Dignity Never Been Photographed: Scientific Materialism, Enlightenment Liberalism, and Steven Pinker

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 1:28 pm by Francis J. Beckwith

Dignity Never Been Photographed: Scientific Materialism, Enlightenment Liberalism, and Steven Pinker 2015-03-13T13:28:29-04:00 Francis J. Beckwith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

That is the title of an article I published in the Summer 2010 issue of Ethics & Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics (vol. 26.2). (The title, if you have not noticed yet, is from a line in the Bob Dylan song, “Dignity”). Here’s how the article begins (endnotes omitted):

In March 2008, the President’s Council on Bioethics published a volume entitled, Human Dignity and Bioethics. It consists of essays penned by council members as well as other scholars and practitioners invited to contribute. As one would guess, the idea of human dignity and what it means for bioethics, both in theory and in practice, is the theme that dominates each of the works contributed to this impressive volume. But for those who have been following or participating in the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary world of secular bioethics during the past fifteen or twenty years, the insertion of the idea of “human dignity,” or even the word “dignity,” as the anthropological foundation of bioethics is highly unusual. Much of the cutting edge literature in bioethics, with few exceptions, tends to employ the language of modern political theory and contemporary analytic political philosophy and jurisprudence. So, for example, one finds in these cutting-edge works discussions about the meaning and implementation of the principles of autonomy, justice, nonmaleficence, and beneficence, as well as calls for the application of these principles to what constitutes physician neutrality, informed consent, and patients’ rights. This project often goes by the name principlism. There is, of course, much that this project has contributed to the study and practice of bioethics. For each principle and its application has a long and noble pedigree about which many of us hold a variety of opinions. But what distinguishes principlism from the concept of “human dignity,” and what makes this central concern of the council’s volume so astounding, is that advocates of principlism typically intend for it to be a means by which a physician, ethics committee, nurse practitioner, general counsel, etc., need not delve into the metaphysical question for which “human dignity” is offered as a partial answer, namely, “Who and what are we, and can we know it?

To put it another way, if bioethics commits itself to the idea that “human dignity” is essential to its practice, as the President’s Council suggests, it follows that bioethics must embrace a philosophy of the human person, a philosophical anthropology, if you will, that can provide substantive content to the notion of “human dignity.” But such a suggestion seems to run counter to two ideas that are dominant in the secular academy: (1) Enlightenment Liberalism, and (2) Scientific Materialism.

Enlightenment Liberalism is, roughly, the view that a state that aspires to justice and fairness ought not to embrace one view of the human person as the correct view because to do so would be to violate the principles essential to liberal democracy. This is why the principles central to principlism, such as autonomy and justice, are almost all procedural in their application. That is, when they are applied and practiced correctly, they commit the relevant medical personal and institution to as minimal an understanding of the human person and her good as possible. Now, as I point out below, I think that this is actually false. In fact, secular bioethics does commit its practitioners to a substantive understanding of the human person and the human good, one that is as contested and controversial as the so-called “religious” views for which principlism is often thought of as a neutral arbiter. What I am suggesting here, however, is that this is not how its supporters present, or in some cases understand, their position.

The second idea, Scientific Materialism, is, roughly, the view that science is the best or only way of knowing, and that science is committed to methodological naturalism (that science must proceed under the assumption that non-natural entities cannot be items of knowledge that may count against the deliverances of the hard sciences). Therefore, philosophies of the human person that affirm non-material properties like “human dignity” are not items of real knowledge. Thus, such philosophies of the human person, though they may be privately embraced and practiced by individual citizens in accordance with their own religious sensibilities or believed on the basis of utility, none of these philosophical anthropologies may ever serve as the basis on which a society may regulate research and practices of bioethical controversy, such as embryonic stem-cell research, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, or reproductive technologies.

As one would suspect, given these definitions, advocates of Enlightenment Liberalism and Scientific Materialism offer them as neutral and uncontested concepts that provide a fair, impartial, and scientifically respectable foundation for the practice of medical ethics in a pluralistic society of competing worldviews. Despite their intuitive appeal to many in the academic and professional cultures in which a secular bioethics is dominant, I want to argue that these views are not neutral and uncontested concepts. Rather, they support an account of the common good and the human person that answers precisely the same questions that the so-called contested worldviews, including so-called religious perspectives, attempt to answer. In order to make my case, I employ as my point of departure several comments that appeared in a 2008 article published in The New Republic, “The Stupidity of Dignity,” authored by Harvard University psychology professor, Steven Pinker.

You can download the entire article on my website here.

Previous Post

November 7, 2011

Evangelical and Catholic

Next Post

November 9, 2011 Duke's Coach K on uncompromising morality

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2010 Election 2012 2012 Election Abortion Academic freedom Academic Freedom Alliance Affirmative Action Al Mohler Alvin Plantinga Amazon.com American Culture Animal Rights Anti-Catholic Bigotry Antichrist apologetics Apostolic Succession Appearance Aristotle Ash Wednesday atheism Baptists Barack Obama basketball Baylor Best Books Bias Biden Billy Joel bioethics Bishop Gorman High School Bishop Robert Barron blogging Bob Dylan books C. S. Lewis Called to Communion Calvin College Calvinism Cancel culture Casey v. Planned Parenthood Catholic Catholic Answers Catholic saints Catholic Social Thought Catholic World Report Catholicism China Christianity Christianity Today Christians Christmas Christopher Hitchens Chuck Colson Church Fathers Church of England communion of the saints Conclave Confirmation Conservatism Constitutional Law contraception conversion stories Cornel West Critical Race Theory Culture of Death Culture of Life Daddy's Little Girl Darby Beckwith David Boonin David Crowder David Novak Defending Life DEI Dinesh D'Souza Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization Dr. Tod Worner E. O. Wilson Easter Edgardo Mortara Edith Schaeffer Elizabeth Beckwith Emergent Church Emily Edmondson Epistemology Equality Eric Metaxas Ethics Evangelical Philosophical Society Evangelical Theological Society Evangelicalism Evangelicals Evangelium Vitae EWTN faith and reason Falkirk Center family Federalist Society feminism Film First Amendment First Things Football Fr. Robert Barron Francis A. Schaeffer Frank Capra Frankie Beckwith God Good Friday Gospel Coalition Grateful Dead Gratitude Greg Koukl Ground Zero Mosque Hadley Arkes Harold Joseph Beckwith Harverford College Hell Higher Education Hillary Clinton Hobby Lobby Houston Baptist University Humanities humor Integralism intelligent design Internal Revenue Service Islam It's a Wonderful Life Ivy League J. Budziszewski Jesus Movement Jimmy Akin Jimmy Stewart Joe Dickerson John F. Kennedy John Gerstner John J. Haldane John Locke John Rawls Journeys of Faith Judaism Judith Jarvis Thomson Justification Keith Green Keith Whittington King James Version Las Vegas Latter-day Saints Laura Nyro Law Lawrence Ferlinghetti Levon Helm Liberalism Liberty University Lou Reed Lutheranism Malcolm & Alwyn Marriage Martin Luther Mary the Mother of God Media Media appearances Michael Licona Michael Ruse Michele Bachmann Michelle Bachmann Mike Huckabee Mike Krzyzewski Miracles MIT Mitt Romney monozygotic twinning Moral Theology Mormonism music N. T. Wright Natural Law New Books Network New Evangelization new word New York Times Newt Gingrich Newtown Massacre Nicholas Wolterstorff Norman L. Geisler Note Dame Notre Dame NSA spying O. Carter Snead Papal Conclave Papal Conclave 2013 Passover Pat Robertson Patheos Penance Personhood Philosophy Philosophy of Religion Planned Parenthood Political Correctness Political Liberalism politics Politics for Christians Pope Benedict XVI Pope Francis Pope John Paul I Pope John Paul II Pope John XXIII Pope Leo XII Pope Paul VI Pope Pius XII Prayer in Schools President Barack Obama President Bill Clinton President Ronald W. Reagan Princeton Problem of Evil Prolife Protestantism Providence College Public Discourse Publications Publishing Purgatory R. C. Sproul Racism Ralph Wood RCIA Real Presence Reformation relativism relics Religion religious art Religious Liberty Religious urban legends Republican Party Resurrection Return to Rome Reversion Rhetoric Richard Dawkins Richard Mouw Rick Santorum Riley Beckwith Robert P. George Rod Dreher Roe v. Wade Roger Olson Ronald Dworkin Ronald W. Reagan Rush Limbaugh Russell Moore Ryan T. Anderson Sanctity of Life Satan Sexual Ethics Sexual misconduct Snoop Dogg Social Justice South Park Southern Baptists Speaking Engagement Speech St. Augustine St. Francis of Assisi St. Peter's Catholic Student Center St. Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas More stained glass Stand to Reason Stanford Stephen H. Webb Studies in Christian Ethics Super Bowl LV Syllabus The Band The Beatles The Bible The Catholic Thing the Christian university The City The King's College The Moral Argument The Sacraments The Vatican theology Theology of the Body Thomas Aquinas Thomas Nagel Thomas S. Hibbs Thomistic Institute Tim Challies Timothy George Tolerance Tony Sclafani Transubstantiation Trump U. S. Supreme Court Uncategorized University Faculty for Life University of Dallas UNLV Vatican Virtual Book Burning Volokh Conspiracy Walker Percy William F. Buckley William Lane Craig Wokeness Word of Fire

Select a Month August 2025 June 2025 March 2025 February 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 July 2024 April 2024 March 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 January 2023 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 September 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 October 2015 August 2015 July 2015 May 2015 April 2015 July 2014 April 2014 March 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called ____ of God.

Select your answer to see how you score.

Children Friends Disciples Servants