A Question Of Dignity

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You can do whatever you want with a rock. It has no feelings to consider, no rights to respect, no needs to fulfil. You can treat it with care, but that doesn’t mean you should. ?People are a different matter. People deserve respect; we can’t do whatever we want with them. People, we might say, have dignity.

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But what is it exactly that we can’t do to people? One hugely influential answer came from the philosopher Immanuel Kant,

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?“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”

The quote isn’t completely clear on first reading, so let’s unpack it.

What does it mean to treat another ‘merely as a means to an end’?

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To treat someone as a means to an end is to make use of someone to achieve an end you seek. If I want a pint of milk (end), I will make use of a shopkeeper (means) to purchase it. If I want help getting a decent grade in my exams (end), I will make use of a teacher’s advice and expertise (means). By contrast, treating someone merely as a means to an end is what we commonly call using someone. To be ‘used’, and not just made use of, means being seen not as an independent being with my own interests and capabilities, but as a tool to satisfy another’s desires. ?

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Suppose that someone befriends you, yet only seems interested in meeting up when you bring your other (quite famous) friend along. You think to yourself, do they actually want to be friends with me? Or are they only interested in seeing my celebrity friend?

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Consider how it feels to be used in this way. Most likely, you’ll feel cheated, as the motive for friendly interaction wasn’t what it seemed. Their deception robs you of the ability to make informed decisions about getting what you want. You might also feel unseen, as being treated in this way is a symbolic denial of your self. You are an instrument to be used and then cast aside. It is as though you aren’t even there.

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Feeling cheated and unseen are features of being used by another person. However, are there also ways in which you can use yourself?

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Can you treat yourself ‘merely as a means to an end’?

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On first reflection, the idea that you can treat yourself ‘merely as a means to an end’ is quite odd. If your actions are self-directed, aren’t you always pursuing ends you’ve chosen? Accordingly, don’t you always treat yourself as an end?

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Next, consider the experience itself. Being used by another makes us feel cheated and unseen. Would we feel the same if we did this to ourselves? This is strange. Can we, in fact, deceive ourselves? And can we view ourselves as less than a person, when we are the one making the judgment? Both require a divided consciousness; we are simultaneously using and being used. Is such a split in us possible?

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Perhaps we are missing the point. Perhaps the problem is not that we treat ourselves merely as a means to an end, but that we treat ourselves as objects. It may not be possible to do the former, but we can certainly do the latter.

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Is it wrong to treat yourself as an object?

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Twenty years ago, the United Nations human rights committee submitted a ruling on a peculiar case. A French court had recently banned the controversial practice of ‘dwarf tossing’, a game of throwing heavily padded tiny stuntmen as far as possible in bars and clubs, and the committee heard an appeal to the case. Strikingly, this appeal was made by Manuel Wackenheim, a dwarf who had been making a living from the pastime before the ban. Wackenheim argued that he had freely chosen to participate, and he just wanted his job back. Should he be allowed to return to it?

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The committee thought not, ultimately deciding to uphold the ban on the grounds of protecting ‘public order’ and ‘human dignity’. Yet their ruling omitted discussion of the thorny issue of self-objectification. They left out the question: is objectifying yourself wrong, and if so, why?

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Kant supplies us with one answer. Fundamentally, Kant argued, human beings are subjects. We have agency; interests to satisfy, and the ability to make rational decisions. Objects, on the other hand, have no agency. They are to be used and owned. To make yourself into an object, then, is a degradation of your status as a subject. He wrote, ‘Man is not his own property and cannot do with his body what he will. The body is part of the self; in its togetherness with the self, it constitutes a person; a man cannot make of his person a thing.’ By choosing to be thrown about for sport, Wackenheim reduced himself for a time to an object used by larger men: a mere plaything. Therefore, he violated his inherent dignity as a subject. According to Kant, this was wrong.

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We might also consider self-objectification to be wrong for religious reasons. If the human body is sacred, there are certain things you can't do with it. On this view, your body is a divine gift, a temple of your spirit, so tossing it about as?though it was some kind of beach ball is desecration. So if a woman (as it is almost always a woman) freely chooses to sell her body for sex, does she do anything wrong? Does treating your body as a mere instrument for the sexual satisfaction of another, to make money, debase it in some way?

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Belief in some special dignity to the body may not be restricted to religious believers. Most atheists believe there is something wrong with cannibalism yet find it difficult to explain why. Imagine someone has died of natural causes, and they have no remaining relatives or friends. Would it be wrong to consume their flesh? Instinctively we feel that it is, yet it is hard to justify without appealing to something like the sacredness of the body.

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Another objection to self-objectification focuses on a thing’s purpose or function. When considering what we should do with our bodies, we ought to think about what bodies are for. Our bodies are for interacting with the world and carrying out tasks. Bodies aren’t meant for throwing, so to use a body exclusively for this purpose (e.g. in ‘dwarf tossing’) is wrong. Similarly, we can ask, what is sex for? We might consider that sex aims towards reproduction, pleasure, and increasing the emotional connection between people. If someone has sex for none of these reasons, but only for money, we may say this goes against the proper purposes of sex. As such, it is wrong. Do you agree?

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One final reason to object to self-objectification is because it affirms an imbalance of power between people. Imagine that Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, posted the following job advert on Twitter: ‘Want to earn ￡100,000 a year? It’s as easy as crouching on all fours! Come be my own personal footrest.’ If someone accepted this offer- and doubtless many would (it is a lot of money)- it would mean placing themselves beneath Musk both literally and figuratively. The role clearly establishes that you are not Musk’s equal, since you have lowered yourself to the status of furniture.

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Something similar could be said in the Wackenheim case. Dwarves find it harder to get regular jobs and participate fully in society, so their choice to participate in ‘dwarf tossing’ isn’t truly free. By consenting to being tossed about as an object, Wackenheim affirms an imbalance of power between people of short stature and fully grown adults. The situation can’t be reversed, so that the fully grown adults are the ones being thrown, so the game is a symbolic illustration of the privilege enjoyed by one group over another. Moreover, using dwarves rather than heavy objects for throwing is unnecessary, suggesting that signalling this privilege is in fact part of the game. ?

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Finally, some feminist writers argue that sex work - even when undertaken voluntarily - affirms a power imbalance between men and women. The woman isn’t on an equal footing with their client, since they provide a service where they do what the man wants. As the American feminist scholar Catherine MacKinnon puts it, sex work ‘isn’t sex only, it’s you do what I say, sex.’

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Can self-objectification ever be a good thing?

According to the sociologist Catherine Hakim, each of us has a range of personal assets we use to get ahead in life. Among these are our economic capital (i.e. resources we use to make money), cultural capital (i.e. our knowledge and qualifications), and social capital (i.e. our network of connections). We use all of these to make money, get better jobs, and find and build relationships with others. However, Hakim believes that a category is missing, what she calls ‘erotic capital’. This she defines as,

?‘a combination of aesthetic, visual, physical, social, and sexual attractiveness to other members of your society, and especially to members of the opposite sex.’

Erotic capital, just like the other kinds of capital, is a personal asset we can use to get what we want. Being attractive gives us a competitive advantage over others much like being clever. In both cases, we are free and justified in using what we have, so Hakim has no moral qualms with it. She writes, ‘there is no basis for regarding intelligence as morally superior to outstanding good looks. Similarly, there is no reason to denigrate sexuality and sex appeal as base.’ Is this right? Or does using your looks to get ahead undermine your dignity in a way that using your intelligence doesn’t?

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If you want to explore these ideas further, check out these books:

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Honey Money, by Catherine Hakim?

I and Thou, by Martin Buber

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant

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