Introduction
The contemporary literature on the nature of the dignity of the person is very extensive.[1] Likewise, studies addressing the relationship between dignity and people with disabilities have begun to appear in recent times.[2]
As in many other issues in which the recognition of the human person as a person is at stake, the controversy over dignity and disability explicitly or at least implicitly involves topics as varied as the notion of “health”, the role of context, capabilities, functional diversity, common human nature, the idea of justice, the scope of practical reason and the problem of the very notion of personhood. This is not surprising. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in its “Preamble”, has risked a sort of definition of disability that immediately appeals to a set of issues that are not easy to clarify:
Disability is an evolving concept resulting from the interaction between people with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that prevent their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.[3]
And further on, in its first article, it states:
Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.[4]
In a recent document of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), this general approach is also assumed, and the elements offered in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) are cited as inspiration:
Disability refers to any physical and mental health impairment or condition that, when interacting with environmental and social factors, limits a person’s functioning and participation in society. Examples of disability include limited mobility, impaired vision or hearing, genetic and neurodevelopmental conditions such as Down syndrome or autism spectrum disorder, acquired brain injuries, dementia, and certain mental health conditions.[5]
The ICF provides a conceptual basis for defining and measuring health and disability. Thus, it is possible for the PAV document to state that “one in six people in the world, or more than one billion, live with some level of disability”.[6]
In the following, we will limit ourselves to point out some of the main elements that allow us to overcome the easy invisibilization of the dignity of persons with disabilities. We will insist mainly on the value of the personalist norm of action – Persona est affirmanda propter seipsam! – and on the need to distinguish between the ultimate metaphysical foundation of the person as a subject with dignity and the ultimate normative foundation in order to actively recognize the person as a non-instrumentalizable subject.
1. The obscuring of dignity: the problem of the “throwaway culture”
Contemporary society is complex. Social phenomena are often multi-causal and cannot be defined by a single aspect. However, one of the axes around which an important part of culture seems to revolve is precisely the identification of the rational as a primarily instrumental phenomenon.
Indeed, not only Max Horkheimer identified that purely pragmatic reason becomes a maddening machine that ends up sacrificing its own creators, but Josef Ratzinger himself in Introduction to Christianity emphasizes that something proper to our times is that truth ceased to be seen as a property of being (verum quia ens) to be affirmed, first, as a property of human facts realized in the past (verum quia factum), and finally, as a property of human action projected into the future (verum quia faciendum). This means that reason has undergone a profound mutation: it is no longer the capacity to understand reality in its ultimate and definitive meaning, but has become the capacity to exercise dominion and utilitarian transformation of the world and, in particular, of people, especially the most vulnerable.[7] Pope Francis synthetically calls this phenomenon the “throwaway culture”.[8]
The pragmatic and utilitarian drift of reason is no accident. When the truth is not dense, but by various means affirms that its consistency is tenuous, reason is subjected to the pure will to power, which no longer finds reasons to define limits. The important thing is to interpret life as a pure game of power and seek to affirm one’s own self through the submission and sacrifice of the other. This mentality is painfully visible not only in the games of the self-referential market but also in the uncomfortable coexistence with the functionally diverse, fragile and vulnerable human being. In other words, the “throwaway culture” shows its absurdity when it despotically sacrifices disabled people through oblivion, isolation, lack of inclusion, and lack of due care, which sometimes reaches subtle or not so subtle forms of humiliating mistreatment.
Dietrich von Hildebrand offers us a hypothesis that can illuminate this question. This important philosopher, a disciple of Husserl, devoted much of his life to exploring the structure of moral life. In his analyses he recovers many ideas from classical thought. However, he also explores new territories such as the so-called “value blindness”.[9] What does this expression mean? It means that there are people - and eventually peoples – who in certain periods, sometimes very long periods, suffer from a lack of awareness of the existence and obligatory nature of some value. “Value blindness” is not an error in moral judgment or a certain ignorance due to lack of study. It is rather a true eclipse in the capacity to appreciate some valuable realities. Nor is “value blindness” a compulsive unwillingness to look or a state of distraction. There are people with great intelligence and capacity to be attentive, who, nevertheless, do not appreciate, do not esteem, do not manage to receive the provocation of a certain type of values, for example, the provocation of the dignity of the functionally diverse other.
Some people when thinking about this phenomenon consider that a “value blindness”, such as the one we are describing, exempts the subject who suffers from it from responsibility. This may be true with respect to a certain specific act, but it is not true with respect to the general moral state of the subject suffering from the “blindness”. Blindness usually arises from a culpable lack of education in the gaze and in the affective life.
There are various types of “value blindness”. The one that interests us with respect to the subject that concerns us is the so-called “moral blindness of subsumption”. This is the type of blindness that occurs in the person when individual interest or a passion habitually settles in the conscience and obscures the values that demand attention. It is not that the person does not understand theoretically the nature of his neighbor, it is not that the person does not perceive a certain conduct as wrong. In subsumption blindness the issue is that in one’s own life the value in question is not perceived and more or less immediately the reason invents subterfuges to justify the immoral conduct carried out in the name that “in this precise case the situation is different”.
The lack of real and concrete appreciation for the dignity of the disabled person in many of us is due to the fact that rationality, driven by the will to power, clouds the conscience and orients the heart in a habitual way towards a utilitarian goal that sacrifices dignity or identifies it with a standard of functional efficiency. To sum up: when we spoke of pragmatic or instrumental rationality, we did not mean to point to an abstract question, but rather to a concrete phenomenon of subsumption blindness that significantly determines individual and sometimes collective consciousness.
2. The human person is a unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable subject
If we look closely at the most elementary human experience, we can discover that this experience is not solitary, individual or isolated. On the contrary, the experience of the self, with all its richness and inner tensions, has always been accompanied by the experience of a “you”. In fact, in the first awakening of consciousness, when the central nervous system acquires a certain constitutional sufficiency, the self perceives “being” as an abode that welcomes it, as an embrace that shelters it, as a love that sustains it. To put it briefly: each of us discovers the meaning of “being” by discovering ourselves in original relationship with the others who have engendered me, and eventually, with the Other who has created me. At the beginning of consciousness, although the “I” does not yet perceive analytically the being of each of its parents, much less the divine being, they are already there as a presence, as a good mystery that insinuates that one’s being is not rooted in oneself but in a complex of interpersonal relationships.[10]
In this way, the “other” does not only indicate a certain distant similarity with respect to oneself, but the “other” participates with me in the fundamental human experience, enriching and illuminating it continuously. The “other” is not a more or less arbitrary projection of my own “I”, but the “other” contributes data that only a subjectivity full of value can offer. The “I” is not a subjectivity that after existing, then alters and becomes a “being-along-with-others”. The “I” lives its own experience of being not only “being-along-with-others” but “being-thanks-to-others”.
The experience of the “I”, although it refers to the non-transferable and transcendent self that I am, cannot be explained except with the “others” with whom I “co-exist” and for whom I am responsible. This is why Karol Wojtyla used to say: “Another human being is a neighbor not only on the basis of his generic feeling of humanity, but primarily on the basis of his being another-self”.[11]
Why remember this? Mainly to discover that the experience of my own irreplaceable being is constituted in an original way together with the equally irreplaceable experience of my neighbor. This is more foundational than the experience of participating in a “common humanity”. In other words, our common belonging to the species is not the deepest reason for the peculiar bond that each person has with each of his brothers and sisters. The basic reason why, in order to affirm myself, I need to accept the practical challenge of the presence of the “other” is that the “other” is as much a person as I am.
Indeed, the other does not only occur as part of my most elementary experience in the theoretical order, but it occurs mainly as an experience in the practical order, that is, as a concrete imperative that demands a response. If I am a unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable case, and my neighbor is also unique, then a primary moral norm emerges that I cannot leave aside: Persona est affirmanda propter seipsam, we must love the person by his own sake! The value of my neighbor is not that of an interchangeable or substitutable being! His value is the highest because he is a being of whom there can be no “copy” whatsoever!
This discovery makes it possible to make the most important universalization in practical life: every human person has the very high value of a true end and not a mere means!
This right is maximally normative and true, especially in cases where a purely efficiency-based approach blurs the perception of the inalienable dignity of the human person. In other words, the encounter with the “other” is a primarily ethical experience that constantly invites us to rediscover the non-instantializable character of people, especially those whose functional diversity segregates them and displaces them from the gaze, culture, public policies, etc.
3. The sources or roots of the dignity of disabled persons
The sources of the dignity of the disabled person cannot be different from those of the “functional” person.[12] For dignity does not come from the fulfillment of some functional standard but from the way being has been given to us, making us incomparably unique, making us truly ends. “Dignity” is the value possessed by a being whose being is given in a loving act of benevolence (loving the other for the sake of the other). Therefore, to discover one’s own dignity, to a large extent, is to discover that we are what we are because we are loved in a special way, in a very particular way, “by our own sake“. Or as Carlos Diaz often says, amor ergo sum, “I am loved, therefore I am”.[13]
This is the origin or root of the ontological dignity of the human person as a person. And this dignity gives rise to fundamental rights such as the right to life, to physical integrity, to the right to freedom of conscience of the person, etc.
When ontological dignity is made to rest on the conscious state of the person, on a certain standard of neurological efficiency, on the activation of mental processes, or on something else similar, we immediately enter a scenario marked by absurdity: the fundamental dignity of the person would be subject to different degrees and levels, placing those who did not reach a certain “level” in the status of a “thing”. People would not possess dignity because of their being but because of their conscious-doing, and with this, there would be inequality of fundamental rights.
This is relevant for cases of persons with mental disabilities. The fact that there are certain deficits in mental processes, either temporarily or permanently, does not mean that the person ceases to be a person and/or loses his or her dignity. The profound reason for this is the following: the being of the person does not presuppose consciousness, but rather it is consciousness that presupposes being. If there is no being prior to consciousness, there is no place to return to through conscious processes. Consciousness is always consciousness-of-being. All the consciential maturation that genetic psychology usually studies is possible thanks to the fact that the being of the “I” is always greater and more original than what we consciously consider of it. Being and “conscious-being” are not correlative. The first founds the second. Not vice versa.[14]
Now, having said this, the ontological dignity of the person can manifest itself through conscious acts. This is the root of the right to freedom of expression, education, political participation, etc.
Likewise, the ontological dignity of the person can be exhibited through free acts when they are performed in accordance with the demands of their highest value. This is where the “moral dignity” of the person is displayed. This dignity, obviously, admits degrees and levels depending on the moral quality of the actions. On this level is based, for example, the right to a person’s good reputation and the right to reply to an unjust accusation.
Finally, there is a “dignity granted” by the community to persons who enjoy certain special qualities, such as their intelligence, their goodness, their role of authority or their singular social significance because of a limitation. For example, here rests the dignity of magistrates or judges, but in general, also of all persons who deserve being recognized positively for a quality or for physical or psychological limitations.
In other words, in a certain sense, living with a disability should be cause for special consideration, special respect and care on the part of society. We are not talking here about moral dignity because of a virtuous life. Rather, we are talking about the dignity that is socially attributed to a special way of living the human condition under certain psychophysical and, in many cases, social limitations. In other words, the situation of vulnerability associated with disability, rather than inviting to “discard” should motivate to a special respect because of the same vulnerability.
I have the impression that in the recent Declaration “Dignitas infinita”, published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith,[15] this is perceived in theological see when it is stated:
“By proclaiming that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the humble, the despised, and those who suffer in body and spirit; by healing all sorts of illnesses and infirmities, even the most dramatic ones, such as leprosy; by affirming that whatever is done to these individuals is also done to him because he is present in them: in all these ways, Jesus brought the great novelty of recognizing the dignity of every person, especially those who were considered ‘unworthy.’ This new principle in human history – which emphasizes that individuals are even more ‘worthy’ of our respect and love when they are weak, scorned, or suffering, even to the point of losing the human ‘figure’ – has changed the face of the world”.[16]
4. The normative ultimate foundation is different from the metaphysical ultimate foundation
With what has been said above, it is possible to say with certainty that the ontological dignity of the person must be recognized beyond any circumstance, beyond any context, beyond the particularities of this or that culture.[17]
In order to be able to have an eventual “situated” thought, to be able to denounce eventual “colonizations” in societies, to be able to adequately value cultures, it is necessary to recognize the dignity of every person as a meta-contextual principle.[18] When the dignity of the person and his fundamental moral imperative are thus recognized, a light is found that allows the development of a critical theory based on a robust, ontologically founded anthropology. When the recognition of meta-contextual principles, such as the one mentioned here, is explicitly or implicitly renounced, thought easily collapses into an endless relativism, that is, into an immanentism that closes off the possibility of truly affirming that reality has primacy over our modest interpretations.
However, we still need to clarify a delicate question: dignity is the value that, when discovered by the practical reason of the person, allows us to formulate a primary moral precept: the personalistic norm of action. Where does the binding force of this norm come from? Why does the response to the value that we call “dignity” have a “moral necessity” for the conscience and for the free will?
In some iusnaturalist authors it was common to maintain that the obligatory force of any imperative is due to the “lex aeterna” of God that participates in the creature. Since God exists, and since there are precepts promulgated by him, the obligation to comply with them proceeds from their divine origin.[19]
In our opinion, a metaphysical explanation of the natural law, in effect, demands that it be recognized as a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature.[20] However, we have wanted to insist that the practical obligatoriness of the personalistic norm of action comes from human dignity. Therefore, the fact that this dignity is a perfection that the human being possesses by the fact of having an “act of being” (actus essendi) that constitutes him as an entity per se willed per se does not mean that only by accepting the existence of God as the ontological foundation of the person is the absolute respect due to each person obligatory. In the practical order, that is, from the point of view of the way in which the experience of action is constituted, the encounter with the person is sufficient for the absolute imperative that derives from his dignity to be unconditionally binding.[21]
This is important because it focuses attention on the dignity of the person and does not displace it to the always complex issue of the existence of God and his arguments. Dignity, then, is a constitutive dimension of the person that is the source of the binding nature of the personalist norm of action. The personalist norm is a moral principle that should deactivate the valuation of persons by their efficiency and that rather obliges us all to look at the functional diversity of persons from a supra-utilitarian criterion. Only with this criterion is it possible to make a more inclusive culture, and therefore, a slightly more humane society.
5. In conclusion
People with disabilities are a borderline issue that tests the moral sentiments of contemporary culture. We are currently in a “resurgence of morality”. Social media is awash with uplifting moral phrases and value-driven living. However, if we look more closely, this new moment is not entirely clear. For Gilles Lipovetsky, we find ourselves in “the emergence of an ethical regulation of an unprecedented kind. Through the charitable and humanitarian effervescence, what is at work once again is the eclipse of duty; under the old habits of morality, the post-moralist functioning of our societies is actually organized. What is very loosely called the return of morality merely precipitates the exit of the moralistic epoch from the democracies by instituting a morality without obligation or sanction in keeping with the mass aspirations of individualistic-hedonistic democracies”.[22]
At no other time has there been so much talk about people with disabilities and their rights. However, new forms of marginalization and stigmatization are appearing on the scene. Therefore, perhaps it is time for a more profound review based on the recognition that every human being has disabilities to some degree and that, eventually, they may be further amplified by age, illness, mishap, etc. Perhaps it is time to relearn to see that the encounter with value generates a duty without which value itself is silenced in its call, in its vocation, in its profound nature. Perhaps it is time to affirm that every person, especially the disabled, deserves our welcome, our inclusion and our commitment, because this is the measure of the degree of humanity of our societies. Everything is put to the test when a person is partially or totally excluded from the path of development that we all deserve because of our dignity.[23]
* Ph.D. in Philosophy, International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein; Founder President, Center for Advanced Social Research (CISAV, Mexico); Ordinary member, Pontifical Academy for Life and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. E-mail: rodrigoguerra@mac.com
[1] See: M. Rosen, Dignity its History and Meanings, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2012; G. Kateb, Human Dignity, The Belknap Press, Cambridge, 2011; C. McCrudden, Understanding Human Dignity, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013; L.L. Sardiñas Iglesias, Dignidad humana. Concepto y fundamentación en clave teológica latinoamericana, USTA, Bogotá 20218; C. Trueba – S Pérez (Eds.), Dignidad. Perspectivas y aportaciones de la filosofía moral y la filosofía política, Anthropos – UAM, Barcelona – Mexico 2018; R. Guerra López, Afirmar a la persona por sí misma. La dignidad como fundamento de los derechos de la persona, Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Mexico 2003.
[2] M. Melgar Alvarez – A. Mota Rodríguez, Humanity and disability: a hermeneutic-analogical reading of the Rights of persons with disabilities in Mexico, CNDH, Mexico 2016; M. Atienza, “Dignidad Humana y Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad”, in Revista Ius et Veritas, n. 53, December 2016, pp. 262-266; T. Amezcua, M. Garcia, V. Fuentes Gutiérrez, “Dignity as a fundamental principle of the citizenship status of persons with intellectual disabilities”, in Revista Electrónica de Investigación y Docencia (REID), Monograph 3, March 2018, pp. 97-113; S. Graumann, “Human dignity and people with disabilities”, in M. Düwell, J. Braarvig, R. Brownsword, & D. Mieth (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2014, pp. 484-491.
[3] United Nations, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, December 13, 2006, Preamble.
[4] Ibidem, art. 1.
[5] Pontifical Academy for Life, Friendship with persons with disabilities: the beginning of a new world, June 14, 2021.
[6] Cf. World Health Organization, World Report on Disability, Geneva 2011: https://www.who.int/teams/noncommunicable-diseases/sensory-functions-disability-and-rehabilitation/world-report-on-disability
[7] Cf. M. Horkheimer, Crítica de la razón instrumental, Trotta, Madrid 2010; J. Ratzinger, Introducción al cristianismo, Sígueme, Salamanca 1968, p. 43 et seq.
[8] Among many other places: Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, n. 53.
[9] Cf. D. Von Hildebrand, Moralidad y conocimiento ético de los valores, Cristiandad, Madrid 2006, p. 43 et seq.
[10] H.U. von Balthasar, Gloria, trd. cast. V. Martín-F. Hernández, Encuentro, Madrid 1988, T. V (Metaphysics. Modern Age), p. 565 et seq.
[11] K. Wojtyla, “Participation or Alienation?”, in El hombre y su destino, Palabra, Madrid 1998, p. 117.
[12] For the various roots or sources of dignity we are partially inspired by J. Seifert, “Dignidad Humana: Dimensiones y fuentes de la persona humana”, in Actas del III Simposio Internacional fe cristiana y cultura contemporánea “Idea cristiana del hombre”, Eunsa, Pamplona 2002, pp. 17-37. However, in some arguments we differ from the author.
[13] C. Díaz, La persona como don, DDB, Bilbao 2001, p. 145.
[14] Cf. R. Guerra López, Volver a la persona, Caparrós, Madrid 2002.
[15] Published on April 8, 2024. Signed on April 2, 2024.
[16] Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration ”Dignitas infinita”, April 2, 2024, n. 19, italics added.
[17] Pope Francis, Encyclical “Fratelli tutti”, n. 107: “Every human being has the right to live with dignity and to develop integrally, and this basic right cannot be denied by any country. He has it even if he is inefficient, even if he is born or grows up with limitations. Because that does not undermine his immense dignity as a human person, which is not based on circumstances but on the value of his being. When this elementary principle is not safeguarded, there is no future either for fraternity or for the survival of humanity.”
[18] R. Guerra López, Afirmar a la persona por sí misma. La dignidad como fundamento de los derechos de la persona, CNDH, Mexico 2003.
[19] Among others, see: O.N. Derisi, Los fundamentos metafísicos del orden moral, CSIC – Instituto Luis Vives de Filosofía, Madrid 1951, Ch. VIII.
[20] Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Theol. I-II, q. 91, a. 2, c.
[21] Karol Wojtyla, in a little studied text, stated: “Getting to the bottom of morality by explaining it on the basis of the ultimate end has given way to explaining and justifying morality on the basis of values and norms. We are concerned today not so much with determining the ultimate end of moral conduct as with giving ultimate justification to the norms of morality. Credit for bringing about this change in how the central problem of ethics is posed and formulated undeniably goes to Kant. But to accept Kant’s starting point in ethics – that is, to consider the problem of the justification of norms as the main ethical problem – is not necessarily to accept his solution. Indeed, a search for the ultimate justification of moral norms can lead us directly to the ultimate end. But this is not presupposed in advance at the starting point. One thing, however, is presupposed right from the start: in the whole way ethics is treated, normative rather than teleological tendencies will prevail, even in the case of teleological conclusions.” K. Wojtyla, “Etyka a teologia moralna”, in Znak, Vol. XIX, 1967, pp. 1077-1082.
[22] G. Lipovetsky, El eclipse del deber. La ética indolora de los nuevos tiempos democráticos, Anagrama, Barcelona 2002, pp. 128-129.
[23] In this regard, see the following text: “One criterion for verifying whether real attention is given to the dignity of every individual in society is the help given to the most disadvantaged. Regrettably, our time is not known for such care; rather, a ‘throwaway culture’ is increasingly imposing itself.[97] To counter this trend, the condition of those experiencing physical or mental limitations warrants special attention and concern. Such conditions of acute vulnerability[98] – which feature prominently in the Gospels – prompt universal questions about what it means to be a human person, especially starting from the condition of impairment or disability. The question of human imperfection also carries clear socio-cultural implications since some cultures tend to marginalize or even oppress individuals with disabilities, treating them as ‘rejects.’ However, the truth is that each human being, regardless of their vulnerabilities, receives his or her dignity from the sole fact of being willed and loved by God. Thus, every effort should be made to encourage the inclusion and active participation of those who are affected by frailty or disability in the life of society and of the Church”. (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration “Dignitas infinita”, n. 53. Available online https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240402_dignitas-infinita_en.html