In May, the New Republic published a piece titled "The Stupidity of Dignity"by Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Commonweal commented on it here. Now Paul J. Griffiths responds to Pinkerin theAugust/September issueof First Things. (The article is available online only to subscribers.) Pinker argues that the concept of dignity is useless and often dangerous in discussions about bioethics. Herecommends that such discussions instead be governed by theconcept of autonomy, which he considers adequate, straightforward, and safely secular. Griffithspoints out that autonomy is really no more straightforward than dignity. As for its adequacy, well, that depends on what kind of answersone is looking for. Griffiths writes:

The deep question here is not thatof transparency or religion or democracy or freedom. It begins, rather, with a need to find out what autonomy-talk and dignity-talk dispose us to think andadvocate. The short answer is that autonomy-talkers such as Pinker are likely to think of worth principally in terms of capacity and thus to draw small the circle of those understood to be human and thereby in principle exempt from deliberate killing or damage. Dignity-talkers, Catholic or not, are likely to think of worth principally in terms of gift and thus to draw that same circle large. Thequantity of blood shed differs significantlyFrom there, we need to consider a question of truth. Are wehumans better characterized as autonomous or as dignified? An equally short answer to this isthat autonomy-talk scants, sometimes to the point of ignoring, our dependence on others: All that each of us has -- everycapacity, every skill, the fact thatwe are and continue to be -- is due to the generosity of others. Autonomy-talk, to the extent that it denies this, says something false. Dignity-talk, to the extent that it affirms this, says something true.