that the arrangement serves common interests, citizens realize a form of solidarity that is perfectly mutual: each citizen works for the interests of each her fellow citizens in exactly the same way that each of her fellow citizens works for her interests.

Social cooperation on the basis of the difference principle does not embody the same kind of mutuality. Imagine that citizens are reasoning about their institutions. Starting with an arrangement that creates equal prospects for those born into every starting position, they consider different arrangements that would yield Pareto improvements over the egalitarian scheme. [ 20 ] Citizens must now choose between different possibilities: one arrangement would maximize the prospects for the least advantaged group; another would maximize the prospects for the second least advantaged group; a third would maximize the prospects for the third least advantaged group; and so on. Given these possibilities, the difference principle requires citizens to choose the arrangement that is best from the standpoint of one group in particular—i.e., those in the least advantaged position.

Imagine now that we live in a social order that satisfies the difference principle. There are certain facilities in society—say, certain educational facilities—that answer distinctively to the interests of those in the least advantaged group. The resources involved could have been deployed in ways that would have been better for those in the second least advantaged group, or the third least advantaged group, etc., so the arrangement as a whole is tilted in favour of one group in particular. Because it is tilted in this way, the pattern of interaction lacks the property of perfect mutuality: each citizen does not work for the interests of each of her fellow citizens in exactly the same way each of her fellow citizens works for her interests. Everyone works in a way that is distinctively oriented towards the interests of the least advantaged.

Of course, citizens realize a form of solidarity insofar as social cooperation is organized in light of the difference principle; the point is just that citizens realize a distinctive form of solidarity insofar as social cooperation is organized in light of the principle of common interest. In the latter case, they realize a more communal form of solidarity, as citizens set their private interests aside to focus on common interests and citizens attach no special significance to the distinctions between different groups. A more communal form of solidarity answers better to the social dimension of the political relationship and this may be one reason why Rawls favors a form of public reasoning in which the principle of common interest governs “matters which concern the interests of everyone and in regard to which distributive effects are immaterial or irrelevant” (1971 [1999: 82–83]).

In the vast literature on the common good, several topics stand out as important subjects of concern. One important topic is democracy. Democracy figures prominently in philosophical reflection about the common good because there is broad agreement among philosophers—though by no means universal agreement!—that a private society would be defective in terms of the way that members make collective decisions. Collective decision-making in a political community must unfold in its public life, that is, in the sphere of interaction in which citizens transcend their own private concerns and reason from the standpoint of the common good.

On some accounts of democracy, citizens are not required to take up the perspective of the common good. According to pluralism, for example, democracy is best understood as a collective decision-making process that disperses power and influence among many different groups in society (see Dahl 1956 and 1989). Citizens each have their own private interests and groups of citizens with similar interests advance these interests in various rule-making forums. The overall process is essentially a form of bargaining, where each group strategically trades concessions with other groups in order to maximize the satisfaction of their policy preferences. A properly ordered democratic regime will maintain fair bargaining conditions, where all important groups are able to exercise a meaningful degree of influence on the collective decisions that affect their interests. But on the pluralist view no one needs to take an interest in the common affairs of the community: each citizen may care only about her own private affairs, entering the public forum to advance her private interests against the interests of others.

Many philosophers criticize pluralism and other similarly privatized views of democratic reasoning because these views fail to capture an important aspect of political life. As Jeremy Waldron notes, citizens often vote on the basis of something other than their own private interests:

People often vote on the basis of what they think is the general good of society. They are concerned about the deficit, or about abortion, or about Eastern Europe, in a way that reflects nothing more about their own personal interests than that they have a stake in the issues. Similarly, the way they vote will usually take into account their conception of the special importance of certain interests and liberties. (Waldron 1990 [1993: 408])

Many critics also contend that pluralism does not distinguish properly between the form of practical reasoning appropriate to democratic decision-making and the form that is appropriate in market contexts. Managers in a firm may justify one business strategy over another on the grounds that this strategy will improve the bottom line for the firm, taking no account of how the strategy might harm competitors or other groups. But citizens in a democratic process are not supposed to reason this way:

…it is a political convention of a democratic society to appeal to the common interest. No political party publicly admits to pressing for legislation to the disadvantage of any recognized social group. (Rawls 1971 [1999: 280])

If a privatized approach to democratic decision-making is morally defective, what exactly is the problem? What is wrong with citizens assessing laws and voting on laws based on how well these will serve their private interests?

One prominent line of reasoning in democratic theory appeals to an epistemic conception of democracy (e.g., Rousseau 1762b; J. Cohen 1986). According to this view, there is an independent standard of correctness for legislation, which says that laws must serve common interests. Democratic decision-making is a requirement of political morality because the legislative process is more likely to generate laws that meet the standard when the process is democratic. Moreover, a democratic process is more likely to generate laws that meet the standard when those taking part in the process are actually trying to identify laws that meet the standard. So citizens taking part in the democratic process should assess legislative proposals in terms of how well these proposals serve common interests because this is the best way to identify and enact laws that are justified.

The other main line of reasoning in democratic theory appeals to a deliberative conception of democracy (J. Cohen 1996, 2009; Habermas 1992; Gutman & Thompson 1996). According to Joshua Cohen’s deliberative conception, political morality requires citizens to make binding collective decisions through a process of public reasoning in which citizens recognize one another as equal members of the political community (J. Cohen 1989, 1996). The process of public reasoning requires that each citizen should offer reasons to convince others to adopt a legislative proposal, where these reasons are reasons that she could properly expect others to accept, given the facts of reasonable pluralism.

Cohen argues that the ideal of deliberative democracy, as he understands it, provides a compelling account of the common good orientation of democratic decision-making (1996 [2009: 168–170]). No citizen could reasonably expect others to accept a legislative proposal simply because it serves her own interests, so there is a basic requirement that any legislative proposal must be responsive to the interests of all citizens. Furthermore, the background idea that citizens are equal members of the political community imposes an additional requirement. Citizens

can reject, as a reason within [the] process, that some are worth less than others or that the interests of one group are to count less than the interests of other groups. (1996 [2009: 169])

This constraint on acceptable reasons leads to a substantive requirement that legislation must be consistent with a public understanding of the common good that treats people as equals in the relevant sense.

Cohen cites Rawls’s difference principle as one example of a public understanding of the common good that satisfies the relevant requirement.

Treating equality as a baseline, [the difference principle] requires that inequalities established or sanctioned by state action must work to the maximal advantage of the least advantaged. That baseline [i.e., equality] is a natural expression of the constraints on reasons that emerge from the background equal standing of citizens: it will not count as a reason for a system of policy that that system benefits the members of a particular group singled out by social class or native talent or any other feature that distinguishes among equal citizens. […In addition, the principle] insists, roughly speaking, that no one be left less well off than anyone needs to be—which is itself a natural expression of the deliberative conception. (J. Cohen 1996 [2009: 169–170])

Note that Cohen argues here for a “distributive” rather than a “communal” conception of the common good (see section 7 above). On Cohen’s view, members of a political community have a relational obligation to provide one another with a set of facilities that answers to everyone’s sectional interests in the way that a certain distributive principle prescribes (i.e. the difference principle). This differs from a communal conception, which does not conceive of the relational obligation of citizens in terms of a distributive principle.

Cohen is probably right that the difference principle is a natural expression of the deliberative ideal against the background of an assumption that all citizens are equal members of the political community. But defenders of a communal conception might argue that the political relationship among citizens has a social dimension that goes beyond equal membership in the political community. Like the relationship among friends or among members of a sports team, the political relationship must be understood to impose obligations on people that embody relational ideals such as solidarity and mutuality. This means that the political relationship may require citizens to reason with each other in ways that embody these values. For instance, the political relationship may require citizens to set their private and sectional interests aside in certain deliberative contexts in order to focus on their common interests as citizens. An implicit concern for social ideals such as solidarity and mutuality may be one reason why Rawls identifies the common good with the principle of common interest and gives this principle a special role to play in political reasoning.

Many philosophers agree that citizens must transcend their private concerns when they take part in the political process. But some philosophers believe that there are other aspects of social life in which citizens have a relational obligation to transcend their private concerns. Two especially prominent examples in the literature involve burden sharing and resource pooling. Michael Walzer’s discussion of conscription and national defense highlights several important issues (1983: 64–71, 78–91, 97–9, and 168–70; see also Walzer 1970).

When a foreign power threatens the constitutional order in a liberal democracy, political morality seems to direct citizens to defend the order in a particular way. Citizens must approach national defense as a communal enterprise in which they organize themselves to achieve a certain common level of security together through various forms of burden sharing and resource pooling. Burden sharing, in this case, requires every member of the community to participate in some way in carrying the collective burden of fighting the threat. Some citizens will do the actual fighting, but others will contribute by treating the wounded, developing weapons, taking care of children, sending care packages to soldiers, rationing essential resources, and so on.

The moral importance of burden sharing comes out most clearly when we consider certain highly privatized ways of organizing national defense. Consider, for example, a market based approach. A political community might allow entrepreneurs to set up “protection agencies” that would act as firms, hiring mercenaries, buying weapons, and selling varying levels of protection to individual citizens based on their preferences and their ability to pay (see Nozick 1974). Even if it were possible to defend people’s constitutional liberties through a mechanism of this kind, [ 21 ] political morality seems to rule it out. One reason is that the market scheme would allow citizens who are wealthy enough to buy protection services for themselves, but then leave it to others to face the actual dangers of combat. This would violate the communal ideal that all citizens must share in some way in carrying the collective burden of defending the community (see Walzer 1983: 98–9 and 169).

Another problem with a highly privatized approach to national defence has to do with the injured. When soldiers get injured in combat, their injuries have a different moral status as compared to the injuries that they might suffer if they decide to do things as private individuals like ride a motorcycle or work in a circus. The difference is that combat injuries are not private injuries that citizens must bear as private persons. Even in the case where soldiers volunteer for combat, they perform a public service and we treat their injuries as part of a collective burden that the community as a whole must bear, e.g., by providing medical care and rehabilitation services to the wounded free of charge.

The communal ideal of public service and burden sharing might extend beyond national defence to other forms of socially necessary work that is difficult or dangerous.

Miners today are free citizens, but we might think of them…as citizens in the service of the nation. And then we might treat them as if they were conscripts, not sharing their risks, but sharing the costs of the remedy: research into mine safety, health care designed for their immediate needs, early retirement, decent pensions, and so on. (Walzer 1983: 170)

A more extensive application of the communal ideal might require citizens to treat the burdens associated with other occupations as parts of a shared social burden, including the burdens faced by police officers, firefighters, teachers, day care workers, nurses, nursing home workers, and so on (cf. Brennan & Jaworski 2015).

Besides burden sharing, resource pooling is another way that citizens may organize their activities in light of the common good. Many facilities in a modern liberal democracy serve common interests, including the armed forces, public health services, and the education system. These facilities require material resources, and this raises an array of questions about how to generate these resources and incorporate them into the pool of assets that serve common interests.

Aristotle favors an approach that works through private ownership. In Plato’s Republic , almost all of the resources held by the guardians are held as collective assets that the guardians may use for the sake of the common interest of the community. [ 22 ] Importantly, because the guardians hold almost nothing as private property, they do nothing that is analogous to the choices that a group of friends might make on a camping trip to voluntarily pool their resources for the sake of common interests. In other words, the guardians do not express their concern for the members of the community through gifts, donations or other forms of private contribution. Partly for this reason, Aristotle favors an arrangement in which citizens have private ownership and control over assets and a civic obligation to pool these assets for the sake of common interests (see Kraut 2002: 327–56). For example, if the community faces a naval threat, wealthy citizens in Aristotle’s ideal community would be responsible for building warships and contributing these ships to the war effort.

Aristotle’s view draws attention to an important set of questions in contemporary market societies. The civic obligation he has in mind comes closest to our notion of private philanthropy. But is private philanthropy really the right way for a community to maintain common facilities for the sake of common interests? In 2015, Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook, announced that he would donate 99% of his shares in the company to charitable causes, including public education (Kelly 2015). From Aristotle’s point of view, this reflects well on our society: our institutions put wealth in private hands, thereby allowing citizens to make meaningful choices to pool their wealth for common interests. But many would argue that our arrangements are seriously defective insofar as they put some individuals in a position to control a private fortune worth over $45 billion, even if these individuals will eventually devote these resources to common interests. Plato is on to something when he says that political solidarity requires that social institutions channel some wealth directly into the public domain. But Plato seems to go too far in the other direction, and this leaves us with an important set of questions about when society should pool resources through the state and when society should pool resources through private philanthropy.

A third important topic in philosophical reflection about the common good is the market. Citizens have a relational obligation to care about certain common interests, and social coordination through markets can draw citizens into a pattern of production activity and consumption activity that answers to these interests. For example, markets can lead citizens to make better use of land and labor in society, thereby generating more resources for everyone to use in pursuing their various ends. The problem is that market coordination involves a privatized form of reasoning, and the proper functioning of the market may require citizens not to reason from the standpoint of the common good.

To illustrate, suppose that a society uses markets to coordinate the education of citizens (see Friedman 1962). A system of for-profit schools would operate as firms, hiring teachers, buying computers, and selling education services to the public. Parents, in turn, would act as consumers, buying the best education for their children at the lowest cost. Each citizen in this arrangement would reason from the standpoint of her own private concerns: as school managers, citizens would aim to maximize profits, and as parents, citizens would aim to get the best education for their children at the lowest cost. No one would act out of a concern for the education system as a shared facility that serves common interests. In fact, the market may require citizens to avoid this perspective. After all, to lower costs effectively, school managers must not show too much concern for the education of their students. And in order to improve the education of their own children, parents must not show too much concern for the education of other people’s children.

We can divide the philosophical debate into two camps. The first camp says that market society—i.e., a social order that relies extensively on markets to coordinate social life—is compatible with the requirements of the political relationship. Theorists in this camp include Adam Smith (1776), G.W.F. Hegel (1821), John Rawls (1971), Michael Sandel (2009) and perhaps Michael Walzer (1983). We might also include deliberative democrats such as Jürgen Habermas (1992) and Joshua Cohen (Cohen & Sabel 1997). [ 23 ]

As an example of someone in the first camp, consider Hegel (1821) and his view of the market. Hegel follows Adam Smith in thinking that the market draws citizens into a pattern of specialization that serves common interests. The market does this through prices. Each citizen finds that she can do better for herself by developing her talents and selling her labor at the going rate, then buying the goods that she needs from others. But following price signals involves a form of reasoning that is focused only on private interests, not the common good. As a result, it is essential, on Hegel’s view, that the realm of market activity must be integrated into a wider political community. As members of a political community, citizens (or at least some citizens) discuss their common interests in the public sphere, vote in elections, and find their views represented in legislative deliberations that shape an official conception of the common good. This official conception shapes the laws and guides the government in managing the economy. So even if citizens do not reason from the standpoint of the common good as market actors, their lives as a whole are organized by a form of reasoning that is focused on maintaining shared facilities for the sake of common interests.

The other camp in the disagreement says that market society is not compatible with the requirements of the political relationship. Theorists in this camp include Aristotle (see Pol. 1256b39–1258a17), Rousseau (1762b), Marx (1844, 1867), and G.A. Cohen (2009). Marx’s view provides an interesting contrast to Hegel’s.

Marx agrees with Hegel that members of a political community must organize their activities in light of a conception of the common good. But he does not think that members live up to the ideal if most of them never actually reason from this standpoint. A political community must be “radically democratic” in the sense that ordinary citizens participate directly in the collective effort to organize social life by appeal to a conception of the common good (Marx 1844). What makes social coordination through markets problematic is that market actors are drawn into certain patterns of activity through prices, which means that they never actually reason with each other in terms of the common good. On Marx’s view, a properly ordered political community would move beyond this opaque form of social coordination:

The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. (Marx 1867 [1967:84]).

In a properly ordered political community, members will transcend the authoritarian mysticism of price coordination and organize their production and consumption activities through an open and transparent process of reasoning that makes explicit to everyone how their activities serve common interests.

Many contemporary issues in political philosophy revolve around questions about the market and the standpoint of the common good. Most theorists today hold views that fall somewhere between the two camps I just described: they argue for some more nuanced view about when citizens are supposed to adopt a privatized perspective and when they must reason from the standpoint of the common good.

When it comes to corporations and corporate executives, for example, Thomas Christiano (2010) argues for a certain kind of socially conscious orientation: corporate leaders must reason from the standpoint of the common good at least in limiting their strategic pursuit of private objectives in a way that is consistent with the broader social objectives established by democratic majorities. [ 24 ] Joseph Heath (2014) argues for a more limited view, such that market actors must not take a purely privatized perspective in cases where externalities and other market failures would prevent the market process from generating attractive results. A great deal of work remains to be done when it comes to other aspects of market life that may require citizens to reason from a more socially conscious perspective, particularly when it comes to labor rights, political liberties and climate change.

Another important set of contemporary issues has to do with competition. Market coordination typically works through a process in which citizens compete with one another for important goods. In the United States, for instance, labor market participants compete for jobs that substantially determine who gets access to different levels of income, and by extension, different levels of health care, police protection, consideration in the justice system, and political influence. As citizens square off against each other, each one strives to secure important goods for herself, knowing that her activities will—if successful—effectively deprive some other citizen of these same goods. In this way, labor market competition requires citizens to act with an extreme form of disregard for how their actions affect one another’s basic interests.

Many philosophers believe that the antagonistic structure of market competition is inconsistent with the relational obligation that members of a political community have to care about certain common interests. G.A. Cohen (2009: 34–45) articulates the problem in terms of a “socialist principle of community” that rules out social arrangements that require people to view one another simply as obstacles that must be overcome. Hussain (forthcoming) takes a more moderate view, arguing that there is a difference between a “friendly competition” and a “life or death struggle”. The political relationship allows for a certain degree of competition among citizens, but it limits how severely institutions can pit citizens against each other when it comes to goods that are part of the common good, e.g., health care, education, and the social bases of self-respect.

This article has covered the main points of agreement and disagreement among different conceptions of the common good, as well as a few central topics of concern. Let me conclude by saying something about the relation between the common good and social justice.

Consider the case of friendship. Friendship is a social relationship that requires those who stand in the relationship to think and act in ways that embody a particular form of mutual concern. The relevant form of concern incorporates the basic requirements of morality—i.e., what Scanlon (1998) calls “the morality of right and wrong”—as friends must not lie to each other, assault each other, or take unfair advantage of each other. But even strangers are required to conform to these basic moral standards. What distinguishes friendship is that the form of mutual concern it involves goes beyond basic morality and requires friends to maintain certain patterns of conduct on the grounds that these patterns serve certain common interests.

Members of a political community stand in a social relationship, and this relationship also requires them to think and act in ways that embody a certain form of mutual concern. The common good defines this form of concern. The common good incorporates certain basic requirements of social justice, as citizens must provide one another with basic rights and freedoms and they must not exploit each other. But the common good goes beyond the basic requirements of justice because it requires citizens to maintain certain patterns of conduct on the grounds that these patterns serve certain common interests.

The analogy with friendship should make it clear that the common good is distinct from, but still closely related to social justice. According to most of the major traditional views, the facilities and interests that members of a political community have a relational obligation to care about are partly defined in terms of social justice. For instance, Rousseau (1762b), Hegel (1821) and Rawls (1971) all hold that a basic system of private property is both a requirement of justice and an element of the common good. Similarly, in Natural Law and Natural Rights , Finnis holds that respect for human rights is a requirement of justice and that “the maintenance of human rights is a fundamental component of the common good” (1980: 218). But the common good goes beyond the requirements of justice because (1) it describes a pattern of inner motivation, not just a pattern of outer conduct and (2) it may incorporate facilities and interests that are not general requirements of justice.

All of this leaves us with some important questions. Many contemporary social issues turn on disagreements about when citizens may take up a privatized perspective and when they must reason from the standpoint of the common good. Social justice is often silent on these issues because people could, in principle, act as justice requires, whether they are moved by a scheme of private incentives or by a concern for common interests. These social issues are best understood as turning on disagreements about the nature of the political relationship and the form of mutual concern that it requires. Philosophical reflection has an important role to play in shedding light on this relationship and what it requires of us beyond what we owe to each other as a matter of justice.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

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Human Dignity and Human Rights

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Human dignity captures the notion that every human being is uniquely valuable and therefore ought to be accorded the highest respect and care. Although this concept has a long history in philosophical thinking, it emerged with great force in the aftermath of the Second World War, having since then been recognized by the international community as the foundation upon which human rights are based. Indeed, since 1948, international human rights law is explicitly grounded on the assumption that people do have equal basic rights (i.e., that they have equally valid claims to basic goods) because these latter derive from the dignity which is inherent in every human being.

Human dignity holds also a prominent position in the intergovernmental instruments relating to biomedicine that have been adopted since the end of the 1990s by bodies such as UNESCO, the United Nations, and, at the European level, the Council of Europe. Global bioethical standards combine, on the one hand, the appeal to human dignity as an overarching principle and, on the other hand, the recourse to human rights, which provide an effective and practical way forward for addressing bioethical issues at a transnational level.

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Andorno, R. (2014). Human Dignity and Human Rights. In: ten Have, H., Gordijn, B. (eds) Handbook of Global Bioethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2512-6_66

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	--> The President's Council on Bioethics Washington, D.C. March 2008 Part 5: Theories of Human Dignity The word "dignity" has become something of a slogan in bioethics, often invoked by both sides of debates about a variety of scientific and clinical issues, supporting contradictory conclusions. For instance, in arguments about assisted suicide, those who favor the legalization of the practice base their conclusion on a moral imperative to provide "death with dignity," while those who oppose legalization do so because they see intentionally rendering a human being dead, even out of mercy, as a direct assault on human dignity. Certainly this suggests that dignity is a concept in need of clarification. Ruth Macklin has noted this lack of conceptual clarity surrounding the use of the word "dignity" in the bioethics literature and has concluded that dignity is a "useless concept," reducible to respect for autonomy, and adds nothing to the conversation. This hasty conclusion, casting aside thousands of years of philosophical writing, ignoring the contemporary bioethical discourse of continental Europeans, and sweeping away a whole body of international law, can be justified only by begging the question. If one defines a word completely in terms of another concept more to one's liking, it will always follow that the word in question adds nothing to the concept one already endorses. While shrouded in rhetoric, this is precisely the structure of Macklin's argument. Premise: dignity means nothing more than respect for autonomy. Conclusion: therefore dignity means nothing more than respect for autonomy and (Corollary) therefore dignity adds nothing to bioethical discourse. A more careful treatment of the topic is in order. In this essay I will, first, describe three ways the word "dignity" has been used in moral discourse, both in the history of Western thought and in contemporary bioethics. I call these the attributed, the intrinsic, and the inflorescent uses of the word. Second, I will argue that, while all three senses have moral relevance, the intrinsic sense of dignity is the most fundamental from a moral perspective. I will advance this argument in two ways. I will call the first the Axiological Argument and the second the Argument from Consistency. Third, I will outline some of the general norms that follow from accepting the moral primacy of the intrinsic sense of human dignity. Finally, I will show how this vigorous understanding of dignity helps to give shape to arguments in bioethics. As examples, I will show (briefly) how it applies to questions about justice and access to health care resources, the care of the disabled, embryonic stem cell research, cloning, euthanasia, and the care of patients in the so-called permanent vegetative state. I will conclude that a notion robust enough to supply answers to all of these questions is not useless. Throughout Western history and in contemporary debates, the word dignity has played a prominent role in ethical discussions. It may be surprising to both religious and non-religious persons to know, however, that dignity is not a word that entered the Western moral vocabulary through the Judeo-Christian heritage. Dignity is not an important word in either the Hebrew or Christian scriptures. For almost two millennia, it was not an important theological term. Until very recently, dignity was almost never invoked by moral theologians in making arguments about abortion, euthanasia, or economic justice. Neither was dignity an important concept for all Western moral philosophers. For instance, dignity was not an important word for Plato or Aristotle. The first Western philosophers for whom dignity was an important philosophical term were the Roman Stoics. Cicero and Seneca, especially, used the word to designate important concepts in their moral philosophies. Cicero defined dignity as "the honorable authority of a person, which merits attention and honor and worthy respect" ( ). He used the word dignitas frequently in his writings. As one translator put it, the meaning of dignitas in Cicero's use is literally "worthiness," but he often used it (as did others in his day) to refer to a person's standing, reputation, or even office in the civitas. Importantly, in Cicero's account, this dignitas is not so much dependent on the subjective evaluation of others as it is on the ability of everyone to recognize an instance of true human excellence. For example, in Cicero writes, . In other words, for Cicero, one's standing in the community ought to be based on one's true excellence. For him, to have dignity was to have a merited degree of respect from others because of one's excellence as a human being. The Stoic use of the term, however, is not the only historical conception of dignity. Hobbes, for instance, defined dignity in a very different way. He eliminated any necessary connection to true human excellence and took the meaning of dignity to depend solely upon the inter-subjective judgments of the market. In the he writes: Hobbes writes clearly and bluntly. Dignity is the value one has to the Commonwealth regardless of whether one actually merits this based on one's true excellence as a human being or on one's nature as a human being. Kant never explicitly cites Hobbes, but in presenting yet a third view of dignity, he seems to be writing in direct reaction to Hobbes. The Kantian view of dignity ( ) continues to exert a powerful influence to the present day. Kant wrote, ) is the acknowledgement of the dignity ( ) of another man, i.e., a worth which has no price, no equivalent for which the object of valuation ( ) could be exchanged. Kant connected dignity with his idea that human beings should never be treated as pure instruments of another's will. In the he writes, ".[T]hat which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself has not merely a relative worth, i.e., a price, but has intrinsic worth, i.e., dignity." More simply, he states elsewhere, "Humanity itself is a dignity." Thus, the Kantian view of dignity is neither based on one's value to others, nor on the esteem they ought to show based on one's degree of human excellence, but rather on one's humanity itself. The Kantian view of dignity is powerful, influential, and substantially different from the notions that preceded it. The Kantian notion of may be one of his greatest contributions to moral philosophy. These three historical uses of the word "dignity" are illustrative of three senses of the word that are still active in philosophical discourse and in ordinary language today. These three general senses of dignity can be understood according to the following names and descriptions. By attributed dignity, I mean that worth or value that human beings confer upon others by acts of attribution. The act of conferring this worth or value may be accomplished individually or communally, but it always involves a choice. Attributed dignity is, in a sense, created. It constitutes a conventional form of value. Thus, we attribute worth or value to those we consider to be dignitaries, those we admire, those who carry themselves in a particular way, or those who have certain talents, skills, or powers. We can even attribute worth or value to ourselves using this word. The Hobbesian notion of dignity is attributed. By intrinsic dignity, I mean that worth or value that people have simply because they are human, not by virtue of any social standing, ability to evoke admiration, or any particular set of talents, skills, or powers. Intrinsic dignity is the value that human beings have simply by virtue of the fact that they are human beings. Thus we say that racism is an offense against human dignity. Used this way, dignity designates a value not conferred or created by human choices, individual or collective, but is prior to human attribution. Kant's notion of dignity is intrinsic. By inflorescent dignity, I mean the way people use the word to describe the value of a process that is conducive to human excellence or the value of a state of affairs by which an individual expresses human excellence. In other words, inflorescent dignity is used to refer to individuals who are flourishing as human beings-living lives that are consistent with and expressive of the intrinsic dignity of the human. Thus, dignity is sometimes used to refer to a state of virtue-a state of affairs in which a human being habitually acts in ways that expresses the intrinsic value of the human. We say, for instance, that so-and-so faced a particularly trying situation with dignity. This use of the word is not purely attributed, since it depends upon some objective conception of human excellence. Nonetheless, the value to which this use of the word refers is not intrinsic, since it depends upon a prior understanding of the intrinsic value of the human. The Stoic use of the word, while it sometimes borders on an attributed sense, is generally an inflorescent sense of dignity. These conceptions of human dignity are by no means mutually exclusive. Attributed, intrinsic, and inflorescent conceptions of dignity are often at play in the same situation. Yet each has been taken as the central basis for particular moral claims in bioethics. Does it matter which of these senses of dignity one invokes in ethical discourse? The short answer would seem to be "yes." At the very least it seems important to keep these senses straight. For example, those who claim that death with dignity requires that euthanasia be permissible seem to be using the word "dignity" in an attributed sense, while those who claim that euthanasia is a direct offense against human dignity appear to be using the word in an intrinsic sense. Still others who oppose euthanasia appear to argue from an inflorescent sense of dignity, suggesting that the practice represents less than the most noble and excellent response a human being can make in the face of death. Merely noticing these distinctions can help us clarify arguments and understand points of disagreement. But more than this, is there anything that can be said about the relationship between these senses of dignity? Is there an order or moral priority? If there is a conflict between moral claims based on differing senses of dignity, does one count more than the other? I will argue that the intrinsic notion of dignity is foundational from a moral point of view. I will advance two arguments to support this claim. I call these the Axiological Argument and the Argument from Consistency. The axiological argument depends on the theory of value or axiology. By understanding what values are, how values get into the world, what sorts of values there are, and how they are related, it will be argued that one can arrive at the conclusion that the intrinsic sense of dignity is the fundamental sense. Classically, axiology distinguishes between intrinsic and instrumental values. Instrumental values, however, are best characterized as a subclass of attributed values. I have argued that the primary distinction in axiology is between intrinsic values and attributed values. Intrinsic value is the value something has of itself-the value it has by virtue of its being the kind of thing that it is. It is valuable independent of any valuer's purposes, beliefs, desires, interests, or expectations. Truly intrinsic values, according to environmental ethicist Holmes Rolston III, "are objectively there-discovered, not generated by the valuer." Attributed values are those conveyed by a valuer. Attributed values depend completely on the purposes, beliefs, desires, interests, or expectations of a valuer or group of valuers. That is why I argue that instrumental values are a class of attributed values. An instrumental value is one that is attributed to some entity because it serves a purpose for a valuer. The instrumental value of the entity consists in its serving as a means by which the valuer achieves some purpose. But there can be non-instrumental attributed values as well. For example, the value of humor may serve no clear instrumental purpose. Attributed values play important roles in human life. The authority of government, for instance, is attributed. The value of money is attributed. The value of technology is attributed. Importantly, some attributed values are morally flawed, such as attributing value to human skin color or attributing too much value to the opinions of other persons. Intrinsic values and attributed values are asymmetrically related. Intrinsic values, as intrinsic and objective, must be recognized by an intelligent valuer. Recognition, of course, requires attribution, and thus an intelligent valuer must attribute intrinsic value to whatever does have intrinsic value in order to be correct in his or her evaluation. It would be incorrect for the valuer to attribute no value to what has value intrinsically. This is not to suggest that the act of evaluation confers the value, but that the value must be attributed to whatever has intrinsic value in order for the act of evaluation to be correct. By contrast, the mere fact that value has been attributed to an entity has no logical implications with respect to intrinsic value. One may freely attribute value to things on the basis of individual preferences, social customs, or instrumental needs. One may also recognize (i.e., correctly attribute value to) an entity that has intrinsic value. The bare fact that value has been attributed does not allow us to conclude whether the value at stake is attributed or intrinsic. I have suggested that there is yet a third category of values, inflorescent values. Certain processes or states of affairs in an intrinsically valuable entity are considered especially valuable. This is the case because these processes or states of affairs either are conducive to or instantiate the flourishing of an intrinsically valuable thing as the kind of thing that it is. The flourishing of a member of a natural kind is a good state of affairs, but that goodness depends upon something about the kind of thing that is flourishing. Thus, the value of that state of affairs is, in a sense, derivative. One might be tempted to say that flourishing is intrinsically good, but the goodness of flourishing is always dependent upon the kind of thing that is said to be flourishing, and thus that state of affairs is not, strictly speaking, intrinsically valuable. Rather, it is the thing that is flourishing that is intrinsically valuable, and its flourishing can only be understood in terms of the intrinsic value of that thing. On this view, human virtues, such as courage, are not, in a technical sense, intrinsically valuable. We seek virtue not for its own sake, but for the sake of our humanity. For instance, since the virtue of courage is a state of affairs of an individual member of the human natural kind, the value of courage is dependent upon knowledge of what kind of thing a human being is and upon the value of being human. Human virtues are good because they instantiate aspects of the flourishing of the human natural kind in virtuous individuals. What relationship does this discussion have to dignity? "Intrinsic dignity" is just the name we give to the special type of intrinsic value that belongs to members of natural kinds that have kind-specific capacities for language, rationality, love, free will, moral agency, creativity, aesthetic sensibility, and an ability to grasp the finite and the infinite. The phase "attributed dignities" refers to several non-instrumental values that are attributed to members of any natural kind that has intrinsic dignity. The phrase "inflorescent dignity" refers to a variety of states of affairs in which a member of a natural kind that has intrinsic dignity is flourishing as the kind of thing that it is. By definition, then, intrinsic dignity is the fundamental notion of dignity. One defines attributed and inflorescent dignity in terms of intrinsic dignity. The next step in the argument is to note that, if there are intrinsic values in the world, the recognition of the intrinsic value of something depends upon one's ability to discern what kind of thing it is. This brings me to the notion of natural kinds, a relatively new concept in analytic philosophy. The fundamental idea behind natural kinds is that to pick something out from the rest of the universe, one must pick it out as a something. This, in turn, leads to what its proponents call a "modest essentialism"-that the essence of something is that by which one picks it out from the rest of reality as anything at all-its being a member of a kind. The alternative seems inconceivable-that reality is actually completely undifferentiated and that human beings merely carve up an amorphous, homogeneous universe for their own purposes. Reality is not homogenous but "lumpy." It comes differentiated into kinds of things. It seems bizarre to suggest that there really are no actual kinds of things in the world independent of human classification-no such things, de re, as stars, slugs, or human beings. Intrinsic value, to repeat, is the value something has by virtue of its being the kind of thing that it is. Thus, the intrinsic value of a natural entity-the value it has by virtue of being the kind of thing that it is-depends upon one's ability to pick that entity out as a member of a natural kind. Intrinsic dignity, then, is the intrinsic value of entities that are members of a natural kind that is, as a kind, capable of language, rationality, love, free will, moral agency, creativity, aesthetic sensibility, and an ability to grasp the finite and the infinite. One should note that this definition is decidedly anti-speciesist. If there are other kinds of entities in the universe besides human beings that have, as a kind, these capacities, they would also have intrinsic dignity-whether angels, extra-terrestrials, or (arguably) other known animal kinds. Importantly, the logic of natural kinds suggests that one picks individuals out as members of the kind not because they express all the necessary and sufficient predicates to be classified as a member of a species, but, rather, by virtue of their inclusion under the extension of a natural kind that, as a kind, has those capacities. The logic of natural kinds is extensional, not intensional. As Wiggins puts it, For example, very few bananas in the bin in the supermarket express all the necessary and sufficient conditions for being classified as fruits of the species We define a banana as a yellow fruit. Yet some specimens in the bin are yellow, some are green, some are spotted, some are brown, and some are even a bit black. Nonetheless, they are all bananas. They fall under the extension that gathers them around an arbitrary good specimen (or two) of a banana. Health care depends profoundly upon this logic. It is not the expression of rationality that makes us human, but our belonging to a kind that is capable of rationality that makes us human. When a human being is comatose or mentally ill, we first pick the individual out as a human being, then we note the disparity between the characteristics of the afflicted individual and the paradigmatic features and typical development and history of members of the human natural kind. This is how we come to the judgment that the individual is sick, and make the diagnosis of a disease. So, if there is such a thing as intrinsic value in the world, then intrinsic dignity is the name we give to the value of all the individual members of any and all kinds that, as kinds, share the properties we think essential to the special value we recognize in the human. Thus, because a sick individual is a member of the human natural kind, we recognize that this individual has the intrinsic value we call dignity. It is in recognition of that worth that we have established the healing professions as our moral response to those of our kind who are suffering from disease and injury. The plight of the sick has little instrumental value, rarely serving the purposes, beliefs, desires, interests, or expectations of any of us as individuals. Rather, it is because of the intrinsic value of the sick that health care professionals serve them. Thus I would argue that intrinsic human dignity is the foundation of health care. The argument from consistency is an alternative means of reaching the conclusion that intrinsic dignity is the primary moral sense of dignity. The argument is simple in its form. Consistency is at least a necessary condition of a valid moral argument, even if one would quickly add that consistency is not sufficient. In discussions about its fundamental moral meaning, the word "dignity" can be defined as the value or worth that a human being has either: (a) in terms of some property that some entities have and some do not, or (b) in terms of simply being human. But I will show that defining the fundamental moral meaning of dignity as the value certain entities have by virtue of their possession of any particular candidate property leads to gross inconsistencies in our universally shared, settled moral positions if applied to all human beings. Therefore, one is led to the alternative: that dignity, in its fundamental moral sense, is defined in terms of simply being human-i.e., as an intrinsic value. This kind of argument depends on the exhaustiveness of the list of candidate properties and is not decisive. But at least it puts the burden of proof on those who oppose assigning moral priority to the intrinsic sense of dignity to come up with an alternative property (such as age, size, strength, brainwaves, or skin color) to define what gives an entity the fundamental worth or value we call dignity. First, some have argued that human dignity, in its most fundamental moral sense, depends upon the amount of pleasure and pain in a human life. Hedonism certainly has its adherents, whether egoistic or utilitarian. But even hedonists might not want to promote the pleasure/pain calculus as a theory of human dignity. Certainly, most of us are able to tell stories about the extraordinary lessons in human dignity we have learned from persons whose lives have been racked by pain, and most of us also know undignified human beings who have spent their whole lives in the pursuit of pleasure. Basing morality squarely on a balance between pleasure and pain has seemed, since the time of Aristotle, to be an anemic account of morality and human dignity, and one that most people would reject. Second, some might think that Hobbes was right-that human dignity depends upon one's market price. But there are problems with such a conception of human dignity. The unemployed, the severely handicapped, the mentally ill, and all others who cannot contribute to the economic well-being of society would then have no dignity. Yet our society has gone to great lengths to recognize the dignity of such persons. If we did not believe that human dignity remains even if people are disabled and lose their economic value to society, then we would not be making access ramps for them. This Hobbesian conception of dignity seems inconsistent with some of our most basic moral and social views. Third, some might think that human dignity depends upon the active exercise of freedom. Dignity, on this view, is the value we give to entities that actively express a capacity for rational choice. But this view is also hard to sustain consistently. One would have to hold that those who have lost control of certain human functions, or have lost or never had the freedom to make choices, have lost or have never had dignity. This would mean that infants, the retarded, the severely mentally ill, prisoners, the comatose, and perhaps even the sleeping would have no human dignity. This seems obviously wrong. Now some might suggest that these are "straw man" arguments. What counts, they would aver, is the possibility of exercising control and freedom, not the actual exercise of control and freedom. One might suggest that some individuals without full control and freedom nevertheless deserve to be treated with dignity either because they have a potential for exercising such a capacity (so that children, for instance, come to be regarded as placeholders for actual persons with dignity), or they have a history of having exercised such a capacity (so that the demented, for instance, come to be regarded as remnants of persons with dignity). But these arguments are quite tenuous. Who would feel dignified and secure as a placeholder or a remnant? Further, these arguments still cannot answer why those who never could and never will make free, rational choices (such as the severely mentally retarded) are worthy of being treated in accord with human dignity. Certain advocates of the position that dignity means the capacity to exercise rational choice (at least above a certain threshold level) do not believe their argument is thus refuted. They fail to see how arguments that would lead to the moral legitimization of practices such as infanticide and experimentation upon permanently unresponsive patients without their consent need to be regarded as refutations of their position. Rather, these philosophers fancy themselves heroes, bravely embracing these stark conclusions as the moral consequences of a new and enlightened form of thinking, finally free from the prejudices that weigh the rest of us down. To argue against this position, one must move the argument one step logically prior to the argument about dignity. One must investigate the underlying theory of the good that drives some philosophers to cling so tenaciously to the idea that dignity means the active exercise of free choice, that they are willing to become champions of infanticide rather than give up the idea of dignity as freedom. One must ask, are things good merely because we choose them? Although space limitations preclude a fuller discussion, simply put, is it not the case, rather, that we choose what we think is good, aware that we can be mistaken in our choices? The meaning of the human good is not exhausted by the exercise of free choice. It is metaphysically impossible to choose one's biological parents. It is metaphysically impossible to choose to come into existence. It is impossible to choose to be loved by someone. In the instant that the choice is one's own rather the free choice of one's lover, what one receives ceases to be love. And it is impossible to choose not to die. Thus, defining the most fundamental human good as the exercise of free choice results in a moral system that simply cannot account for the great human questions, among them: existence, biological relationship, love, and death. The human good must be far deeper than the freedom to choose. The most fundamental meaning of human dignity is not human freedom and control. Fourth, and finally, some might think that human dignity is something individuals are free to define as they choose, according to their own inner lights. But this view also leads to major moral inconsistencies. First, the concept of a moral term implies that it has universal meaning, a position acknowledged both by Kant and by utilitarians such as R. M. Hare. Second, to say that human dignity is subjective is to claim that one person can never reliably recognize the dignity of another person, because one can never know exactly what the other thinks dignity means at any given moment. This explains why empirical projects designed to understand dignity by asking each in a collection of individuals to describe "what dignity means to me," while well-intended, are profoundly misguided. Morality seems to depend upon our mutual commitment to knowing that each of us has dignity before we open our mouths and explain our notions of dignity to each other. Human dignity cannot be a purely subjective concept. Thus, the argument from consistency claims that fundamental human dignity must be something each of us has simply because we are human. It is the notion of dignity that drove the U.S. civil rights movement. It is the notion the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., says he learned from his grandmother, who told him, "Martin, don't let anyone ever tell you that you're not a somebody." No matter what value others may attribute to persons because of properties such as skin color, or how free they are to do as they would like, they have dignity because they are somebodies-human beings. Being somebody, being a human being, is the foundation of the notion of human dignity. The argument from consistency says that, if this is what dignity means in civil rights, this is what dignity must mean in bioethics. The conclusion that intrinsic dignity is the fundamental sense of dignity has significant moral implications. The notion of intrinsic dignity entails both self-regarding and other-regarding moral duties for beings that have intrinsic dignity. One of the primary features distinguishing the intrinsic value of a natural kind that has intrinsic dignity from other natural kinds is a kind-typical capacity for moral agency. All members of a natural kind that has intrinsic dignity (and are individually capable of exercising the moral agency that is distinctive of their natural kind) have moral obligations to themselves, to any other entities that have intrinsic dignity, and to the rest of what exists. The following list describes some of these duties. Space limitations preclude a full discussion of how these principles follow from this theory of dignity, but many will appear quite plausible on their face. This list is also not meant to exhaust the fundamental principles of ethics. It is limited to those fundamental principles that are most directly connected to the theme of dignity. But these duties should be taken as sufficiently fundamental and general to be considered true principles. All members of a natural kind that has intrinsic dignity and are, as individual members of that natural kind, capable of exercising the moral agency that in part constitutes their intrinsic dignity, have the following duties: P-II. A duty of perfect obligation to respect the capacities that confer intrinsic dignity upon a natural kind, in themselves and in others. P-III. A duty to comport themselves in a manner that is consistent with their own intrinsic dignity. P-IV. A duty to build up, to the extent possible, the inflorescent dignity of members of natural kinds that have intrinsic dignity. P-V. A duty to be respectful of the intrinsic value of all other natural kinds. P-VI. A duty of perfect obligation, in carrying out PP-I-V, never to act in such a way as directly to undermine the intrinsic dignity that gives the other duties their binding force. While the language of these principles might seem unfamiliar to bioethicists, the concepts are quite familiar. The second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative might be considered a corollary of P-I. Together, P-I, P-II, P-III, and P-VI elaborate the meaning of Respect for Persons; P-III sounds as if it comes directly from a Stoic discourse on dignity; P-IV and P-VI are related to Beneficence and Non-Maleficence; P-V is the clarion call of environmental ethics. Justice arises from the need to balance the requirements of PP-I-V. It is also important to note that the duty to build up the inflorescent dignity of any human being depends logically on the intrinsic dignity of human beings. The primary duty is to recognize and respect that intrinsic dignity. The duty of building up the inflorescent dignity of human beings is a way of concretizing the fundamental duty of respect for intrinsic dignity. If one is to show respect for a dynamic, developing, living natural kind as an intrinsically valuable thing, then it follows that one ought to show that respect by concrete actions that help to establish the conditions by which that thing can flourish as the kind of thing that it is. Thus, one waters a rosemary bush and assures that it has proper sunlight. One feeds a human child and teaches him or her to read. It is the intrinsic value of the human that grounds our moral duties towards our fellow human beings and gives these duties their special moral valence. It is a minor indiscretion to go on vacation and forget to arrange for someone to water one's rosemary bush. It is an unspeakably immoral evil to neglect to feed or educate one's child. Human beings have a special intrinsic value, and it is this value that commands that we act towards our fellow human beings in a special way. The ground of our duties towards our fellow human beings is not merely that they have interests. Rodents also have interests. As David Velleman has argued, from an ethical point of view, there must be something more fundamental to ethics than interests-i.e., a reason to respect a fellow human being's interests in the first place. The question can be asked, for example, why should I care that this person has lost a degree of independence that I have the capacity to restore through the medical arts? Velleman's answer is that we seek to protect and promote a fellow human being's interests because we first respect the human being whose interests they are. This fundamental respect is for intrinsic dignity-the "interest-independent" value of a human being. Without this primary respect, there is no basis for interpersonal morality. This conception of dignity has important implications for addressing a variety of issues in bioethics. Access to health care and the just distribution of health care resources are pressing questions both within individual nations and between the nations that constitute our globalized world community. Human dignity is often invoked in such discussions, but without much clarity or rigor. Intrinsic dignity, as elaborated in this essay, can be understood as the foundation of all human rights. We respect the rights of an individual because we first recognize his or her intrinsic dignity. We do not bestow dignity because we first bestow rights. Human beings have rights that must be respected because of the value they have by virtue of being the kinds of things that they are. Intrinsic dignity is at the core of all our beliefs about moral obligation. Of particular relevance to discussions of access to health care resources are principles P-I and P-IV. Absolute rights (also called negative rights or natural rights) are based on P-I, the duty to respect all members of natural kinds that bear dignity. These include, for example, the rights not to be killed, not to be treated disrespectfully, and not to be experimented upon without one's consent. These rights can and should be respected by all persons and all societies regardless of their ecological, historical, physical, social, or economic circumstances. In Kantian terminology, these rights entail duties of perfect obligation. I have argued that health care is not an absolute right or a natural right in this sense of the word. To assert a right to health care is to assert a positive right-a right to goods and services that must, of necessity, vary according to the ecological, historical, physical, social, and economic circumstances of individual persons and societies. In Kantian terminology, these rights entail duties of imperfect obligation. They apply to the degree that they can be instituted in various circumstances. Such so-called positive rights are based on P-IV, the duty to build up the inflorescent dignity of individuals belonging to a natural kind that has, as a kind, intrinsic dignity. Health is critical for the flourishing of any member of any living natural kind. This is no less true for members of the human natural kind. Diseases diminish health. Accordingly, the concept of disease necessarily includes reference to the adverse effects of the condition on the flourishing of the affected individual. As I have defined it elsewhere, "A disease is a class of states of affairs of individual members of a living natural kind X, that: (1) disturbs the internal biological relations (law-like principles) that determine the characteristic development and typical history of members of the kind, X,.(4) and at least some individuals of whom (or which) this class of states of affairs can be predicated are, by virtue of that state, inhibited from flourishing as Xs." Thus, an anatomical variation such as an anomalous branch in the brachial artery going around the median nerve may violate the law-like generalizations and characteristic development of human beings, but such a variation has no adverse effect on the flourishing of any human being and is not a disease. By contrast, a condition such as rheumatoid arthritis inhibits one's ability to walk, to care for oneself, to open a jar, or to hold a spoon. It causes such pain that one may lose the ability to concentrate on other aspects of life. It is a real disease. Rheumatoid arthritis inhibits one who bears the stamp of intrinsic dignity from flourishing as a human being, either directly or by virtue of the fact that health is required for so many other forms of human flourishing-family life, friendship, work, art, politics, scholarship, and more. Respect for an afflicted individual requires, in recognition of this dignity, a concrete response. Medicine is one of the major forms of human response to such affliction, capable at times of restoring the flourishing of the individual, and at other times limiting the degree to which the disease or injury detracts from human flourishing. In terms of concrete medical practice this can mean either cure, or assistance with the activities of daily living, or amelioration of pain or other symptoms if this is possible. The duty to provide such care follows from P-IV. A society that fails to provide for health care has violated P-IV. Health is also a fundamental condition for attributions of value, either reflexively by an individual, or by the attribution of others. To see this, one need only reflect on the ways in which illness and injury assault the attributed dignity of human beings. Those who are ill are robbed of their stations in life. They lose valued independence. They often become disfigured. They lose their social productivity. They lose esteem in the eyes of others and may even begin to question their own value. If there are any duties to build up the attributed dignities of human beings, surely health care is one of the primary means of doing so. As argued above, however, the fundamental reason one provides health care is out of respect for intrinsic dignity. And intrinsic dignity inheres in the human with a radical equality. In its intrinsic sense, dignity is inalienable and does not admit of degrees. Thus, a duty to build up the inflorescent dignity of human beings through health care, founded upon respect for intrinsic human dignity, applies equally to all. So, while there might not be a natural right to health care, a just society has a moral obligation, founded upon human dignity, to provide equal access to health care, to the extent possible in its particular ecological, historical, physical, social, and economic circumstances. Thus the conception of dignity presented here provides a normative basis for determining what it means for a society to distribute health care resources justly. This would seem to make dignity a useful concept. As I discussed earlier, understanding the three senses of dignity presented in this essay helps to explain three very different ways the word has been invoked in debates about euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. This, in itself, seems a significant contribution to bioethics. Proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide argue that the practice ought to be permitted because the assaults that illness and injury mount upon the attributed dignities of human beings can be so overwhelming that some patients might be led to attribute no more worth or value to themselves, thus making euthanasia a reasonable option. Opponents of euthanasia make two dignity-based arguments: one based on an inflorescent sense of dignity and the other based on an intrinsic sense of dignity. Neither argument denies the assault that illness and injury can mount against the attributed dignity of a human being. The argument from inflorescent dignity suggests, however, that the value of the human is expressed most fully (i.e., flourishes) in the ability to stand up to such assaults with courage, humble acceptance of the finitude of the human, nobility, and even love. To kill oneself in the face of death or to ask to be killed, on this view, is precisely the opposite of what it means to face death with dignity. The argument from intrinsic dignity suggests that the fundamental basis for the duty to build up the inflorescent dignity of sick human beings-the root of any motivation to attribute dignity to them-is the intrinsic value of the human, the value human beings have by virtue of being the kinds of things that they are. As argued above, no circumstances can eliminate that intrinsic dignity. As Duty P-VI states, there is a duty of perfect obligation, in carrying out PP-I-V, never to act in such a way as directly to undermine the intrinsic dignity that gives the other duties their binding force. Thus, while one might, out of human sympathy, suggest that a duty to build up attributed dignity legitimizes euthanasia, the conception of dignity presented in this essay would argue that this cannot be permitted because it undermines the fundamental basis of morality itself-respect for intrinsic dignity. A conception of dignity with the explanatory power to understand the basis for arguments on both sides of the debate about euthanasia as well as the normative power to settle that argument in favor of prohibiting the practice seems much more than a "useless" concept. The proper treatment of persons with disabilities has become a matter of great controversy in bioethics, with significant implications for our society. A famous philosopher has even argued with a disability rights activist about these issues in the pages of the Could the conception of dignity presented here illuminate these debates? First, it is clear that disability does not transform a human being into another natural kind. One classifies a person as disabled because one has first picked that individual out as a member of the human natural kind, noting the kind-typical features that the individual does not express. The disabled therefore have intrinsic dignity. Respect for intrinsic dignity would dictate, as argued above, that one recognize the radically equal intrinsic dignity of a severely mentally retarded adult and of a philosophy professor at an Ivy League university. No matter how severe the disability, there are no gradations in intrinsic dignity. It is the value one has by virtue of being the kind of thing that one is-a member of the human natural kind. Second, respect for intrinsic dignity would prohibit, as described above, euthanizing disabled human beings of any age on the basis of their disability. As discussed, in violation of P-VI, this practice would undermine the most fundamental basis of any human morality. Third, as discussed above, the duty to build up the inflorescent dignity of human beings-a duty based on respect for intrinsic dignity-carries with it a notion of the radical equality of the intrinsic dignity of all human beings. Just as skin color, income, education, and social worth ought not be the basis for differential access to health care, likewise disability ought not be invoked as a basis for justifying unequal access to health care. Yet, as a duty of imperfect obligation based on P-IV, the duty to provide health care to the disabled will have limits even in the wealthiest society. A disabled person cannot be euthanized, but there will be limits to how far one goes in sustaining the life of a disabled person, just as there will be limits to how far one must go in sustaining the life of any person. These limits include the physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and economic resources of the individual in his or her particular circumstances as well as the limits of a society's resources. It is critically important to add, however, that any criterion for deciding upon limits must not be based on the disability in itself, since this would constitute a judgment regarding the worth of the person and violate the principle of equal respect for intrinsic dignity. Rather, such judgments must be based on the same criteria one would use for deciding on the limits of care for any individual, whether disabled or not. That is, based on the inefficacy of the intervention, on absolute scarcity, or on the individual's own judgments about burdens and benefits. Limits based on judgments of social worth, whether made by physicians or third parties, are inconsistent with the meaning of respect for intrinsic dignity. Thus, the conception of dignity presented here is in full harmony with the traditional distinction between killing and allowing to die, converging on that distinction by noting differences in the types of dignity and the moral duties associated with each. The conception of dignity presented here provides a strong basis for preventing discrimination against the disabled and for supporting claims of equality of access to health care for the disabled. Such a conception of dignity would appear quite useful to bioethics. A currently vexatious issue facing biomedical science is the morality of using human embryonic stem cells for research. Arguments opposing this practice on the basis of respect for human dignity have been vigorously attacked in the bioethics literature as vacuous. Does the conception of human dignity presented in this essay shed any light on these arguments? If there is such a thing as intrinsic value, then, as I have argued, it is the value something has by virtue of its being the kind of thing that it is. Intrinsic value inheres in natural kinds, since artifacts have only attributed, and not intrinsic, value. I defined intrinsic dignity as the intrinsic value of natural kinds that have, as natural kinds, the capacity for language, rationality, love, free will, moral agency, creativity, aesthetic sensibility, and an ability to grasp the finite and the infinite. These are characteristic features of the human natural kind. Thus, the human natural kind (at least) has intrinsic dignity. As I have argued, this value is not based on the active expression by an individual of any one (or even several) of the particular characteristics that confer intrinsic dignity on the natural kind as a whole. I made this argument in two ways. First, I explained that the extensional logic of natural kinds dictates that one first pick out an individual as a member of a kind by including it under the extension provided by one or two representative samples of the kind, backed by a full understanding of the typical history, the development, and the law-like generalizations that characterize members of that kind. The very notion of natural kinds entails acceptance of this "modest" essentialism. The presence or absence of no single specifiable characteristic or set of characteristics is sufficient to determine this "essence," in all of its modesty. Second, I showed that each of the candidate characteristics one might suggest, by intensional logic, as the dignity-conferring characteristic, leads to gross inconsistencies when applied universally, clashing with our most deeply held moral views. One is therefore led, by a process of elimination, to accept that dignity is the worth all human beings have simply by being human. On the basis of all that I have explained about dignity thus far, it follows that if a human embryo is a member of the human natural kind, then it has all the intrinsic dignity of the human natural kind. And if that is true, then it cannot be killed, even to do good for others, without violating the fundamental moral duties that flow from recognizing intrinsic dignity. Thus, the fundamental question with respect to whether a human embryo has intrinsic dignity is whether that embryo is an individual member of the human natural kind. What else is a human embryo, however, but an individual member of the human natural kind at the earliest stages of its development? This is what a human embryo is, biologically and ontologically. It is not a different kind of thing (say a slug or a porpoise). It is what every human being is (or was) at 0-28 days of development. Judith Thompson has argued that "a fetus is no more a human being than an acorn is an oak tree." Thompson is precisely correct in her analogy, but precisely wrong in the biological, ontological, and moral conclusions she draws from it. Despite her rhetorical fervor, Thompson has it backwards. A fetus (or an embryo) is a member of the human natural kind at the earliest stages of development, just as an acorn is a member of the oak tree natural kind at the earliest stages of its development. Every human being's history can be traced back, as a continuous existent, to its own embryonic stage. Every oak tree's history can be traced back, as a continuous existent, to its own acorn stage. In fact, the continuity is clearer in the case of human development. The concept of natural kinds has been introduced into philosophy to do just this: to account for the continuity and change of individuals over time. "Embryo" and "acorn" are not terms used to sort different natural kinds. Rather, these words are used to distinguish phases within the development of two distinct biological natural kinds. "Embryo" is a phase-sortal term for animals and "acorn" is a phase-sortal term for oaks. If intrinsic value inheres in individuals as members of kinds, then it inheres in them throughout their natural histories as members of that kind undergoing the development that typifies the kind. Thus the intrinsic dignity of the human inheres in embryonic members of the human natural kind every bit as much as it does in adult members of the human natural kind. Space limitations preclude a full discussion of long-standing arguments about the distinction between persons and members of the human natural kind. Suffice it to say that "person" is not a phasesortal, like "fetus" or "adolescent." Even if "person" were a phasesortal, one could not make personhood the basis for intrinsic dignity without completely subverting the notion of intrinsic value, which must, by definition, inhere in each individual by virtue of its being the kind of thing it is, and not by virtue of the phase it is in during its development as a member of that kind. Some have argued that the fact that an early human embryo can split into two, forming twins, means that there is no individual until after 14 days of development, so that any developing entity younger than 14 days is not an individual human being and therefore has no dignity. As Germain Grisez and Robert P. George have pointed out, however, this argument is totally specious. The fact that one amoeba can split into two amoebas is not an argument that what was there before the split was not an amoeba. It is among the law-like generalizations and is typical of the natural history and features of individual members of the human natural kind that they can split before 14 days of development and form identical twins. This is hardly an argument that human embryos younger than 14 days are not individual members of the human natural kind in whom intrinsic dignity inheres. Finally, some have argued that the fact that some human zygotes will develop into tumors known as hydatidiform moles means that one need not regard the developing entity as human, since it could be a mole. For simplicity's sake I will consider only the case of a complete hydatidiform mole. It is uncertain whether this "mole" objection is intended as an ontological argument or an epistemological argument. Interpreted as an ontological argument, it is tainted with genetic reductionism, presuming (falsely) that whatever has a 46 XX or XY set of chromosomes is a human being. But a hydatidiform mole is neither a human being nor a human embryo. A mole is not even an organism. Its chromosomes are only of paternal origin, and these are abnormally imprinted, even if the DNA sequence is totally human. No actual embryo ever develops, only abnormal trophoblastic tissue. From its origin, a mole is a different kind of thing, even though it has human genes. As a different kind of thing, a mole does not have intrinsic dignity. Therefore, the possibility of mole formation is not an argument that a human embryo in the Petri dish does not have intrinsic dignity. If what is in the dish is a human embryo, then it has intrinsic dignity. If what is in the dish is a mole, then it does not. Interpreted as an epistemological argument, however, this line of reasoning suggests that, because one might not be able to determine until later in development whether what is growing in the uterus or the Petri dish is a mole, one therefore cannot speak meaningfully of the intrinsic dignity of a five-day old blastocyst. It is true that, given current technology, there is no good way to tell an embryo from a mole at 5 days of developmental age. by contrast, it has been demonstrated that even at the 2-cell stage one can detect characteristic abnormalities in hydatidiform moles. However, prescinding from the question of whether one has epistemic access to the true (if modest) essence of the thing undergoing development, as a practical matter this possibility does not seem morally decisive. Moles are rare. If there is a 99.9% chance that what I see stirring in the woods is a fellow hunter, and a 0.1% chance that it might be a deer, prudence suggests not shooting. And any epistemic doubts I might have about what stirs-in the woods, the womb, or the Petri dish-do not suffice to change the ontological status of the thing that stirs. There is a correct answer to the question, is this a mole or an embryo? If what is in the dish is an individual member of the human natural kind in the embryonic stage of development, then it has intrinsic dignity. My uncertainty does not change the kind of thing that it is, nor does my uncertainty change its intrinsic value. A theory of dignity that can provide such explanations and guidance in moral decision-making about the treatment of human embryos would not seem useless. All of the arguments I raised above about why it is a violation of intrinsic human dignity to destroy already existing human embryos for research purposes apply to creating human embryos expressly in order to destroy them for research purposes. However, a different set of considerations arises in examining the morality of cloning to bring babies to birth. Curiously, cloning to bring babies to birth has met with widespread opposition by persons of many different philosophical and theological orientations. Most subscribe to the notion that this practice would deeply offend human dignity. There has yet to be, however, an entirely compelling explanation of exactly why this might be so. Does the conception of dignity offered in this essay shed any light on this bioethical issue? The intuitions of many observers may be captured by attempting to understand how the difference between an artifact and a natural kind is related to the conception of dignity that I have presented. Artifacts have no intrinsic value. The value of an artifact is purely attributed-conferred on the artifact by its artificer. Typically, this attributed value is instrumental. I make a knife in order to cut things because cutting them is useful to me. I manufacture a mobile telephone because telephones have an instrumental value to me that is enhanced by making that instrumental value portable. The very notion of the intrinsic value of biological entities, as I have discussed, entails the notion of natural kinds-the value things have by virtue of being the kinds of things that they are. Intrinsic dignity is the name we give to the intrinsic value of members of the human natural kind. This value is discovered, not made. It is decidedly non-instrumental. The introduction of various reproductive technologies into clinical medicine has worried many observers for many years, but few have articulated these worries carefully. The possibility of cloning for reproductive purposes seems to have led many observers to agree that these long-standing worries have had genuine moral substance. The President's Council on Bioethics has expressed this unease as the difference between begetting and manufacture. A child born of the normal course of affairs is begotten. A child brought to birth after having been cloned seems manufactured. The conception of dignity expressed in this essay perhaps gives a more fundamental basis for explaining the worry captured by the pithy distinction between begetting and manufacture. Cloning blurs the line between the value one discovers in the human as a natural kind (i.e., intrinsic dignity) and the value that is merely conferred upon artifacts by human attribution. In one very serious sense, a human clone would be an artifact. As such, it would have value only to the extent that value would be conferred upon it by its artificers. If the clone were created and then destroyed for research purposes, perhaps one could convince oneself that what one had destroyed was not a member of the human natural kind and therefore had no dignity. But if that clone were brought to birth, one could not avoid confronting the artifact vs. natural kind question. The scientist would stare the clone in the eye and say, "I have created you." The value of the clone would be artifactual, not already given, commanding recognition and respect. An artifact's value is purely instrumental and attributed. Thus, the very notion of intrinsic human dignity would be radically threatened. And with it, our whole system of morality, founded upon respect for intrinsic dignity, would be threatened. In another sense, of course, a cloned human being brought to birth would have intrinsic dignity. While born out of the natural course, perhaps suffering from genetic disorders associated with that manner of coming into being, the clone would still be a member of the human natural kind. Clones are not created from scratch-from a soup of nucleotides and DNA polymerase. Somatic cell nuclear transfer depends on the pre-existence of members of the human natural kind from which the clones would be derived. A human clone brought to birth would be picked out as falling under the extension of the human natural kind. While quite likely to be genetically defective, such an individual would still have a developmental history traceable back to a human embryo. Such an individual would still obey most of the law-like generalizations that characterize the human natural kind. Thus, such an individual would be a member of the human natural kind and would still have intrinsic dignity. Given the way in which the individual came into being, however, the real and acute worry would be that this individual's intrinsic dignity would be open to question, because the individual might be considered an artifact and not a member of a natural kind, and might therefore be considered to have only attributed and not intrinsic value. And when the intrinsic value (the intrinsic dignity) of any member of the human natural kind is threatened, the moral system that characterizes us as a kind is threatened. A theory of dignity that explains the common intuition that the bringing to birth of a cloned human being would be a transgression against dignity is a robust theory of dignity. This suggests that the concept of dignity is not irrelevant to bioethics but, rather, extremely important. The proper care of persons suffering from the Permanent Vegetative State and related neurological conditions has become a highly contentious bioethical topic in the Western world. Even the name of the condition has become a matter of controversy. Although a good biologist or philosopher who has studied Aristotle knows that the term "vegetative" is purely descriptive and not pejorative, many persons, sadly, have abused the term and have called patients who suffer from the condition "vegetables." Because of this, the Australian term, "post-coma unresponsiveness" may be the most descriptive name one can use for this condition and may also be the least liable to misinterpretation. Accordingly, "post-coma unresponsiveness" is the term I will use to describe the condition of persons who initially become comatose after anoxic or traumatic brain injury, but gradually develop into a state in which they are able to open their eyes, have intact brain stem functions and are able to breathe and exhibit sleep-wake cycles, but never recover signs of cognitive awareness or conscious interaction with their environments. One line of argument in bioethics suggests that such individuals have lost all dignity and therefore should either be euthanized, experimented on, or denied access to life-prolonging therapies. The conception of dignity presented in this essay provides a basis for understanding that this line of argument cannot be sustained. That is because such arguments are based solely on an attributed sense of dignity. Human beings suffering from post-coma unresponsiveness (PCU) have not undergone an ontological change. Such patients have not become some other kind of thing. We pick them out as members of the human natural kind as a precondition for our judgment that they are severely ill. Even an argument, for example, for euthanizing such patients, based on their profound loss of attributed dignity, presumes, as I have argued, that they are members of the human natural kind and still have intrinsic dignity. All duties to build up or to create conditions conducive to a patient's possibilities for inflorescent dignity depend upon respect for intrinsic dignity. Likewise, any perceived duty to build up diminished attributed dignity also depends upon respect for intrinsic dignity. Respect begins with recognition, and recognition does require an act of attribution, yet this attribution does not create the value. Rather, recognition is best described as an act of attributing correctly, an acknowledgement of the intrinsic dignity of the patient that cannot be eliminated even should it go unrecognized. The dignity here acknowledged is an objective value that presents itself as worthy of respect. Before we can attribute any additional values to human beings, whether sick or well, and call those values "dignities," we must first recognize and respect them as bearers of intrinsic dignity. Those suffering from PCU may represent a limiting case. They have severely diminished attributed dignity, and extremely limited possibilities for inflorescent dignity. Yet it is only by virtue of having first picked them out as members of the human natural kind and having recognized their intrinsic value that we concerned about either their attributed or their inflorescent value. Those who strive to build up the attributed dignity of patients suffering from PCU have already conceded that there is such a thing as intrinsic dignity by the very fact that they show concern for these patients. While extraordinarily impaired, these individuals still have intrinsic dignity by virtue of being the kinds of things that they are- members of the human natural kind. Therefore, according to the moral duties that follow from a fundamental duty to respect intrinsic dignity, someone suffering from PCU cannot be euthanized or experimented upon without consent (P-VI). Such individuals have an intrinsic dignity that also demands equality of treatment. Accordingly, such individuals cannot be denied access to care that other ill human beings would be afforded merely on the basis of their medical conditions. Treatment might be refused, but treatment must be offered. Comfort, care, and respect must never be abandoned. As discussed above, this duty to provide care is limited by the individual's physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and economic resources in his or her particular circumstances as well as the availability of a given society's resources. The diagnosis of PCU itself, however, must never be the basis for unilaterally withholding or withdrawing care that would be rendered to others. It is undeniably true that such individuals are extremely restricted in their ability to flourish as the kinds of things that they are. They are incapable of expressing courage, or honor, or even understanding their predicaments. Thus, their capacities for inflorescent dignity are profoundly restricted. No one wishes to be in such a state. Therefore, respect for equal intrinsic dignity also ought to assure such persons the same rights as others to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments that are futile, or more burdensome than beneficial. The conception of dignity presented in this essay thus also has concrete implications for understanding how to care for individuals suffering from post-coma unresponsiveness. This gives further evidence of the critical importance of a serious consideration of dignity in debates about pressing issues in bioethics. In this essay, I outlined three ways the word "dignity" has been understood in the history of Western thought and explained how these three senses of dignity-the attributed, the intrinsic, and the inflorescent-are still at play in contemporary bioethical debates. I offered two arguments about why the intrinsic sense of dignity is the most foundational-the Axiological Argument and the Argument from Consistency. In so doing, I stressed the importance of the conception of natural kinds to all three senses of dignity. I then outlined several general moral norms that specify what it means to respect dignity. Finally, I applied this theory of dignity and its associated moral norms to a variety of pressing ethical questions in contemporary bioethics, showing how this conception of dignity is extraordinarily powerful in helping us to understand how we ought to proceed in answering these questions. Space has precluded a fuller explication of this theory or a full consideration of counter-arguments. However, it seems clear that if this is what dignity means, then dignity is anything but a useless concept. _______________________ i. There is a third logical possibility that I will not discuss, although some nihilists accept it-namely, that human beings have no dignity. _______________________ 1. Daniel P. Sulmasy, "Death, Dignity, and the Theory of Value," 9 (2002): 103-118, reprinted in , ed. Paul Schotsmans and Tom Meulenbergs (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2005), pp. 95-119. 2. Ruth Macklin, "Dignity is a Useless Concept," 327 (2003): 1419-1420. 3. Charles Trinkaus, "The Renaissance Idea of the Dignity of Man," in , vol. 4, ed. Philip P. Weiner (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), pp. 136-147; Daniel P. Sulmasy, "Death with Dignity: What Does it Mean?" 4 (1997): 13-24. 4. Cicero, I.166. 5. Miriam T. Griffin and E. Margaret Atkins, "Notes on Translation," in (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. xlvi-xlvii. 6. Cicero, I.106, trans. Walter Miller (New York: Macmillan, 1913), pp. 106-109. 7. Thomas Hobbes, , chapter 10, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 63-64. 8. Immanuel Kant, "The Metaphysics of Morals, Part II: The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue," Ak419-420, in Kant, , trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1983), pp. 80-81. 9. Immanuel Kant, , Ak 434, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1981), p. 40. 10. Ibid. 11. Thomas E. Hill, Jr., (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 43. 12. In my essay, "Dignity and the Human as a Natural Kind," included in , ed. Carol R. Taylor and Roberto Dell'Oro (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006), pp. 71-87, I called this the "derivative" sense of dignity. However, some commentators, especially those who would be counted as using the word this way, have worried that "derivative" sounds less"dignified" than is appropriate. 13. Timothy E. Quill, "Death and Dignity: A Case of Individualized Decision Making," 324 (1991): 691-694. 14. Dónal P. O'Mathúna, "Human Dignity in the Nazi era: Implications for Contemporary Bioethics," 7 (2006): E2. 15. Leon R. Kass, (San Francisco, California: Encounter Books, 2002), pp. 231-256. 16. See Noah M. Lemos, "Value Theory," in , ed. Robert Audi (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 830-831; also Michael J. Zimmerman, "Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value," (2004 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, available online at http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic/. The standard views either distinguish intrinsic from instrumental values, or intrinsic from extrinsic values. The theory of intrinsic value outlined in this essay, however, following Holmes Rolston III, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), aligns with the views of Kant, Brentano, Broad, Ross, and others, that whatever is intrinsically good is worthy of being valued in itself. 17. See Sulmasy, "Death, Dignity, and the Theory of Value." 18. Rolston, , p. 116. 19. Credit for initiation of the discussion of natural kinds is usually given to Saul Kripke, in his two essays, "Identity and Necessity," in ed. Milton K. Munitz (New York: New York University Press, 1971), pp. 135-164, and "Naming and Necessity," in , ed. Gilbert Harman and Donald Davidson (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Reidel, 1972), pp. 253-355. For a good contemporary approach to the concept of natural kinds, see David Wiggins, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 77-101, and his (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 20. Wiggins, , p. 169. 21. Tom L. Beauchamp, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), pp. 5-21. 22. Aristotle, 1095b, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett, 1985), p. 7. 23. H. Tristram Englehardt, Jr., (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 213. 24. Michael Tooley, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 25. Raymond G. Frey, "Pain, Vivisection, and the Value of Life," 31 (2005): 202-204. 26. Kant, , Ak 421, p. 30. 27. Richard M. Hare, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 107-116. 28. Thomas F. Hack, et al., "Defining Dignity in Terminally Ill Cancer Patients: A Factor-analytic Approach," 13 (2004): 700-708. 29. Garth Baker-Fletcher, , Harvard Dissertations in Divinity, No. 31 (Minneapolis, Minnesota: For tress Press, 1993), p. 23. 30. J. David Velleman, "A Right to Self-Termination?" 109 (1999): 605-628. 31. Daniel P. Sulmasy, "Dignity, Rights, Health Care, and Human Flourishing," in , ed. G. Diaz Pintos and David N. Weisstub (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, in press 2007). 32. Daniel P. Sulmasy, "Diseases and Natural Kinds," 26 (2005): 487-513. 33. Harriet McBryde Johnson, "Unspeakable Conversations," , February 16, 2003, p. 50. The philosopher was Peter Singer. 34. Judith Jarvis Thompson, "A Defense of Abortion," 1 (1971): 47-66. 35. Robert P. George and Patrick Lee, "Acorns and Embryos," 7 (Fall 2004/Winter 2005): 90-100. 36. Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, "Does Respect for Embryos Entail Respect for Gametes?" 25 (2004): 199-208. 37. Germain G. Grisez, "When Do People Begin?" 63 (1990): 27-47. 38. Robert P. George, "Human Cloning and Embryo Research," 25 (2004): 3-20. 39. Carlos A. Bedate and Robert C. Cefalo, "The Zygote: To Be or Not Be a Peron," 14 (1989): 641-645; Thomas J. Bole, III,"Metaphysical Accounts of the Zygote as a Person and the Veto Power of Facts," 14 (1989): 647-653. 40. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., "Are Teratomas Embryos or Non-embryos?" 5 (2005): 697-706. 41. The President's Council on Bioethics, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2002), pp. 104-107. 42. National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, "Post-Coma Unresponsiveness (Vegetative State): A Clinical Framework for Diagnosis," December 18, 2003, available online at http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications/synopses/_files/hpr23.pdf. An official website of the United States government The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site. The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely. Publications Account settings Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now . Advanced Search Journal List The place of human rights and the common good in global health policy John tasioulas. 1 Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London, Somerset House East Wing, London, WC2R 2LS UK Effy Vayena 2 Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute, University of Zurich, Hirschengraben 84, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland This article offers an integrated account of two strands of global health justice: health-related human rights and health-related common goods. After sketching a general understanding of the nature of human rights, it proceeds to explain both how individual human rights are to be individuated and the content of their associated obligations specified. With respect to both issues, the human right to health is taken as the primary illustration. It is argued that (1) the individuation of the right to health is fixed by reference to the subject matter of its corresponding obligations, and not by the interests it serves, and (2) the specification of the content of that right must be properly responsive to thresholds of possibility and burden. The article concludes by insisting that human rights cannot constitute the whole of global health justice and that, in addition, other considerations—including the promotion of health-related global public goods—should also shape such policy. Moreover, the relationship between human rights and common goods should not be conceived as mutually exclusive. On the contrary, there sometimes exists an individual right to some aspect of a common good, including a right to benefit from health-related common goods such as programmes for securing herd immunity from diphtheria. What are the demands of justice applicable to global health policy? By global health policy we mean those practical measures, whether adopted and implemented by international organizations, states, corporations, or agents of some other kind, that have as their ultimate goal, in the words of the World Health Organization’s evocative motto, “health for all.” They are legal and other measures aimed at protecting and promoting the interest in health of every human being around the globe. In keeping with a long philosophical tradition, we deploy two distinct senses of the idea of justice. According to the first, justice concerns moral duties that are owed to and claimable by others as a matter of individual rights . In another, broader sense, justice concerns moral duties governing our conduct towards others, especially insofar as they fall within the proper remit of public decision-making. 1 The second sense of justice, the domain of other-regarding moral duties, includes the first sense, the domain of justice as rights, as a component. But it also includes other moral duties, notably duties to preserve and promote the common good that may not be linked to rights. Transposed to the global context, justice, to a significant degree, consists in the morality of individual human rights and global common goods. To this extent, a justice perspective on global health policy must be bifocal in character. However, we contend that it is a profound error, if also a common one, to construe the two strands of justice as being in an inherently dichotomous and generally antagonistic relationship. Not only do we need to draw on both human rights and common goods, but the ‘individualism’ of human rights is not to be starkly juxtaposed against the ‘collectivism’ of the common good. On the contrary, human rights are an integral component of some global common goods. This article seeks to make a start on elaborating the meaning and implications of such an integrated, bifocal perspective in relation to global health policy. 2 We begin, in the first section, by outlining the distinctive character of human rights: they are moral rights possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity. Then, in light of the prominent role of human rights in global health policy debates, the next two sections focus on the human right to health. One important question is how that right is to be individuated within the overall set of human rights. Contrary to a popular, radically ‘inclusive’ interpretation, we suggest characterizing the human right to health’s scope of concern primarily by reference to obligations regarding health care services and public health measures. This way of understanding the human right to health makes it clear that it is only one among a number of human rights that serve our interest in health and to which global health policy needs to be responsive. We then offer an account of how to specify the content of the human right to health, i.e., the content of the duties regarding health care services and public health measures associated with the right. The process of content specification, we argue, involves the application of a threshold criterion that incorporates considerations of possibility and burden. In the fourth section, we explain why human rights cannot do all the work in shaping a just global health policy, giving special attention to the crucial role of health-related global common goods. We also respond to the converse hypothesis that global policy must be predominantly concerned with common goods as opposed to human rights. This response turns on showing how common goods may include, as a component, arrangements that secure human rights. Introducing human rights Global health policy advocates have repeatedly called for a post-2015 development agenda that gives a prominent place to policy objectives couched in the language of human rights. These calls echo the chorus of agreement among a wide variety of international actors—including the United Nations, NGOs, governments, and ordinary citizens—on the vital importance of a human rights basis for the new development goals more generally [ 3 – 5 ]. Charitably interpreted, as more than just a rhetorical ploy intended to convey a sense of urgent commitment, this emphasis on human rights embodies a vital insight. The adoption of goals simply concerned with the promotion of human welfare—such as our interests in health, prosperity, education, etc.—is not enough. Human rights inject a distinctive moral dimension into policy objectives, one that is especially responsive to the plight of victims of injustice throughout the globe. The distinctive character of human rights consists in the fact that they are universal moral rights: moral rights possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity. 3 They mark the threshold at which each individual human being’s interests generate duties or obligations (we use these terms interchangeably) on the part of others to respect, protect, and promote those interests in various ways. The violation of an obligation is a moral wrong, whereas no wrong is committed simply by thwarting another’s interests or leaving those interests unpromoted. For example, neither beating a rival for a coveted job nor failing to donate your spare healthy kidney for a transplant need be wrongful. Human rights are a distinctive moral register of critical assessment, beyond assessments tracking rises and falls in individual or collective welfare. The foregoing does not mean that wellbeing as such, or elements of it such as the global burden of disease, lacks normative significance. It is just to say that it cannot displace the distinctive kind of moral assessment introduced by human rights: the idea of moral duties owed to each and every human being, the violation of which specifically victimizes the right-holder. Indeed, the discourse of human rights is at the core of a ‘global justice’ approach to health: justice, on one historically influential interpretation, consists in the rights-involving part of morality, and the sub-category of human rights are those moral rights that are held globally because they are possessed by people simply in virtue of their humanity. So far, we have spoken of human rights as a certain kind of moral norm. Of course, there is now a firmly established doctrine of international human rights law in which various health-related human rights form an integral part. 4 Moreover, in excess of two-thirds of national constitutions explicitly include health rights, often by incorporating provisions in international human rights treaties [ 2 , p. 263]. But the morality of human rights is independent of its recognition by domestic or international law. A right does not need to be actually legally enshrined, let alone enforceable, to exist as a human right. On the contrary, human rights law is best understood as deriving its distinct identity from the attempt to give legal effect to background human rights morality, insofar as it is appropriate to do so. It is the background morality of human rights that is the main focus of this chapter. Three further preliminary observations are worth making in this connection. First, the duties associated with human rights include positive duties to engage in certain forms of conduct, such as the provision of health care services, as well as negative duties to refrain from certain conduct, such as administering medical treatment without consent. Moreover, the positive duties associated with a right may be primary duties. In other words, they are duties that are not parasitic on other duties associated with the right, such as positive duties to compensate or make reparation triggered by a violation of some prior duty. Instead, human rights also impose primary positive duties to make certain goods and services available to their holders. Of course, there are special problems in the allocation of positive primary duties to duty-bearers, and in the specification of their content, which do not arise in the case of negative primary duties [ 8 ]. But these differences between the two kinds of rights, which are largely matters of degree, do not warrant the wholesale expulsion of so-called ‘socio-economic rights’, with positive primary duties, from the category of bona fide human rights [ 9 ]. Second, there is no compelling a priori reason why the duties associated with human rights should be thought to fall exclusively on states, at least as primary duty-bearers. This idea is a distortion that a misplaced focus on legal instruments—constitutions and treaties—has introduced into thinking about human rights. Instead, we should maintain an open-minded and flexible attitude to the question of who the relevant duty-bearers are in any given time and place [ 6 , 10 ]. Multinational corporations, international organizations, and even individuals can be directly subject to human rights-related duties. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, may be directly subject to human rights obligations to make antiretrovirals and other drugs available to developing countries at a significantly lower cost than market price [ 11 ]. In an environment of accelerating globalization, with a concomitant decline of state power relative to various other global actors, the importance of not conceptually restricting human rights obligations to states is all the more pronounced. Indeed, precisely this insight is at the heart of the innovative UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which seek to provide an authoritative specification of the human rights responsibilities directly applicable to corporations [ 12 ]. Finally, another a priori commitment to be resisted is the idea that a pro tanto case always exists for enshrining human rights as legal entitlements, let alone for taking the further step of making them enforceable legal entitlements [ 6 , 13 ]. Law is a vitally important mechanism of implementation, but it remains one mechanism alongside others, including social conventions, public opinion, and the inculcation of a rights-respecting ethos through fostering the internalization of human rights norms by individual and collective agents. As Sen has stressed, whether and to what extent individual human rights should be enshrined in counterpart legal rights are a matter of what is inherently appropriate and works in all the circumstances, which is subject to considerable variation in time and place. Experience shows that making human rights legally claimable is sometimes counter-productive. For example, in Brazil the constitutionalization of the right to health appears to have facilitated a transfer of health resources to wealthier members of society who can afford the cost of litigation [ 14 ]. The overall health budget remained fixed, but the better-off engaged in litigation against the government to siphon off a larger share of it for themselves, often in order to treat less serious ailments. 5 To take another example, the economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the chief architects of the Millennium Development Goals (MDSs), has ascribed the success in meeting those goals partly to the fact that states are not legally bound by them. This lowered the cost of states publicly signing up to the goals in the first place, enhancing the likelihood that they would do so [ 16 ]. In short, the difficult and multi-faceted question of legalization is one that deserves extensive consideration on a case-by-case basis. No presumptive answer to it is already inscribed in the very nature of human rights. Individuation and inclusivity Human rights exist insofar as universal human interests generate obligations on others to respect, protect, and promote those interests in various ways. Interests are here understood as the elements of wellbeing, the realization of which in a person’s life make it a better life for them. We favour an objectivist and pluralistic account of the interests that ground human rights [ 17 ]. They are interests human beings possess independently of whether they actually desire their realization, and they are not limited to one kind of interest—autonomy, for example—or to one category of interests, such as those interests that qualify as basic needs [ 18 ]. Instead, a plurality of genuinely universal human interests are capable of generating duties on the part of others in the case of all human beings, simply in virtue of their humanity. Moreover, essential to the rights-generative role of human interests is that they belong to distinct individuals with equal moral status in virtue of their humanity: the status of human dignity. This is central to explaining the resistance of human rights to trade-offs both against other rights and against non-rights based considerations. 6 The pluralistic theory of human rights claims not only that a plurality of interests is relevant to the justification of human rights generally but also that any given individual human right is typically grounded in a plurality of interests, such as autonomy, health, knowledge, friendship, accomplishment, play, etc. [ 17 ]. The right not to be tortured, for example, is grounded not only in one’s interest in autonomy but also in one’s interest in being free from pain and in being able to form intimate and trusting relationships. This is also true of the human right to health: it serves not only one’s interest in health but also various other interests that enjoying good health can enable one to realize, such as making friends, acquiring understanding, or accomplishing something with one’s life. Indeed, the right to health may even include entitlements to medical services, such as non-therapeutic abortions or cosmetic surgery, that are not primarily intended to serve the health interests of the right-holder. Hence, a diversity of interests helps to justify the existence of a human right to health and to shape its associated obligations. One way to fall into the trap of assuming that the human right to health is grounded exclusively in our interest in health is to adopt an unduly expansive interpretation of health. This is precisely what the WHO did in the preamble to its constitution, which notoriously states that ‘health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity’ [ 20 ]. But, as has been repeatedly shown, this definition is far too broad. Health, on any remotely useful understanding, is one element of wellbeing among others, not the whole of it. And this remains the case even though health bears pervasive constitutive and instrumental relations to the other elements of wellbeing. For the purposes of this article, we take health to be centrally concerned with the effective functioning of standard human physical and mental capacities [ 21 ]. A person can enjoy such functioning even when they are deficient in other elements of wellbeing, such as accomplishment and enjoyment. Moreover, they may even reasonably put their health at risk in order better to achieve some other aspect of wellbeing. There is a further crucial point worth making about the individuation of the human right to health. Although many familiar human rights serve our interest in health in all sorts of important ways, this does not automatically render them components of the general human right to health. Yet, such an overly inclusive interpretation of the right to health has been advocated by the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, in its influential General Comment 14, as well as by other UN organs and leading global health scholars [ 22 ]. So, for example, Gostin notes that General Comment 14 treats as ‘integral components of the right to health’ entitlements to food, housing, life, education, privacy, and access to information. Gostin himself suggests that this specification is probably too ‘constrained’ and should be widened to include ‘gender equality, employment, and social inclusion’ [ 2 , p. 257]. This inclusive approach is echoed, and perhaps taken even further, in a ‘Fact Sheet’ on the right to health jointly produced by the WHO and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. According to this document, the human right to health incorporates a slew of other rights, including gender equality and freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment [ 23 , p. 3]. By a process parallel to the WHO’s inflation of the notion of health to embrace all of human well-being, such interpretations appear to absorb within the human right to health all the rights that bear positively on our interest in health. Indeed, on this radically ‘inclusive’ approach, it is an open question, whether there is any right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or in any of the two leading Conventions on Human Rights, which cannot be subsumed within the right to health, at least insofar as they involve duties that serve the right-holder’s interest in health. After all, a colourable story can be told of how denial of the rights to citizenship, political participation, a fair trial, freedom of speech, religion, movement, and association, among others, can have a seriously detrimental impact on health. Now, something is clearly awry if the human right to health is lumbered with such a bloated interpretation. 7 The mistake is to individuate the scope of the right simply by reference to whether a putative rights-based duty is justified, in part, by whether it serves a person’s interest in health. Many, if not most, human rights serve a person’s interest in health, and this is because they serve a multiplicity of interests, including health. Consider, for example, the fact that improvements in adult women’s education accounted for 40 % of the reduction in mortality between 1960 and 1990, although the steps taken to enhance educational provision are not obviously ‘health care’ measures [ 24 , p. 94]. However, a human right is not picked out straightforwardly by the profile of interests it serves but, we claim, by reference to the subject matter of the obligations it generates. More specifically, our suggestion is that the right to health should be construed as principally ranging over obligations concerned with the provision of health care services by medical professionals and public health measures, such as sanitation, potable water, clean air, alcohol, tobacco control, and so on. On this view, there is a moderate sense in which the human right to health is an ‘inclusive’ right. It ‘includes’, as justified components, various more specific rights to health care or public health measures, such as a right to health insurance or measles vaccination. By contrast, however, many so-called ‘social determinants of health’, which are crucial in promoting the health of individuals, do not come under the right to health. Instead, determinants such as education, housing, employment, and a social environment free of gender and racial discrimination—insofar as there is a right to them—more plausibly fall under other rights. The rationale for excluding these social determinants is partly a holistic one, turning on avoiding excessive overlaps with other rights there is good reason to recognise as distinct rights. But there is also a deeper rationale, which brings back the role of the interests served by the right in a more sophisticated manner. This is whether or not the object to which one has a right serves one’s interest in health as its primary and direct objective, as in the case of clean air and water, or whether it does so indirectly, via the serving of other interests which are its primary goal, as in the case of education and employment. Health care services and public health measures satisfy this criterion, but the social determinants of health typically do not. One cannot, therefore, infer that the right not to be tortured or the right against degrading treatment are incorporated in the right to health, since these rights are not properly understood as having some specific connection with the provision of health care or public health measures. 8 However, it is not always straightforward to draw clear lines between different human rights. Sometimes the boundaries will be blurred, and there will occasionally be tolerable overlaps in the scopes of rights. For example, the provision of training in first aid, or of health education more generally, might plausibly come under both the rights to health and to education. In consequence, it may sometimes be that the identical course of conduct constitutes a violation, or a fulfilment, of more than one human right. Often, laws will need to draw sharp lines between human rights so that overlaps can be avoided, where this would be beneficial in some way. We offer no general prescription for resolving these difficulties of line-drawing in a principled way, beyond the remarks about holism and primary and direct goals. What we have suggested, instead, is that the starting-point in delineating the human right to health has to be different from that adopted by the radical ‘inclusive’ view. That right, like all others, needs to be individuated by reference to the subject matter of the obligations associated with it. It might be objected that the rejection of the radical inclusivity thesis expresses little more than a preference for tidy normative housekeeping. But this is not so: it also underwrites the idea that there are a number of fairly specific and irreducibly distinct human rights, so that enumerating a list of rights such as that in the Universal Declaration is a meaningful endeavour. It further caters to the idea that separating out various human rights is the best way of highlighting distinct normative concerns that might otherwise be obscured. It is worth underlining a significant practical pay-off of the approach we advocate. If one follows the radically ‘inclusive’ account to the right to health, then one faces a needlessly Herculean task when assessing the extent to which the right to health is being fulfilled globally. This is because the extent to which all health-enhancing rights are fulfilled will then need to be tracked. Progress towards such a massively sprawling goal is hard to monitor, and extremely difficult to achieve. This inevitably breeds uncertainty, frustration and despair. If one wishes to set a more determinate and manageable but still demanding task, then one should adopt the more constrained interpretation of the right to health. It is clear, on the view we have developed above, that global health policy cannot be exclusively responsive to the right to health. This is so even if attention is confined to human rights that further the interest in health, as opposed to merely placing constraints on how it may be furthered. Other human rights are also extremely relevant, such as the rights to life, physical security, religious freedom, privacy, education, work, and so on. Indeed, as noted earlier, if one’s main concern is with the promotion of health overall, securing a right such as that of the right to education may be more important than other health-care related rights, such as the right to a minimum level of health insurance. Adopting an overly ‘inclusive’ interpretation of the right to health threatens to obscure the vital independent role these other rights must play in shaping global health policy. Content specification The preceding discussion of the fallacy of radical inclusivity concerned mainly the individuation of the human right to health at an abstract level: the question of how it is to be distinguished from other human rights. But a deeper problem concerns the specification of its content, i.e., the content of the obligations associated with that right, even after their general subject matter has been identified. This is a difficult and many-sided topic, and here it is only possible to offer a few comments. Recall that a human right exists when, in the case of each human being, universal human interests generate obligations on others to respect, protect, and promote those interests in various ways. Obligations, or duties, are categorical and exclusionary reasons for action, non-compliance with which is a pro tanto basis for assigning blame (on the part of others) and experiencing guilt or self-blame (on the part of the duty violator). It is a challenging task to articulate, in a general way, the conditions that need to be satisfied for the threshold from interests to duties to be crossed. However, at least two dimensions of this threshold are worth highlighting: possibility and burden . Both go some way towards unpacking the maxim ‘ought implies can’. 9 On the one hand, an obligation will only arise when it is generally possible to comply with the counterpart duty in the case of all the supposed right-holders. The impossibility that prevents a duty arising may be of different sorts, ranging from logical impossibility to practical impossibility given fixed conditions of contemporary life. Taking an illustration of the latter kind, there may be inadequate resources now or in the foreseeable future to fulfil a proposed right for each individual human being. This would rule out, on any literal reading, a human right to health that imposed a duty to secure for all ‘the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’. 10 Understood as an absolute standard, it is impossible to bring all human beings to this very high standard, irrespective of the vagaries of their personal history and genetic constitution. But this supposed right is also ruled out by a more complex reason, even if what is ‘attainable’ is relativized to the history and genetic make-up of the individual right-holder. This is the fact that the state of one’s health depends not only on what others do but also on decisions made by the right-holder. It seems that the relativized right would require unacceptable interventions in the right-holder’s life, overriding their own health-affecting choices on matters such as diet, exercise, leisure activities, occupational choice, and so on. This would thwart the autonomy interests of the right-holder in ways that would preclude such a duty from arising. The content of the right might then be further weakened, so that it creates, for example, a duty to afford access primarily to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health care , rather than health itself. This would leave the decision of whether or not to access such care largely to the discretion of the right-holder. But even if a pro tanto case for such a demanding right to health could be made, it will very likely be defeated once the second dimension of the threshold is factored in. This is the dimension of burden, which registers the costs of affirming the right in relation to the interests of duty-bearers, the fulfilment of other human rights, as well as other values, such as respect for non-human nature. The right to health that arises from this process will, in all likelihood, be far less demanding than a right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health care, which is manifestly too costly. It is important to keep in mind, however, that ‘cost’ here is not a simple function of the real world market price of various medical services and public health measures. So, for example, one cannot simply take as given the market price that pharmaceutical companies, exploiting their market position and the rights afforded to them by intellectual property law, actually charge for their products. Equally, the cost cannot simply be a matter of the emotional strain and its consequences that compliance with the putative duty would entail, irrespective of the origin and nature of that strain. So, for example, the racist sentiments that make it ‘burdensome’, in some sense, for racists to conform with the rights of members of groups they despise do not bear on the question of whether members of those groups genuinely possess those rights. To take the racists’ burden into account would be to infect our thinking about which human rights people actually possess with their false beliefs about the relative moral standing of human beings. However, costs of both sorts might figure in deciding whether and how, all things considered, to insist on compliance with the rights in question. The specification of the content of the human right to health is evidently a formidably complex matter. In this domain, as in others, a fully adequate specification through pure moral reasoning is unavailable. Instead, a workable standard must, to a large extent, be the product of social decision-making, whether conventional or legal. This is especially so when addressing the difficult questions of priority-setting in the use of limited resources. Of course, any such specification through social fiat must operate within tolerably determinate parameters set by moral reasoning. 11 However, taking this line of thought much further, some theorists have responded to the problem of indeterminacy of content by appealing to a procedural criterion: the content of the human right to health will be largely fixed through fair processes of (in particular, democratic) decision-making. 12 Of course, the question of what counts as a fair or democratic procedure is itself a contested matter. Bracketing that concern, it is still worth distinguishing at least two general roles for which such a procedure may be invoked. The first is that of serving as a reliable epistemic guide to the actual content of the human right to health. But, if so, we need independent reasons for believing that procedures of the relevant sort are more likely to lead to correct specifications of that right than other procedures, such as judicial review or executive directives. Perhaps some of these reasons will be found in general epistemic virtues typically possessed by democratic institutions, such as inclusiveness in the range of interests and perspectives taken into account in law-making. However, it is doubtful that we can have confidence in a given decision-making process to specify the content of the right to health unless we have a prior, albeit incomplete, grip on the content of that right, and on pain of circularity, this grip cannot merely consist in the fact that the putative content was the outcome of that kind of process. In short, even granting its main premises, the epistemic appeal to procedure is by no means a comprehensive solution to the problem of content specification. The second role decision-making procedures might perform is that of conferring legitimacy on any given legal specification of the right to health that they generates. Even if the content specified by law is not (obviously) correct as a matter of moral logic, that law may nonetheless be binding on its purported subjects in virtue, say, of its democratic pedigree. The first point to be made here is that the connection between procedure, including democratic procedures, and political legitimacy is not quite as straightforward as is often assumed. Contrary to a common view, it can be doubted whether democracy is generally either a necessary or a sufficient condition of legitimacy [ 29 ]. But the second, and more salient, point for present purposes is that the appeal to legitimacy effectively changes the subject. One is no longer addressing the original question—what is the content of the human right to health? Instead, one is asking a different question, namely, when is a law purporting to enact that right binding on its subjects? This latter question is certainly important, and it is also true that some of the indeterminacy surrounding the first question may be, as a practical matter, dispelled at the level of the second question. Nevertheless, in moving to the second question the focus has shifted from the requirements of justice to the legitimacy of law. Justice as the common good Imagine a world in which the human rights of all people were fully realised. Could there nonetheless be grave health deficits in this world? The answer, it seems, is clearly ‘yes’. It follows, at least presumptively, that global health policy must attend to more than just securing people’s human rights. 13 One potential health deficit in a human rights utopia is a high prevalence of obesity arising from the readily avoidable failure of people to maintain a healthy diet and exercise regimen. This could lead to severe health problems, but it would be a stretch to suppose that they are also necessarily human rights problems. Human rights are about how we treat others, not how we treat ourselves. In avoidably neglecting my health, I do not violate my own rights. On the contrary, I may be exercising my rights when I freely engage in unhealthy behaviour, such as smoking, over-eating, and avoiding exercise, knowing the risks and having viable alternatives. So, global health policy must be concerned with the reasons people have to promote their own health, including their duties to do so, and not just with human rights. Another way health deficits might creep into a human rights utopia is if it is too demanding or intrusive for certain kinds of health-enhancing behaviour to be claimable as a matter of individual right. Consider someone in dire need of a kidney transplant. Although being given a matching kidney would certainly promote this person’s health interests, it is very doubtful that she has a right to another’s healthy kidney. This is because their interest in a kidney transplant is insufficient, by itself, to impose an obligation upon another to provide the organ for this purpose. Indeed, the right to bodily security stands in the way of others having a right to one’s kidney. Or consider participation in clinical trials. There are familiar difficulties in recruiting a sufficient number of trial participants in wealthier countries, something that in turn hampers valuable medical research. Yet, one normally should not suppose that anyone’s human right is being violated when people refrain from participating in clinical trials. Instead, it seems more natural to suppose that there is a human right of non-participation. To clarify, we are not advancing the manifestly false thesis that obesity, organ donation, and research participation are utterly devoid of a human rights dimension. Certainly, people have a human right to such things as access to a healthy diet and treatment for obesity. But the incidence of obesity does not necessarily betoken a rights violation, something signalled by the fact that in the developing world, it is a condition more prevalent among those of a higher socio-economic status [ 32 ]. Also, there are presumably human rights-based obligations to facilitate organ donation and research participation and to offer or conduct them without discrimination, exploitation, or undue cost. But even when these demands are fully met, problems of obesity, lack of organs for transplant, and low research participation may nonetheless persist. Consequently, more than just human rights will be required to guide health policy in formulating and addressing these problems. Global health policy must therefore include in its mission promoting compliance with various health-related norms, including duties to oneself and duties of charity, that are not claimable as a matter of human rights. Now, in the remainder of this article, we wish to outline a further type of ethical consideration—common goods, in particular, global common goods—that should also have an important place in global health policy. By ‘common good’, we do not mean aggregate social utility—the utilitarian notion of maximizing the aggregate welfare in society by means of a process of trading-off some people’s interests against those of others. Instead, according to a broadly Aristotelian interpretation, something qualifies as a common good if it serves the interests of all in a given community (universality), serves those interests in a uniform way for each person (uniformity), and does so in a non-rivalrous manner, i.e., the serving of anyone’s interests is not at the expense of serving any other’s (non-rivalrousness) [ 33 ]. 14 A shared language, such as English, is a common good so understood: it serves the interests of all in communication, it does so by furnishing all with a common means of communication, and one person’s use of English in no way detracts from anyone else’s capacity to draw on that language. In the health context, one can recognize the common good of a social ethos that both helps maintain an adequate supply of organs for transplant and ensures sufficient participation in valuable health-related research. Cultivating such a culture of compassion and participation goes beyond anything demanded by human rights, yet it is of great significance for the promotion of the health of all. The second sense of justice, distinguished at the outset, prominently includes duties to promote common goods. The thrust of our argument so far has been that global health policy has to maintain a bifocal perspective insofar as justice is concerned: it has to be responsive both to human rights, including prominently the right to health, and to global common goods that bear on health. Now, Gopal Sreenivasan has recently expressed scepticism about the global health policy significance of the human right to health [ 36 ]. His claim is that, once common or public health goods are acknowledged, most of the requirements ordinarily thought to derive from the human right to health cannot be so understood. Instead, such requirements belong to the category of public (or common) goods. The argument proceeds on the basis that rights and common goods are mutually exclusive so that ‘no individual can have a moral claim-right to any pure public good’ [ 36 , p. 256]. We can accept the assertion that much that is claimed under the heading of human rights involves securing a common good. But what justifies Sreenivasan’s contention that such claims therefore fail? In effect, his thesis—insofar as it bears on the position developed in this article—is that the relevant threshold from interest to duty is not satisfied. In particular, an individual’s interest in a public good, taken in isolation from others’ interests in that good, never suffices to impose a duty on others to deliver it. To take his example, securing the common good of herd immunity to diphtheria through a programme of vaccination involves the imposition of various burdens, not only the materials costs of the programme but also the ‘moral’ costs of compelling people to submit to it. In Sreenivasan’s judgment, it is ‘very doubtful that a single individual’s health has the moral significance to underwrite either cost, let alone both’ [ 36 , p. 257]. 15 Sreenivasan’s novel argument merits attention for at least two reasons. The first is that it forces us to clarify the interest-based approach to human rights in order to explain more fully how interests generate duties and how the ensuing rights are related to the common good. Second, and just as importantly, Sreenivasan’s argument highlights an ambivalence within contemporary global health policy, one starkly illustrated by Gostin’s recent book, Global Health Law . Gostin is a prominent advocate of a human rights approach to global health, having taken the lead in calling for a global health framework convention grounded in the human right to health [ 2 , pp. 437–439]. On the other hand, he also places great weight on public health measures and the social determinants of health, in contrast to medical services, partly on the grounds of their relatively greater preventive value [ 2 , pp. 419–428]. But these considerations look like common goods, which may explain Gostin’s startling assertion, introduced without elaboration only fourteen pages shy of the conclusion of his treatise, that the right to health is not best seen as an individual right. Instead, he contends it is principally a ‘collective right’ that requires the implementation of broader public health and societal measures that are pre-conditions for securing more specific, individual rights [ 2 , p. 426]. The radical idea that the right to health is a group right seems to presuppose something like Sreenivasan’s thesis that there can be no individual right to a common good. But this is a radical departure from the ordinary understanding of the human right to health, which is precisely that it is a right of individuals. So, does Sreenivasan’s scepticism hold up? If his interpretation of when an individual’s interests suffice to generate a duty is correct, then his conclusion seems unassailable. After all, how could the health benefits of herd immunity for one individual, considered in isolation, justify the massive costs involved in instituting policies aimed at securing and maintaining herd immunity, such as compulsory vaccination? But the first indication that something is amiss here is that this pattern of argument generalizes alarmingly even to paradigmatic rights, such as the right not to be tortured. How could the benefits to any given individual of the criminal justice apparatus aimed at the prevention, detection, and punishment of torture, considered independently from the benefits to others, justify the massive costs of such a system? Indeed, it evidently follows that, on Sreenivasan’s approach, the morality of rights, including human rights, will justify far fewer entitlements than is ordinarily supposed. This is a conclusion drawn with alacrity by Allen Buchanan in a book that deploys Sreenivasan’s insight across a broad range of standardly acknowledged human rights [ 37 ]. 16 Rather than take Sreenivasan’s argument as revealing the severe limitations of rights morality, it should be seen as resting on a questionable interpretation of the threshold criterion for the emergence of human rights. For surely, no proponent of the interest-based view ever contemplated that the benefits to an individual alone sufficed to impose a duty to create and maintain vastly expensive public goods, such as a criminal justice system. Now, one response to this problem is to find ways in which the interests of others, rather than those of the right-holder, can work to justify the right to health, e.g., by pointing out that one’s interests are served through serving the interests of the right-holder [ 33 ]. However, we believe that although service to others’ interests may bear on the weight to be accorded to individual rights in practical deliberation, making them determinants of the very existence of those rights threatens to efface the distinction between the rights-based and non-rights-based parts of morality. Therefore, manoeuvres of this kind should not be the first line of response. Instead, we simply reject the idea that on the interest-based account, the individual right-holder’s interest must suffice to justify a duty to bear the whole costs of the relevant public-good securing system. This ignores the fact that the right-holder is just one among many enjoying the benefits of the system. Just as the right-holder does not enjoy all of the benefits of a public good system, so too the justification of his right does not entail that his notional portion of the benefits justify the entirety of the cost. Instead, our contention is that what needs to be justified is the right-holder’s share of the costs among other right-holders who also benefit from the system. Given that we are dealing with human rights, and a standardized profile of interests that abstracts from certain variations among individuals, this share will be notionally the same for all. This notional equality applies a fortiori with respect to public health measures, which are typically not targeted at individuals and produce highly dispersed benefits. So, the real question posed by the threshold criterion is, does the benefit of herd immunity to any given right-holder justify a proportionate share of the costs involved in a vaccination programme aimed at securing it? An affirmative answer to this question is much more plausible than an affirmative answer to Sreenivasan’s question. An immediate consequence of this view is that the relationship between human rights and common goods is not mutually exclusive. So, it is misleading for Sreenivasan to claim that ‘no individual can have a moral claim-right to any pure public good’. On the contrary, some aspects of the common good are rights-based, in the sense that they include elements to which we have a right. What these rights confer is a right to benefit from the common good in question [ 1 , pp. 210–218]. An analogy may serve to illustrate this vital point. Compare two common goods in an academic department: a culture in which plagiarism is scrupulously avoided and, on the very few occasions on which it occurs, it is justly condemned and punished, and a culture in which academics adopt a friendly, highly collegial attitude towards one another. Both kinds of culture are common goods, meeting the requirements of universality, uniformity, and non-rivalrousness. But arguably, only the former is a common good that involves the securing of an individual right as part of its content. This is because the benefits to each individual of participating in a culture of anti-plagiarism have the significance needed to ground duties in others to undergo their proportionate share of the costs to generate those benefits. Now, something similar can be said about two health related common goods: the common good of herd immunity from diphtheria and the common good of a vibrant leisure culture. Both facilitate the health of members of the relevant community, but it is really only in the first case that the benefits of participation to the individual plausibly impose a duty on others to undertake their proportionate share of the costs to sustain the relevant common good. Human rights have a key role to play in global health policy. But more than human rights matter, and insofar as human rights matter, more than just the human right to health matters. We have argued against a normative monism in global health policy that operates only with human rights, or only with the human right to health, insofar as it engages with human rights. Instead, it is also important to factor in other ethical considerations, such as health-related duties to oneself and duties to foster health-related common goods, as well as human rights other than the human right to health. Moreover, the complex relations among human rights as they bear on global health policy, and between them and other aspects of the ethics of global health, need to be plotted in order to resist, in particular, the dogma that human rights and common goods are mutually exclusive and fundamentally antagonistic. In this way, human rights may be rescued from the distortions that they are liable to undergo at the hands of some of their most fervent and influential advocates in global health. Acknowledgment Previous versions of this chapter were presented at the Lancet/London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Global Health Lab, the Oxford Martin School, the KCL–UCL Joint Bioethics Colloquium, the University of Zurich, and the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society and the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago. We are grateful to the audiences on these occasions for helpful discussion and feedback. Some of the themes in this article were much more briefly set out in a previous article [ 38 ], on whose letter and spirit we draw here. A somewhat longer version of the article will appear as [ 39 ]. 1 For these two senses of justice, see Finnis’s discussion [ 1 ]. 2 An important thrust of the human rights campaign in relation to the AIDS pandemic pioneered by Jonathan Mann was to reject ‘the prevailing view … that individual-centered human rights conflicted with community-oriented public health’ [ 2 , p. 245]. This article aims to contribute to this attractive integrationist view by deepening its philosophical basis. 3 For a general account of the nature of human rights relied on here, see [ 6 ]. This article offers a critique of rival, ‘political’, interpretations of the concept of a human right offered by John Rawls, Charles Beitz, and Joseph Raz. 4 For a fine study of the human right to health, see [ 7 ]. 5 This need not be an inevitable consequence of legalization; cf. the South African Constitutional Court’s decision in Soobramoney v. Minister of Health (Kwazulu-Natal) (1997), where it was held that provision of dialysis for a patient with chronic renal failure was not required by the constitutional right to health, partly because this would prejudice the satisfaction of other health needs that have to be met out of the state’s budget [ 15 ]. 6 For agency and needs-based accounts of human rights, see [ 11 , 19 ]. 7 The upshot is so peculiar that one might wonder why radical inclusivism is so popular. Mindy Roseman has suggested (in conversation) that it is sometimes viewed as a way of upholding the credentials of the human right to health against those who are sceptical of ‘socio-economic’ human rights, by showing that it incorporates traditional civil and political rights. Whatever its efficacy at the level of rhetoric, however, this strategy offers no real defence of the positive primary duties associated with the right to health. 8 For a similar interpretation of ‘the human right to health care’, see [ 25 , pp. 205–206]. However, the authors erroneously suppose that the human right to health exclusively reflects our interest in health [ 25 , p. 206]. 9 For a fuller account of the threshold, see [ 17 ]. 10 See article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [ 26 ]. 11 On the process of determinatio through which law gives specific content to objective moral requirements, see [ 1 , pp. 284–289]. 12 Daniels, for example, has characterised the human right to health as “implying entitlements that individuals have to a socially relative array of services (in the case of healthcare) that is the outcome of a process of fair deliberation under reasonable resource constraints” [ 27 , p. 134]. The point is developed with regard to priority setting in [ 28 ]. For the claim that democratic states should be largely exempted from the authority of international human rights institutions when it comes to specifying the content of the human right to health, at least with respect to their own citizens, see [ 25 ]. 13 The idea that global health policy should be exclusively grounded in human rights (and in the human right to health in particular) animates the proposal for a framework convention on global health advanced by Gostin et al. [ 30 , 31 ]. 14 Economists go further and add a condition of non-excludability, i.e., it is impossible to exclude others (cheaply) from enjoying public goods if they are provided at all; see the helpful discussion in [ 34 ]. Although non-excludability is particularly relevant in addressing issues of self-interested incentives to contribute to the maintenance of a common good, we take as our focus the wider notion. As O’Neill shows, an emphasis on non-excludability makes it especially difficult to establish the existence of global common or public goods. Hence her suggestion that it is preferable to focus on goods with dispersed benefits, the weaker definition of public goods adopted in the UNDP-sponsored [ 35 ]. 15 This is Sreenivasan’s attack on the variant of the argument for a right to a public good that invokes an interest-based account of rights. He also has an argument against the possibility of a right to a public good on a will-based account of rights. We find the latter persuasive, given the inconsistency of many public goods, e.g., herd immunity, with the comprehensive individual opt-outs (waivers of rights) that a will-based theory would require. 16 The supposed broader pay-off for Buchanan is that international human rights law, which contains these ambitious requirements, is not best understood as ‘mirroring’ a background morality of human rights. Insofar as our argument works against Sreenivasan’s claim, it also works against the legal implication Buchanan seeks to draw from it. Contributor Information John Tasioulas, Email: [email protected] . Effy Vayena, Email: [email protected] . Human Dignity Sometimes it feels like American culture is going through the spin cycle of a washing machine. Facts aren’t facts (“stop the steal”). Free speech means speech codes. Nondiscrimination means discrimination. Rights are a sword against others’ rights. Achievement is unfair. Human judgment is judgmental. Individuality is identity. Tradition is suspect. The rule of law is a minefield of legal risks, not a framework for social trust. Freedom is compliance.   Finding our balance is hard, especially when centrifugal forces have spun many Americans into opposing camps that loathe each other—generally, MAGA vs identity zealots. Pundits tend to analyze the divide as differences of economic needs and/or social values. But something else is also at work, causing a kind of cultural nervous breakdown.   Americans have been uprooted from their ownership of daily choices—unable to make a difference by doing things our own ways. Instead, America has become the compliance society. Do it this way. Do it that way. Is your paperwork in order? Measure your words carefully—you wouldn’t want to offend anyone. This could be our new national motto: Don’t be yourself.   Self-respect requires individual agency. We need freedom to act on our perceptions and intuitions, to take responsibility, and to be spontaneous, which Hannah Arendt considered the “most elementary manifestation of human freedom.” Today’s overload of mandatory protocols yanks us out of our intuitions: Just follow the rules. Without room for individual initiative, there can be no self-respect. Tocqueville considered “freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones...Subjection in minor affairs...does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till...their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated.”    In his recent newsletters and essays drawn from Everyday Freedom , Philip Howard has emphasized how human disempowerment by post-1960s governing structures causes public failure. In a lead essay about Everyday Freedom in First Things , Rusty Reno explains how the cultural harms from individual disempowerment  are probably even more corrosive to our society, and must be replaced by framework that honors human responsibility: “We’re human beings, not machines, which means that we’re finite [and] imperfect...A culture of freedom champions virtue and holds accountable those in positions of authority. But it’s not utopian. Everyday freedom will never be perfect, and trying to make it so has brought us only mistrust, disquiet, and pessimism.” Francis Fukuyama wrote a companion piece to Philip's recent essay in American Purpose, “ Letting Leaders Lead .” In “ Seeking Authority Rather Than Authoritarians ,” he writes: “Philip’s argument is an important one that needs to be made. I just hope that people will engage what he has actually said…Getting people to listen and think about these ideas is the first challenge to be overcome.” In his Substack Sanity Clause , former TIME columnist Joe Klein calls Everyday Freedom “short, sweet and smart,” adding: “I await the President—Democrat or Whatever Comes After Republican—who takes this to heart.” AEI’s Kevin Kosar reviewed Everyday Freedom for The Hill , writing: “ Everyday Freedom  makes a persuasive case that an increasingly legalistic and rule-focused society is a less free society. Rules crowd out common sense, leaving us atomized and suspicious of one another.” Search Menu Sign in through your institution Browse content in Arts and Humanities Browse content in Archaeology Archaeological Methodology and Techniques Biblical Archaeology Environmental Archaeology Historical Archaeology Landscape Archaeology Prehistoric Archaeology Browse content in Art History of Art Browse content in Classical Studies Classical History Classical Literature Greek and Roman Epigraphy Greek and Roman Archaeology Late Antiquity Religion in the Ancient World Browse content in History Colonialism and Imperialism Diplomatic History Historical Geography History by Period History of Gender and Sexuality Intellectual History Legal and Constitutional History Local and Family History Military History Political History Regional and National History Revolutions and Rebellions Slavery and Abolition of Slavery Social and Cultural History Theory, Methods, and Historiography World History Language Teaching and Learning Browse content in Linguistics Grammar, Syntax and Morphology Historical and Diachronic Linguistics Language Reference Language Variation Language Families Linguistic Anthropology Linguistic Theories Linguistic Typology Sociolinguistics Translation and Interpretation Browse content in Literature Literary Studies (European) Literary Studies - World Literary Studies (1500 to 1800) Literary Studies (19th Century) Literary Studies (20th Century onwards) Literary Studies (British and Irish) Literary Studies (Early and Medieval) Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers) Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets) Literary Studies (Travel Literature) Literary Studies (Women's Writing) Literary Theory and Cultural Studies Mythology and Folklore Browse content in Media Studies Browse content in Music Ethnomusicology Music Cultures Music and Culture Music Theory and Analysis Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques Musicology and Music History Browse content in Philosophy History of Western Philosophy Metaphysics Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Science Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic Social and Political Philosophy Browse content in Religion Biblical Studies Christianity History of Religion Religion and Education Religion and Art, Literature, and Music Religious Studies Browse content in Society and Culture Cultural Studies Browse content in Law Constitutional and Administrative Law Criminal Law Environment and Energy Law History of Law Human Rights and Immigration Browse content in International Law Public International Law Legal System and Practice Browse content in Science and Mathematics Browse content in Psychology Cognitive Psychology Evolutionary Psychology Social Psychology Browse content in Social Sciences Browse content in Anthropology Regional Anthropology Social and Cultural Anthropology Criminology and Criminal Justice Browse content in Economics Economic History Economic Development and Growth Labour and Demographic Economics Browse content in Education Educational Strategies and Policy Browse content in Human Geography Political Geography Browse content in Politics Comparative Politics Conflict Politics Environmental Politics International Relations Political Economy Political Philosophy Political Sociology Political Theory UK Politics Browse content in Sociology Health, Illness, and Medicine Migration Studies Occupations, Professions, and Work Organizations Population and Demography Race and Ethnicity Social Movements and Social Change Social Research and Statistics Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility Sociology of Education Urban and Rural Studies Journals on Oxford Academic Books on Oxford Academic < Previous chapter Next chapter > 36 Human Rights, Human Dignity,and Human Experience Published: November 2013 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Icon Permissions The contested understandings of human dignity today make it very problematic as a reliable principle for determining the scope and merit of particular claims of human rights (at least beyond the principle’s narrow, universally agreed-upon core meaning). Merely relying on an overlapping consensus is insufficient. Nevertheless, the beginnings of a broader shared understanding of the meaning and implications of human dignity, as a foundational principle of human rights law, can emerge from our concrete experience. As a common point of reference for critically evaluating and integrating the diversity of instantiations of human rights in differing legal traditions, the elementary experience of human dignity leads us to regard law as a vehicle for sustained and reasoned reflection on the value of human persons and on the scope of our obligations to respect and protect them. Personal account Sign in with email/username & password Get email alerts Save searches Purchase content Activate your purchase/trial code Add your ORCID iD Institutional access Sign in with a library card. 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It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press Cookie settings Cookie policy Privacy policy Legal notice This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only Sign In or Create an Account This PDF is available to Subscribers Only For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. What is Human Dignity? Common Definitions. You’ll hear the term “human dignity” a lot these days. Human dignity is at the heart of human rights. What is human dignity exactly? What’s the history of this concept and why does it matter? In this article, we’ll discuss the history of the term, its meaning, and its place in both a human rights framework and a religious framework. What is human dignity? At its most basic, the concept of human dignity is the belief that all people hold a special value that’s tied solely to their humanity. It has nothing to do with their class, race, gender, religion, abilities, or any other factor other than them being human. The term “dignity” has evolved over the years. Originally, the Latin, English, and French words for “dignity” did not have anything to do with a person’s inherent value. It aligned much closer with someone’s “merit.” If someone was “dignified,” it meant they had a high status. They belonged to royalty or the church, or, at the very least, they had money. For this reason, “human dignity” does not appear in the US Declaration of Independence or the Constitution . The phrase as we understand it today wasn’t recognized until 1948. The United Nations ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Human dignity: the human rights framework The original meaning of the word “dignity” established that someone deserved respect because of their status. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that concept was turned on its head. Article 1 states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Suddenly, dignity wasn’t something that people earned because of their class, race, or another advantage. It is something all humans are born with. Simply by being human, all people deserve respect. Human rights naturally spring from that dignity. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights , adopted in 1966, continued this understanding. The preamble reads that “…these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.” This belief goes hand in hand with the universality of human rights. In the past, only people made dignified by their status were given respect and rights. By redefining dignity as something inherent to everyone, it also establishes universal rights. Human dignity: the religious framework The concept of human dignity isn’t limited to human rights. In fact, for centuries, religions around the world have recognized a form of human dignity as we now understand it. Most (if not all) religions teach that humans are essentially equal for one reason or another. In Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, it’s because humans were created in the image of God, becoming children of God. Dignity is something that a divine being gives to people. In Catholic social teaching, the phrase “Human Dignity” is used specifically to support the church’s belief that every human life is sacred. This defines the denomination’s dedication to social issues like ending the death penalty. In Hinduism and Buddhism, respectively, dignity is inherent because humans are manifestations of the Divine or on a universal journey to happiness. In the Shvetasvatara Upanishad, an ancient Sanskrit text, it reads “We are all begotten of the immortal,” or “We are children of immortality.” Buddhism begins with the understanding that humans are “rare” because they can make choices that lead to enlightenment. Our dignity arises from this responsibility and ability, uniting all humans in their quest. When everyone is equal, they are all equally deserving of basic respect and rights, at least in theory. Countless people have had their dignity disrespected over the years by religious institutions and others using religion as justification. Why recognizing human dignity is so important Why is human dignity so important when it comes to human rights? Human dignity justifies human rights. When people are divided and given a value based on characteristics like class, gender, religion, and so on, it creates unequal societies where discrimination runs rampant. People assigned a higher value get preferential treatment. Anyone who doesn’t fit into the privileged category is abandoned or oppressed. We’ve seen what happens in places where human dignity isn’t seen as inherent and human rights aren’t universal. While the privileged few in these societies flourish, society as a whole suffers significantly. Inevitably, violence erupts. If a new group takes power and also fails to recognize human dignity, the cycle of destruction continues, only with different participants. Recognizing human dignity and the universality of human rights isn’t just so individuals can be protected and respected. It’s for the good of the entire world. If everyone’s rights were respected and everyone got equal opportunities to thrive, the world would be a much happier, more peaceful place. Learn more how you can defend and protect human dignity in a free online course . You may also like 15 Inspiring Quotes for Black History Month 10 Inspiring Ways Women Are Fighting for Equality 15 Trusted Charities Fighting for Clean Water 15 Trusted Charities Supporting Trans People 15 Political Issues We Must Address 15 Trusted Charities Fighting for LGBTQ+ Rights 16 Inspiring Civil Rights Leaders You Should Know 15 Trusted Charities Fighting for Housing Rights 15 Examples of Gender Inequality in Everyday Life 11 Approaches to Alleviate World Hunger  15 Facts About Malala Yousafzai 12 Ways Poverty Affects Society About the author, emmaline soken-huberty. Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog. Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings . Login Alert > Journals > American Political Science Review > Volume 93 Issue 3 > Aristotle on the Conditions for and Limits of the Common... Article contents Aristotle on the conditions for and limits of the common good. Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014 Contemporary debates over liberal political theory should encourage renewed investigation of the common good, and it is appropriate to begin by interrogating Aristotle's account. Aristotle argues that injustice stands in the way of the common good. Injustice is motivated by both overgrasping for scarce external goods, such as money, honor, and power, and by excessive desires. Aristotle argues that the common good requires a reorientation away from external goods to satisfying activities that do not diminish in the sharing. He sketches an analogical account of familial and political relationships that leads us to wonder what the political conditions are for the common good. Reflecting on these conditions not only points to the strict limits of the common good but also speaks to both sides in debates over liberal theory. Access options This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref . Google Scholar View all Google Scholar citations for this article. 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If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox . Save article to Google Drive To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive . Reply to: Submit a response - No HTML tags allowed - Web page URLs will display as text only - Lines and paragraphs break automatically - Attachments, images or tables are not permitted Your details Your email address will be used in order to notify you when your comment has been reviewed by the moderator and in case the author(s) of the article or the moderator need to contact you directly. You have entered the maximum number of contributors Conflicting interests. Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Please also list any non-financial associations or interests (personal, professional, political, institutional, religious or other) that a reasonable reader would want to know about in relation to the submitted work. This pertains to all the authors of the piece, their spouses or partners. Human Rights, Dignity and the Common Good Human dignity, rights, and the common good are essential principles that recognize the inherent worth of every human being. All people are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Human dignity involves respecting individuals and protecting them from humiliation, degradation, dehumanization, and objectification. Upholding human rights requires respecting civil, political, social, economic, and the rights of the accused. The common good involves establishing conditions for all members of society to fulfill themselves through public order, prosperity, and intellectual and moral well-being. Read less More Related Content What's hot, what's hot ( 20 ), similar to human rights, dignity and the common good, similar to human rights, dignity and the common good ( 20 ), recently uploaded, recently uploaded ( 20 ). 1. Human Dignity, Rights, and the Common Good 2. OBJECTIVES: 1. recognize the value of human dignity, human rights and promote the common good 3. “ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL IN DIGNITY AND RIGHTS” 4. QUALITIES NEEDS WANTS HUMAN 5. HUMAN DIGNITY respect and acknowledgement of an individual person, a human being. 6. HUMAN DIGNITY An idea that a person has an innate right to be valued, respected and treated well. 7. HUMAN DIGNITY It is something that can’t be taken away , each person must be free from slavery, manipulation and exploitation. 8. When a person is meted out a death sentence, it is the State that ends the life of that man. 9. Killing someone is a capital crime. Killing many people is a massacre. Killing an entire race is genocide 10. VIOLATIONS AGAINTS HUMAN DIGNITY 11. 1. HUMILIATION refer to acts that humiliate or diminish the self-worth of a person or a group. injuries to people's self-worth or their self- esteem 12. 2. DEGREDATION acts that degrade the value of human beings diminishes the importance or value of all human beings. selling oneself to slavery, 13. 3. DEHUMANIZATION acts that strip a person or a group of their human characteristics describing or treating people as animals or as a lower type of human beings 14. 3. DEHUMANIZATION occurred in genocides such as the Holocaust and in Rwanda where the minority were compared to insects. 15. 4. OBJECTIFICATION This aspect refers to treating a person as an instrument or as means to achieve some other goal. 16. torture, rape, social exclusion, labor exploitation, bonded labor, and slavery 17. HOW DO WE BECAME KAPWA TO OTHERS? We must respect and honor dignity . All religions teach the value of life. Our cultures make us human and humane and most societies reserve and uphold the principles of dignity, equality and liberty. 18. HUMAN RIGHTS 19. RIGHTS Are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system. 20. HUMAN RIGHTS Human Rights are natural rights of all human beings whatever their nationality, religion, ethnicity, sex, language and color. 21. BILL OF RIGHTS Sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. 22. The Bill of Rights in the Philippine Constitution lays down the basic human rights of Filipinos guaranteed and protected by the State. BILL OF RIGHTS 23. CLASSES OF HUMAN RIGHTS 24. 1. Natural Rights- Rights inherent to man and given to him by God as human being. 25. 1. Natural Rights- EXAMPLE: Right to live, love and be happy 26. 2. Statutory Rights- Rights provided by the law making body of a country or by law. 27. 2. Statutory Rights- EXAMPLE: such as the right to receive a minimum wage and right to preliminary investigation. 28. 3. Constitutional Rights- Rights guaranteed under the fundamental charter of the country. 29. 3. Constitutional Rights- EXAMPLE: rights against unreasonable searches and confiscation, rights safeguarding the accused. 30. CLASSIFICATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS 31. 1. Civil Rights- These are rights specified under the Bill of rights. 32. 1. Civil Rights- Secures private individuals for the purpose of securing enjoyment of their means of happiness. 33. 1. Civil Rights- Rights enjoyed by an individual by virtue of his citizenship in a state or community. 34. EXAMPLE: freedom of speech, right to information 35. 2. Social & Economic Intended to ensure the well-being & economic security of an individual 36. 2. Social & Economic Rights to property, whether personal, real or intellectual. 37. 2. Social & Economic Right to use and dispose his property, right to practice one’s profession, right to make a living. 38. 3. Political Rights- rights an individual enjoys as a consequence of being a member of body politics. 39. 3. Political Rights- Right to vote and right to be voted into public office. 40. 4. Rights of the Accused Intended for the protection of a person accused of any crime. 41. The Bill of Rights in the Philippine Constitution lays down the basic human rights of Filipinos guaranteed and protected by the State. BILL OF RIGHTS 42. SOME IMPORTANT RIGHTS: 1. FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION 2. RIGHT TO ASSEMBLY & TO JOIN PROTEST 43. SOME IMPORTANT RIGHTS: 3. THE RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED TO A FAIR TRIAL 4. RIGHTS AGAINTS SLAVERY & INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE 44. COMMON GOOD The sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members, relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfilment. 45. ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS: KEY ELEMENTS: 1. PUBLIC ORDER 2. PROSPERITY 3. INTELLECTUAL,SPIRITUAL & MORAL VALUES 46. MATERIAL PROSPERITY ASPECTS SEEKS TO DO THE FOLLOWING: 1.To provide employment for as many workers as possible; 2.To take care of the least privileged groups; 47. MATERIAL PROSPERITY ASPECTS SEEKS TO DO THE FOLLOWING: 3. To maintain a balance between wages and prices 4. To make accessible the goods & services for a better life to as many person as possible. 48. INTELLECTAUL & MORAL 1. General education; 2.The development of intellectual, humanistic & technical aspect of individual 3.Development of soul, conscience & will 49. Access & affordable public health care system 50. Effective system of public safety & security 51. Peace among nations 52. Just political system 53. Unpolluted natural environment 54. Flourishing economic system Editor's Notes natural rights, civil rights, political rights, economic rights as well as rights of the accused before, during and after trial. 203 IMAGES Human dignity rights and the common good Human Rights, Dignity and the Common Good What Is Human Dignity Common Definitions Human Dignity and Human Rights Reflection Paper.pdf Human Rights, Dignity and Common Good Human Rights, Dignity and the Common Good VIDEO English Essay about Human Rights| Essay on Human Rights Support Human Rights Protect Dignity #equalitymatters #viral #support #freedom #dignity #trending May 5, 2024 Essay On Responsibility Of A Good Citizen In English॥ Write An Essay On Duties Of A Good Citizen॥ 10 Lines on Rights and Responsibilities of a Citizen in English || Essay Writing Essay on Human Rights || Human rights essay in english || essay on Human rights day COMMENTS Human Rights and Common Good: Collected Essays Volume III This volume collects twenty-two published and unpublished chapters on a variety of topics related directly to human rights, justice, and the common good. The first nine date from 1970 through to 2007. They begin with a study — in dialectic with Dworkin's earlier lecture on the same themes — of the bearing of contemporary legal and political ... Human Rights and Common Good: Introduction by John Finnis Abstract. This Introduction to my Human Rights and Common Good: Collected Essays Volume III (Oxford University Press 2011), published in the United Kingdom in early April, and in the United States in early May 2011, introduces the volume's 22 published and unpublished essays, and follows the volume's division into six Parts: Human Rights and Common Good: General Theory; Justice and ... The Common Good Similarly, in Natural Law and Natural Rights, Finnis holds that respect for human rights is a requirement of justice and that "the maintenance of human rights is a fundamental component of the common good" (1980: 218). But the common good goes beyond the requirements of justice because (1) it describes a pattern of inner motivation, not ... Human dignity: concepts, discussions, philosophical perspectives When in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was signed, human dignity was introduced as a kind of moral reference point for an agreement that could provide normative guidance for the interpretation of the human rights framework in general. ... Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President's Council on ... What's So Special About Human Dignity? 76 Two very good overviews here are McCrudden, "Human Dignity and the Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights," and Rosen, Dignity: Its History and Meaning. 77 One other promising sign, here, is that the present account can help explain what connects some of the disparate "meanings" of dignity in everyday discourse. Introduction Expand Part One Human Rights and Common Good: General Theory. 1 Human Rights and Their Enforcement Notes. Notes. 2 Duties to Oneself in Kant Notes. Notes. 3 Rawls's A Theory of ... Finnis, John, 'Introduction', Human Rights and Common Good: Collected Essays Volume III (Oxford, 2011; ... Human Rights and Human Dignity Human rights are intimately related to the notion of human dignity. Both notions are connected in such a way that one cannot be understood without the other. The importance of human rights and the requirement to respect everyone's rights is based on the notion of human dignity. In that sense, human dignity is considered to be the foundation ... Understanding Human Dignity Abstract. The concept of human dignity has become central to political philosophy and legal discourse on human rights, but it remains enigmatic. Understanding Human Dignity is a book of original essays by a multi-disciplinary group of historians, legal academics, judges, political scientists, theologians, and philosophers, which aims to debate ... PDF The CommoN Good aNd humaN diGNiTy The common good, however, enjoys primacy over individual good. It sets the direction for the lives of individuals. In Aristotelian thinking the common good is a higher, nobler, and even more divine good than the particular good for private persons. Hollenbach (2002:3-4) summarises Aristotle's position: Human Rights and Common Good : Collected Essays Volume III Human Rights and Common Good. : John Finnis. OUP Oxford, Apr 7, 2011 - Law - 429 pages. This central volume in the Collected Essays brings together John Finnis's wide-ranging contribution to central issues in political philosophy. The volume begins by examining the general theory of political community and social justice. Human Dignity and Human Rights The value of the good will, to be really unconditional, ... Human dignity and human rights as a common ground for a global bioethics. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 34(3), 223-240. Article Google Scholar ... Human rights: Essays on justification and applications. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President's The human good must be far deeper than the freedom to choose. The most fundamental meaning of human dignity is not human freedom and control. Fourth, and finally, some might think that human dignity is something individuals are free to define as they choose, according to their own inner lights. But this view also leads to major moral ... The place of human rights and the common good in global health policy Individuation and inclusivity. Human rights exist insofar as universal human interests generate obligations on others to respect, protect, and promote those interests in various ways. Interests are here understood as the elements of wellbeing, the realization of which in a person's life make it a better life for them. (PDF) Human Dignity and Human Rights 1997 is another good example of the central and overarching role that human. ... (2009). Human dignity and human rights as a common ground for a global bioethics. ... Human rights: Essays on ... Human Dignity and the Common Good: The Institutional Insight In this article, I develop the idea of the "institutional insight" as a pathway to two foundational values for applied ethics: human dignity and the common good.I explore—but do not offer a definitive analysis of—these two values that I believe are critical to the progress of business ethics (indeed to the progress of applied ethics generally). PDF Human Dignity and the Foundations of Human Rights The "First Principles of International Human Rights" essays propose reforms of the human rights movement ... and the common good. ... use of dignity in human rights adjudication can be found ... Human Dignity Common Good. P.O. Box 8536, New York, NY 10150-8536, United States. [email protected]. Hours. Sometimes it feels like American culture is going through the spin cycle of a washing machine. Facts aren't facts ("stop the steal"). Free speech means speech codes. Nondiscrimination means discrimination. Rights are a sword ... 36 Human Rights, Human Dignity,and Human Experience The very concrete claims of human dignity that are the daily fare of international human rights bodies are as varied as can be imagined. In my own direct experience as a member of one such institution, 1 many dignity claims were powerful and moving: the Peruvian mother of the disappeared; the Jamaican men kept indefinitely in overcrowded, small, dark, and unventilated police holding cells amid ... What is Human Dignity? Common Definitions. Human dignity: the human rights framework. The original meaning of the word "dignity" established that someone deserved respect because of their status. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that concept was turned on its head. Article 1 states: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.". Aristotle on the Conditions for and Limits of the Common Good Aristotle argues that injustice stands in the way of the common good. Injustice is motivated by both overgrasping for scarce external goods, such as money, honor, and power, and by excessive desires. Aristotle argues that the common good requires a reorientation away from external goods to satisfying activities that do not diminish in the sharing. Human Dignity Human Rights and Common Good Human Dignity refers to a person's self-worth and how they are graded by others in society. Human Rights are believed to belong to all people and protect against abuse, guaranteeing life, liberty, equality and security. The Common Good aims to establish optimal social conditions that allow individuals and groups to succeed for the benefit of all. UCSP Q1 Mod10-Human Dignity-Rights-v5 In your notebook, write <correct= if the statement expresses human rights, human dignity and common good; write <incorrect= if it does not. 1. Respecting the rights of others. 2. Freedom is for leaders only. 3. Paying taxes honestly. 4. All citizens have access to public organizations. 5. 5. Volunteerism is a good spirit Human Rights, Dignity and the Common Good Human dignity involves respecting individuals and protecting them from humiliation, degradation, dehumanization, and objectification. Upholding human rights requires respecting civil, political, social, economic, and the rights of the accused. The common good involves establishing conditions for all members of society to fulfill themselves ... assignment essay homework paper phd report review speech thesis