The Capabilities Approach, Religious Practices, and the Importance of Recognition

Thom,

Interesting paper, thanks!.

I’m a bit puzzled over the statement that “When I treat you with dignity and respect, I need not recognize your equal standing.” Well, I would counter, if that’s the case than you have a rather impoverished if not improper understanding of the meaning of dignity (as an intrinsic or inherent value) and respect, at least as it has been articulated from Kant through contemporary philosophers in the natural law tradition, or as employed in articulating the logical primitive(s) (or conceptual foundations) at work in human rights declarations and principles, constitutions and bills of rights. For instance, the most basic human rights are universal in principle and application and entail thereby our equal status as human beings (as part of the family of man, as children of God, as beings who are capable of suffering, as possessed of a common if open-ended nature, etc.) . Dignity thus refers in the first instance to what one is, rather than what one does. As a minimum, it entitles us to respect as a person, a status we all share, hence the fundamental rights that issue therefrom are “inalienable.” Dignity here suffices in principle for the recognition of at least formal equality, and thus the law gives substance to this equality (as a John Finnis or Lon Fuller would attest).

Allen Wood writes that human dignity “[is] the fundamental value on which all other values, whether moral or non-moral, must be grounded. The value of human perfections [or ‘perfectibility’ in the sense of Godwin or Condorcet] and achievements, even of moral virtue, and of course the value of human happiness [or eudaimonia in the Hellenistic sense], is grounded in the dignity of human beings whose perfections or happiness these are.” Even the notion of equality could be said to be, at bottom, based on an axiomatic principle of dignity, as Wood says, dignity requires that we treat all people as alike in dignity. Wood elaborates:

“The fundamental egalitarianism built into the idea of human dignity can be understood as the most direct basis of many modern political and legal conceptions and principles. These include that governmental authority ought properly to exist and be exercised only with the consent of the governed, that political power should be based on the rule of law, not the arbitrary power of individuals or groups, and that everyone falling under such a system should have the right to participate in the decisions that determine what these laws are and who should be granted the authority to enforce them.”

The notion of humanity as an “end in itself” means that it is our being an “existent end” that we all are equal in our possession of dignity or absolute worth, and it is from this that follows the idea that absolute worth or dignity renders all rational beings, in the Kantian sense (or, as Velleman explains, as beings capable of acting from reasons of a certain kind) equal. And, generally speaking, this requires, in Paul Guyer’s words, “taking steps to enhance [our] prospects for the successful exercise of [our] agency by improving the circumstances under which ends [we] freely set can be pursued and even by directly assisting [others] in their pursuit of those ends.”

As Robert E. Goodin reminds us, a prisoner of war possesses dignity even if he has little free choice or suffers from indignities, so if there is a failure of recognition it is a failure to recognize that dignity, a failure to understand the normative meaning of dignity, a failure not only in conception by conceptual understanding as well. So, in your example, the failure is one of belief in the meaning of dignity, and it is that which motivates the failure of recognition.

Erratum: “a failure not only in conception but conceptual understanding as well.” [drawing on the concept/conception distinction]

This inference is problematic, on my understanding of Nussbaum:

The approach signals the capability threshold we must satisfy in order to
ensure all persons enjoy ‘a life that is worthy of the dignity of the human being’. In other words, an individual lacks full dignity if any single capability is unavailable for her no matter how well all other capabilities are available.

It’s not that a person who lacks access to certain capabilities lacks full dignity; it’s that her dignity (which she has no matter what, qua human being) is not fully recognized.

As an addendum to the first comment above, on some accounts (e.g., Darwall’s) to respect someone just is to recognize her (equal) status as a person.

There are notions of respect that do not involve recognizing one’s status as a person (what Darwall call’s ‘appraisal respect’ and what Dillon calls ‘evaluative respect’). A husband in a polygamous marriage may respect his wives in the evaluative or appraisal way, without recognizing their equal status. But, he would be remiss (and indeed would fail to fully respect them) in not recognizing their equal status.

Also, I think the term ‘dignity’ may have a different sense in claims like “he treated her with dignity” as it does in claims like “she possesses dignity as a person”. Nussbaum is clearly concerned with the second sense of ‘dignity’.

Could I ask you,Patrick O’Donnell, for the citation for Velleman mentioned in your comment? Thanks in advance.

Cynthia,

My reference was to some things Velleman writes in the marvelous collection of material found in his Self to Self: Selected Essays (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). See, in particular, Chapter 2, “A Brief Introduction to Kantian Ethics,” pp. 16-44, at the conclusion we which we find:

“[T]he value of our individual personhood here and now is inseparable from the value of participating in personhood as a status shared with our selves at other times and with other people, whose access to the same framework of reasons is what lends those reasons authority. Only by sharing in the common knowledge of reasoners do we find ourselves subject to authoritative requirements, recognition of which must determine our behavior if we are to be autonomous persons. Being an autonomous person is thus impossible without belonging to the community of those with access to the same sources of autonomy. Insofar as being a person matters, belonging to the community of persons must matter, and the importance of both is what makes it important to act for reasons. [….] [T]he importance of acting for reasons depends on the importance of personhood in general as a source of value. Reasons matter because persons matter, and so we cannot show our regard for reasons by showing disregard for persons.”

(If I’m not mistaken, this is close to some things Onora O’Neill has written about practical reasoning in her elaboration of what she understands by Kantian constructivism.)

Patrick,
Thanks so much for your quick and detailed response!