The Final Reckoning

So what, then, do we make of dignity? More to the point, perhaps, what on earth (yes, out there) is actually being made of dignity? It could be argued that dignity is no better or worse than any other moral ideal by which people choose to lead their lives and that we lack the moral vocabulary to judge such ideals against each other as being of greater or lesser value. As we have seen, dignity has something of an elastic quality about it, and we are left wondering just how far it might be stretched before it finally snaps altogether. What is less a source of wonder is that dignity appears to be held taut by the abstract nature of metaphysics and morality (reason reaching as far as, perhaps, aesthetics), on one post, and by the concrete agency of the state or supra- state (including such things as citizenship and human rights), on the other. To bring the present discussion to a close, then, we shall consider one last time the material strung out for us between both ends of this particular line of thought. Reason is, in fact, both the ally and enemy of dignity. It is the tool of the accountant that may be put to use to arrive at a solution to the problem of an inconveniently stubborn bottom line: infamously, there has been the counting in of persons in one column to become finally written off in the next – just a banal blank, instead of all those human lives to be lived. Within the bounds of reason, there is always made available an excuse, an explanation and a justification for just why it had to happen as it did (Himmler was studiously good at making use of this). But more innocently, reason is the means to cut through such sordid exercises simply by keeping human dignity always in mind. It is only in this way that reason actually is dignity. Here is a final word, then, on the legacy of metaphysics within the realm of reason.