We do not need substantive accounts of the human in order to justify treating one another as equals, nor – given the exclusionary risks attached – should we want such accounts. In this chapter, I address one key challenge to this position, which comes via the idea of human dignity. Dignity per se poses no problem for my argument. Nothing in what I have so far argued stops me valuing dignified behaviour, admiring the dignity of a Nelson Mandela, or advising a friend not to participate in an undignified slanging match. I may feel some ambivalence towards dignity, sometimes admiring it, sometimes wishing people would not stand so much upon it, but there is no inconsistency in me regarding dignity as a mostly desirable quality. Nor, indeed, is it incompatible with my arguments for me to regard dignified behaviour as to some extent species specific, to think that it would be odd to talk of ants as behaving in a dignified manner, though not especially strange to say this of cats. My problem arises when we start talking more specifically of ‘the dignity of the human’. At this point we seem to be indicating some substantive ideal of what it is to be human, and what therefore counts as diminishing or degrading that humanness. Many consider this ‘dignity of the human’ a necessary underpinning for claims about human rights, but there is no good reason why the commitment to human equality should have to be underpinned in this way, nor why it should have to come as a second stage. Most of what people find useful in ideas about human dignity can be adequately provided for by going straight to equality instead.

The ‘dignity of man’ (sic) has figured as one of the bases for claiming rights for centuries, but it was mainly with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 that the ‘inviolable’ dignity of the human became such a central reference point for human rights documents and legislation.