Christian Hein

National Taiwan University, Taiwan

Title: Defining Dignity—Thoughts on the Mechanisms of Shaping Individual Self- Worth in Institutional, Social, and Individual Contexts

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Biography

This paper explores the relationship between human dignity and the feeling of self-worth. It will be argued that a significant change with regard to human dignity has occurred after the transition from natural law to institutionalized law. During the Enlightenment human dignity ceased to be a responsibility every single individual but was handed over to the administrative system. Ironically, this happened in spite of the fact that prominent thinkers of the Enlightenment, first and foremost Immanuel Kant, propagated the autonomy of the individual and the responsibility of every single human being to think for themselves and make their own decisions based on rational and critical thinking. The limits of this approach when it comes to the individual level will be pointed out.

This paper will take a general to particular approach in which it will be analyzed how handing over the responsibility for one’s dignity to institutions inevitably leads to a general loss of dignity. The writings of Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998) will provide the theoretical basis for theanalysis. I will then turn to the level of social and human interaction and argue that defining one’s dignity through one’s relationship to a particular person and gaining self-worth by doing so can equally to a potential loss of dignity. In order to highlight the psychological mechanisms playing into this process, I will, turn to James Joyce’s fictional character Issy Earwicker portrayed in Finnegans Wake to shed light on how society particularly shapes women’s self-image and dignity, and then I will discuss the case of the renowned writer Alice Munro (1931-2024) as an example of how dependence not only on institutions and social norms but also on, quite often, abusive partners, whom one is intimately involved with, can easily lead to a situation in which one’s own self-worth is solely defined through the dignity one is granted by a second party.

Abstract