Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Responsibility: The New Language of Global Bioethics and Biolaw

367 Pages·2012·29.09 MB·English

by  Yechiel Michael Barilan

Human Dignity, Human Rights, and
Responsibility
Basic Bioethics
A rthur Caplan, editor
A complete list of the books in the Basic Bioethics series appears at the
back of this book.
Human Dignity, Human Rights, and
Responsibility
The New Language of Global Bioethics and Biolaw
Yechiel Michael Barilan
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2 012 M assachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electron-
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barilan, Yechiel Michael, 1966– .
Human dignity, human rights, and responsibility : the new language of global bioethics
and biolaw / Yechiel Michael Barilan.
p. cm. — (Basic bioethics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01797-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Respect for persons. 2. Bioethics. 3. Medical ethics. 4. Human rights. I. Title.
BJ1533.R42B37 2012
179.7— dc23
2012004958

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This whole endeavor is dedicated to Anna

Contents
Series Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Introduction 1
An Overview of the Book in Three Paragraphs 1
Human Dignity: The Challenges 2
On the Terminology Used in This Book 4
Cultural Orientation 17
On the Methodology 18
Human Dignity and Rights Today: The Agenda 20
2 Hermeneutics and the History of Human Dignity 23
An Overview of the History of Human Rights 23
Hermeneutics of the Biblical Sources 28
Judaism 41
Stoicism 46
Christianity 47
Torture: Turning One against Oneself 53
Lactantius 57
Slavery and Human Dignity 59
Ezra, Lactantius, and Marx 64
From Lactantius to Liberation Theology 66
Freedom in the History of Human Dignity 69
Physical, Psychological, and Cultural Diversity 71
Freedom and Chosen Slavery 71
Augustine ’s Descendance Principle 74
God ’s Friend 79
The Brief Authority of Man’ s Glassy Essence 80
viii Contents
Immanuel Kant 81
Enlightenment and Modernity 83
Human Dignity as a Phenomenology of Humanness
and Solidarity 84
Suffering and Human Dignity 88
The History of Human Dignity: A Synthetic Summary 89
Challenges to the Future of Human Dignity 91
3 Reconstructing Human Dignity as a Moral Value 93
Introduction 93
Blessed Coincidences 98
Culture, Codes of Honor, and Human Dignity 100
Reverse Engineering of Human Dignity 104
Ten Uses of Human Dignity 117
Embeddedness in Reality and the “ M oral Point of View” 122
Freedom and Human Dignity: Five Meanings 127
Vulnerability 140
Enforcement 144
4 Human Rights or Natural Moral Rights 149
An Outline of a Definition 149
Penology and Rights 162
Metaethics and Rights 165
Claim Rights Take Shape in Deliberative Democracies 170
Human Rights as Recipient-Centered Norms for Agents 174
Contracts and Promises 175
The Will and the Interests 177
Hybridization of Interests and Will in Human Rights 180
Transcendental Choices 183
The Implicit Maxims of Self-Alienation 189
The Right to Property 196
The Right to Privacy 203
5 Moral Status 207
Introduction 207
Shifting Harm or Diversion Dilemmas 209
The Conditions for Inviolability and Human Rights 219
Speciesism and the Argument from Marginal Cases 238
On the Moral Status of Unborn Humans 240
Dominion, Sexuality, Intimacy, and Care 254
Contents ix
6 Responsibility beyond Human Rights 261
Responsibility and Dignity 262
Human Dignity within Responsibilities of Intimacy 269
Responsibility for the Ethos of Human Dignity and the Conditions
of Rights 278
7 A Synthetic Summary 295
Summary of the Key Philosophical Arguments 295
Existence, Identity, and Moral Status 300
Epilogue 302
References 303
Index 335