The Dignity of the Human Person

The “human person” is a philosophy of Louis Janssens from Vatican II, basically says that the human person is made in the image of God and is the unity of body and soul and that the person is human and living because of the soul. One of Janssen’s points was that all persons are utterly original but fundamentally equal. Daniel Sulmasy said that there are two types of dignity: intrinsic and attributed. He said that intrinsic is the kind people have simply because they are members of the human family; it is intrinsic to being human. Attributed dignity is the value or worth one attributes to others or to oneself. It is based on ones power, prestige, function, productivity, and degree of control. I believe that intrinsic dignity is the element that makes all human persons’ fundamentally equal and attributed dignity that makes them unique and the role of the health care provider is not to protect the dignity of the patient, but to respect the dignity of the patient as well as all human persons.
Intrinsic dignity is not earned, compromised, increased or decreased by one's conduct or the conduct of others. This also means that no disease, disability, or suffering, of any kind, can reduce or compromise our intrinsic dignity, regardless of the quality of life. Intrinsic dignity remains equal in all humans from their beginning to their death and beyond. People in the severest stages of illness, who may have lost all measurable autonomy, independence, and self-determination still have intact the same intrinsic dignity they had throughout their lives. This is because they are still a human person, a human being that is fundamentally equal to all other human beings and therefore carry the same intrinsic dignity as all other human beings.
Sulmasy also said that sick people are robbed of their station in life and therefore lose some of their attributed dignity. He went on to say that there is a moral duty to uphold the attributed dignity of human beings whenever possible. I’m not sure I agree with Sulmasy on this one. Instead I fell that the attributed dignity is what makes a person unique and is something that has evolved over the course of a person’s life. In saying that an illness can somehow take that away, to me, diminishes the components that the attributed dignity is made of. Sure the person may lose independence, control, and even self-esteem, but if we continue to show them respect not because of their illness, but because they are a “human person” does their dignity really need protecting?
Until reading about this and really thinking about it, it is not until I began to write this paper that I take this stance on dignity. Until now I agreed with Sulmasy that health care providers as well as all people in general should protect the dignity of others. I also think there is probably not much of a difference in how I would carry this out in the health care setting because in reality the steps one takes to preserve another’s dignity is done because we have respect for the person and their dignity. Maybe its just a play on words, but to me I feel that it leaves the control and power with the patient when we are “respecting“ their dignity, rather than “protecting”, which implies the power has been shifted to us.
In conclusion, intrinsic dignity and attributed dignity do not need preserving, they need respecting. Caregivers, in the act of caring with respect for those that are ill and possibly near death, add to their own attributed dignity and to the attributed dignity of the communities they serve. Mature moral communities will not flourish without widespread education about intrinsic dignity and an active distribution of attributed dignity. All human person’s truly are unique, due to their life experiences, contributions to society, and all of their other various attributes; all human person’s are also fundamentally equal, not only because of their intrinsic dignity but because we were all created in the image of God.