Individual value and individual rights

Dignity, respect and rights

Moral individualism depends on the premise, not just that each person is an individual, but also that each individual is of value. One of the key roles of individualism has been to assert that every person matters. Doctrines that dismiss, disregard or diminish the individual – caste, racism or fascism – are mistaken, oppressive and morally wrong.

The idea of value is expressed in different ways – that individuals have human dignity, that they are deserving of respect and that they have rights. Of these three, the idea of dignity seems to be the term that is least often discussed. Nordenfeldt distinguishes four types of dignity:

• • dignity as merit – that is, dignity relating to position or status;

• • dignity as moral stature – a person's moral standing or worth, including the respect of others and self-respect;

• • dignity of identity – ‘the dignity we attached to ourselves as integrated and autonomous persons’;

• • Menschenwürde or human worth – the sense of equal human value.

Part of this relates to ‘aristocratic’ dignity, which is not what individualists are concerned with; a stress on comportment harks back to the feudal idea that each person had a status, and that they had to be related in a way appropriate to that status. Rather, they emphasise universal dignity – the Kantian idea that each person has ‘unconditional and incomparable worth’.

Some writers have been critical of the idea of dignity – it has been dismissed as redundant, in so far as it can be reduced to other issues like autonomy or respect, or vacuous. Its purpose becomes clearer when it is violated, as it often is for older people and people with disabilities.