OBSERVACIONES

A few months ago the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (known to experts as the EKAH) and the citizens of Switzerland were awarded the spoof “IgNobel Peace Prize 2008” for “adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity”.

Is it so funny to speak of dignity when referring to living beings other than humans?

This may be the case with plants – but how about animals? Is it so ridiculous to ascribe some kind of dignity to them? As early as 1978 UNESCO used the term dig- nity in the Declaration of Animal Rights.1But when translating this text into Polish, the Polish Ethological Society added a genuine warning, saying that here UNESCO authors went definitely astray: The use of the term dignity is to be restricted to

P. Kunzmann (B)

Ethikzentrum Jena, Jena, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

1_{Article 10b: Animal exhibitions and shows that use animals are incompatible with any animal’s}

dignity.

101 F.-T. Gottwald et al. (eds.), Food Ethics, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-5765-8_7,

C

humans only.2_{One may be sure that these Polish scientists are not alone in their} reluctance to broaden the use of a powerful word beyond “human dignity”.

Whether UNESCO actually was ill-advised to speak of dignity in this given context can be left aside for a moment. The phrase “dignity of animals” must never- theless be considered a highly successful coinage. Twelve years ago, Bressler (1997) stated that the German word for dignity, Würde, is hardly to be found in connection with animals, obviously due to its strong relation to human dignity.3In the mean- time, this has changed considerably: dignity/Würde has become widespread in use, whether it is part of public rhetoric or as the subject of serious ethical and legal debates.

This success must have its reasons. To mention a few4:

Dignity and its equivalent Würde are somewhat catchy formulas that pro- vide a certain contrast to more technical terms like “integrity” or to phrases like Mitgeschöpflichkeit, which is meant to be the basic principle in the German Animal Protection Law. This term is so uncommon, so artificial and so uneasy to handle that it has never made it into normal conversational German. It is evidently less attractive than dignity.

At the same time, dignity conveys an almost religious importance, which may make it attractive to those who use the term, and which is at the same time one of the reasons why other ethicists refrain from using it. This applies not only to animal dig- nity, but to all applications of the term as an ethical principle. There is a fierce debate in the US about whether human dignity is a helpful concept in Medical Ethics. In 2008 the “President’s Council on Bioethics” for example edited a 555-page-report on the topic “Human Dignity and Bioethics”. This large volume is just one example that reflects the controversy on the use of the term. It also contains statements on the necessity of speaking of dignity as well as fierce opposition to the statement. Several authors refer to an article by Ruth Macklin who argues that dignity is a useless con- cept. Everything that it attempts to convey is already expressed by “autonomy” or by “respect for the person’s autonomy”.

The quarrel nonetheless shows clearly that even the opponents know that dignity is a powerful term that indicates serious interests.

Dignity has also a very positive connotation which makes it even more attrac- tive to speak of when propagating animals’ concerns in public – it has, as J-C Wolf once put it, a “manifesto” character. A manifesto character may mean that speak- ing of dignity states something important which at the same time urges some kind of specific action or attitude. In terms of speech act theory, locutionary acts con- taining dignity tend to perform some kind of warning, of declaring, of stating, of

2_{“Uwaga: tu prawodawcy sie˛ zagalopowali – godno´s´c jest atrybutem człowieka” (http://www.}

nencki.gov.pl/ptetol/prawa_zwierz.pdf).

3_{“Es gibt (. . .) noch sehr wenige philosophische Beiträge zur ‘Würde des Tieres’. Dies mag seinen}

Grund darin haben, daß, wenn von Würde die Rede ist, die ‘Menschenwürde’ gemeint ist und dieser Begriff eben zur Abgrenzung und Auszeichnung des Menschen gegenüber dem Tier dient”. (Bressler 1997, p. 191).

demanding, of protesting, rather than just describing something. Dignity is kind of a so-called “thick concept” which at the same time carries a description of a state of affairs AND an evaluation of the depicted state of affairs, usually a critical one. This, at least, applies to the long history of human dignity, which in many cases was used as a protesting manifesto against circumstances which were considered to violate this moral and legal principle. Although it is rather difficult to give human dignity its precise shape, it is easier and therefore more common to protest whenever human dignity is at stake.

Animal dignity may borrow some of the vigour from human dignity, but it pays a price. It states something; it demands something without explaining it too clearly. And to some of the critics of the concept of “dignity of animals” or “dignity of creatures”, there is another danger lurking. The refutation of transferring dignity from humans to animals would broaden the term beyond its original meaning with- out cause; this refusal comes most often from authors specializing in law or legal philosophy (Löwer 2001, von der Pfordten 2003). There is a fear that the core con- cept of dignity will suffer when we apply it to entities which we treat in a way that is incompatible with dignity: Humans kill animals, some for quite minor reasons. Animals are kept in confinement, are bought and sold, and are the subject of all sorts of treatment that would absolutely not be justifiable for humans. How can we at the same time ascribe dignity to animals and do all those nasty things which we would refuse to do to human beings with respect to human dignity? As long as our com- mon social practice allows humans to act with such licence with respect to animals, it is not possible to attribute a dignity to them that would exclude these practices when performed on human beings. Will, in turn, the use of the same concept lead to a softening and blurring of its content for humans?