A Stepkowski Human Dignity and Two Ways of its understanding (original) (raw)

The paper presents two ways of understanding human dignity i.e. rational dimension of our human nature, making us ethically exceptional and deserving for special protection. Those two ways of understanding human rationality have inspired two different anthropologies: one presuming social nature of man and the other considering man as an individual for whom any form of community life is artificial and secondary to natural solipsistic condition. The argument within this paper is, that in fact, only one of those two ways in which we understand our rationality allows for true distinction between man and animals i.e. only one of them is defending moral exceptionality of man. Strikingly, this is not the way of understanding human dignity, which is underpinning contemporary intellectual culture of the West. The question thus arises, whether we are really seeking for rationally reliable explanation of our moral distinctiveness from animals? If so, we have to realise it is not possible to uphold special character of human dignity within the intellectual framework that is provided by modern way of perceiving rationality. Therefore, it seems that the only way to save proper understanding of humanity and human dignity is the return to intellectual foundations of classical (i.e. pre-modern) intellectual culture. This classical intellectual framework seems to be able to securing moral status of human being as radically distinct from animals.