Out of Dehumanization
Out of Dehumanization
There is right and there is wrong. Here's how to tell the difference.
Last time, we examined dehumanization and the different ways it manifests itself in politics. At its most extreme, it breeds genocide and crimes against humanity. More commonly, it takes the form of mundane bureaucracy which discriminates and degrades.
Far-right parties dehumanize minority groups. Ostensible leftists dehumanize the victims of their favorite autocrats. Russia dehumanizes Ukrainians. Myanmar dehumanizes ethnic Rohingya. Zionists dehumanize Palestinians and Palestinians dehumanize Jews.
There is a pressing need for moral clarity. But it is not as simple as taking a vow to “stop dehumanizing.” What’s required is a principle to replace it. We also need some way of applying it to real-world situations—a set of criteria by which we can evaluate complex political issues and distinguish right from wrong.
I am not suggesting we can somehow will discrimination and war out of existence through a simple adjustment to our thinking. But we can change the way in which we, as individuals, approach these problems—in the opinions we form and the policies we support.
The answer, it turns out, can be found in international law and the philosophical tenets that underlie it.
International Law as a Starting Point
Two areas of international jurisprudence point the way. The first is international human rights law. Its foundational document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was adopted by the United Nations (U.N.) in 1948. The Universal Declaration lays out a set of rights to which every individual is entitled and states are bound to respect. They include positive rights, such as life, liberty, security, education, and healthcare, as well as negative rights, such as the freedom from servitude, torture, and arbitrary arrest.
If we have one obligation when it comes to politics, it is to stand against dehumanization. But identifying it can be hard, so we need a guide. Where else to find it if not in the very international legal framework that is designed to counter it?
International human rights law governs the treatment of individuals by the states under which they live. But what happens when states go to war with each other? Or if armed groups arise which challenge the state’s authority? These situations introduce their own dangers that do not always fall under the remit of human rights law. To deal with them, another framework known as international humanitarian law comes into play.
Unlike human rights law, international humanitarian law operates only in cases of armed conflict, whether domestic or international. In addition, whereas human rights law exclusively governs the conduct of states, international humanitarian law applies to state and non-state actors (e.g. Hamas). In particular, it requires them to (1) treat combatants and non-combatants humanely; (2) respect the distinction between combatants and civilians, (3) act in pursuit of a legitimate military purpose, and (4) avoid attacks which would cause civilian harm disproportionate to a corresponding military objective.
Though it originated in the mid-nineteenth century, international humanitarian law, like human rights law, assumed its modern-day form after the Second World War. A number of key treaties were adopted in the ensuing decades. Among the most important are the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), which protects civilians in times of war, and the Rome Statute (1998), which established the International Criminal Court.
If we have one obligation when it comes to politics, it is to stand against dehumanization. But identifying it can be hard, so we need a guide. Where else to find it if not in the very international legal framework that is designed to counter it?
Human Dignity, Human Rights
The principles on which the post-war order are based did not arise out of nowhere. They are rooted in major philosophical traditions dating back to the Enlightenment, above all the theory of natural rights. According to this doctrine, every individual is endowed with certain rights. These rights are grounded not in law or social consensus but basic morality; we have them by the mere fact of being human. In this respect, they are “natural,” as the Enlightenment philosophers put it, or “equal and inalienable,” to cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, when thinkers like Voltaire and Locke wrote their treatises on natural rights, they never envisaged a worldwide body of laws obligating states to provide them. For that, we owe the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, who was one of the first to conceive of such a system. Just as the citizens of a state need laws to govern them, he figured, so do states themselves. Thus was born the concept of international law.
If the philosophers above revealed the existence of universal rights and imagined an international framework for protecting them, a question nevertheless remains: Why do we deserve these rights in the first place? What is it about us, as human beings, that entitles us to them?
The drafters of the post-war order had an answer: human dignity. The treaties they authored are premised on the notion that every person has dignity, an intrinsic worth that is independent of one’s status, merit, or usefulness. It is our basic dignity that grants us rights at all—rights which others must respect in us and we must respect in them.
Dignity, and the recognition thereof, is the opposite of dehumanization. It is the antidote to the commonplace thinking by which we diminish the value of others.
So critical is the concept of dignity to the post-war legal apparatus that it appears just six words into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which begins as follows:
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world… [italics added]
It shows up almost as early in the U.N. Charter:
We the peoples of the United Nations [are] determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small… [italics added]
The concept of equal dignity, like that of international human rights and humanitarian law, originated with the Enlightenment philosophers. If there is one thinker who is most associated with the idea, however, it is Kant. “Everything has either a price or a dignity,” he wrote in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals:
What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent, what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity (4:434).
Dignity, which Kant defined as “an inner worth,” is not something that is commonly found in nature; it is a unique attribute of humanity. “Morality, and humanity insofar as it is capable of morality,” he maintained, “is that which alone has dignity (4:435).”
For Kant, the fact that we have dignity carries weighty implications:
A human being is not a thing and hence not something that can be used merely as a means, but must in all his actions always be regarded as an end in itself. I cannot, therefore, dispose of a human being in my own person by maiming, damaging, or killing him (4:429).
A number of key points emerge from Kant’s account, all of which hold important lessons for how to govern ourselves.
First, dignity is neither earned nor bestowed, but inherent. We possess it merely by being human.
Second, dignity is precious. As such, it must be recognized and protected. “Dignity,” Kant explains, must be placed “infinitely above all price, with which it cannot be brought into comparison or competition at all without, as it were, assaulting its holiness (4:435).”
Third, dignity is equally shared. Kant was a product of the Enlightenment, after all. Out was the old idea of a great chain of being that differentiated every living thing by status and rank, including people. Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers spurned such received wisdom. They instead sought to uncover the truth by relying on their ability to reason. And reason, they observed, shows that all human beings are created equal. “The rational being,” Kant declared, “obeys no law other than that which he himself at the same time gives (4:434).” Thus, if I have dignity, so must you and everyone else.
In sum, when the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserted the “inherent dignity…of all members of the human family,” they were following in Kant’s footsteps. Whether or not they had actually read Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, they were clearly thinking in similar terms. For the universal rights they laid down are premised on the very same notion of dignity—as inherent, precious, and equally shared—that Kant outlined almost two centuries earlier.
If the concept of dignity emerged at the foundation of the post-war order, it was because the world had just seen what happens in its absence.
Dignity, and the recognition thereof, is the opposite of dehumanization. It is the antidote to the commonplace thinking by which we diminish the value of others. We still need a reliable way of applying it to concrete political situations, and we will get to that in a forthcoming post. But we now have a basic operating principle to check our dehumanizing impulses.
No, We Do Not Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident
Many of the points above might seem obvious to you, and there is a good reason for that. If you are reading this, you probably grew up in a society that takes the theory of natural rights as a given. We all learn about the Enlightenment in school. It informs the constitutions under which we live and the values we profess to hold. If asked whether we believe that all people are born equal, most of us would answer “yes.” How could we not?
It is easy, almost instinctual, to affirm these ideals in the abstract. But as I explained in my last post, many of us discard them the moment we form an opinion on a given subject. We pay lip service to equal rights only to cast them aside as soon as we confront the reality of everyday politics.
Such hypocrisy is nothing new, of course. Touting Enlightenment doctrine in theory while debasing it in practice has a long and notorious record. Catherine the Great penned philosophical love letters to Voltaire while presiding over an empire of serfs. America’s founders waxed eloquently about universal rights; yet, the ones who did not personally keep their fellow humans in bondage willingly enshrined it into the Constitution.
The principles of the Enlightenment are less intuitive than we think. This is especially true of dignity. Beyond Kant and a few other writers, human dignity, as we understand it today, was not a common theme in the history of philosophy. If it later emerged at the foundation of the post-war order, it was because the world had just seen what happens in its absence. Next time, we will examine how and why dignity came to occupy center stage when it did.