The Stupidity of Pinker

All right, Steven Pinker is not stupid. But his article in this month's New Republic, “The Stupidity of Dignity,” displays an estimable ability to misinterpret his opponents' arguments. Pinker follows Ruth Macklin in claiming that “human dignity” is a superfluous concept; human autonomy and informed consent will do just fine, thank you very much. Now, there's an argument to be made here, and in part of his article he works it out. To hold that consent is the foundation of all ethical behavior is a position with quite a long pedigree. But Robert George and Richard John Neuhaus cannot be comfortably situated anywhere on the line of thought between Locke and Rawls, and for Pinker to deal seriously with their argument, he'd have to engage with the Aristotelian/Thomist conceptions of human goods. Here's an example of how he avoids doing this:

Almost every essayist concedes that the concept [of human dignity] remains slippery and ambiguous. In fact, it spawns outright contradictions at every turn. We read that slavery and degradation are morally wrong because they take someone's dignity away. But we also read that nothing you can do to a person, including enslaving or degrading him, can take his dignity away.

Perhaps the essayists do contradict themselves; I haven't read the specific book he's reviewing. But I've read enough of Neuhaus and George to know that Pinker is conflating the violation of someone's dignity with the removal of it. The analogy with human rights should be perfectly clear; somehow, Pinker doesn't see it.

At one point, Pinker even goes so far as to argue that human dignity can be harmful:

Every sashed and bemedaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through ostentatious displays of dignity. Political and religious repressions are often rationalized as a defense of the dignity of a state, leader, or creed… Indeed, totalitarianism is often the imposition of a leader's conception of dignity on a population, such as the identical uniforms in Maoist China or the burqas of the Taliban.

I don't even know what to make of this passage. Conservative bioethicists aren't talking about the fundamental “dignity of a state, leader, or creed”; they are talking about the equal inherent dignity of all human beings. I know that dignity and self-esteem are used similarly in common parlance, but the conservatives are trying to get at something fundamental, not dress codes.

The basic idea of human dignity is that the principle of reciprocity (which Pinker has elsewhere acknowledged as a major and valid element of human moral reasoning, from the Golden Rule to the categorical imperative to the social contract) cannot be built on any particular accidental quality, such as rationality or capacity to make decisions, but must come from the essential feature of being human. Pinker seems to think that it consists in the ability not to be embarrassed or ashamed (“…every one of us voluntarily and repeatedly relinquishes dignity for other goods in life. Getting out of a small car is undignified…”). It may be that he can show how the concept of autonomy is broad enough to make the concept of dignity superfluous, but it would be best if he first worked a little bit harder to understand what sort of dignity he is discussing.