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W. v.d.
Donk, R. Steenvoorde, S. Waanders (eds.)
Globalisation and Human Dignity. Sources and Challenges in Catholic
Social Thought
Vught: Damon, 2004, pp. 118, € 12,50.
Elena
Balvočiutė
“Hope, amazement, mercy” – these three words
characterise the attitude of the Tempora-project, which initiated the
publication of the book Globalisation and Human Dignity. The
goal of the project is to stimulate Catholic contributions to the
public debate on globalisation, and this book is intended as a further
contribution to the same. It follows on from the publication of some
Dutch contributions to the Jubilee of Universities in Rome, in the
book Humanity in a Globalising World.
During the 75th anniversary of Tilburg University in March
2003, a workshop on globalisation and human dignity within a
conference on “sustainable ties in the information society” was
organized. Here, in a forum of Catholic academics, the presentation of
the central essay of this publication A Better Life for All!,
written by Dr. Marjolijn Drenth von Februar, took place. During the
seminar, comments on the text were made by Professor Dr. Ernst Hirsch
Ballin, Dignity in Difference, Dr. Onno Ruding,
Globalisation and the Realities of Poverty, and by Professor Dr.
Johan Verstraeten, Globalisation and the Dignity of the Poor.
The central essay and these comments became parts of the book
Globalisation and Human Dignity.
The preface, written by Dr. Martinus P.M. Muskens, Bishop of Breda, is
followed by an inspirational introduction The Challenge of
Globalisation given us by the editors of the publication Win van
de Donk and Richard Steenvoorde. They begin by describing the daily
miracle dedicated to human dignity that happens in the Trinity Chapel
of Salisbury Cathedral. At this point we can guess that the picture
chosen for the cover of the book represents the prisoners of
conscience for whom prayers are offered every morning in this chapel.
It is a very thoughtful choice. Actually, after reading such a book as
this, that analyses the concept of human dignity in a globalised
world, one realises that this picture offers a very comprehensive
definition of human dignity. Namely, as Johan Verstraeten points out
in his comment, conscience is the space wherein the human person finds
the law written in his heart by God and it is in obeying this law that
an individual discovers his or her ‘very dignity’.
In the introduction we also read how Jacques Maritain, one of the
influential thinkers behind the idea of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, recalls in his book Man and the State that
during the negotiations many states were able to support the preamble
of the declaration, where recognition of intrinsic human dignity is
made, as long as they were not asked ‘why’. Hence, the debate on the
‘why’ behind the need to protect human dignity was kept out of the
realm of international law and politics. “If there is a short message
of [the] book, this message would be: we cannot skip the ‘why’ any
longer, especially in an age where globalisation is not just a
concept, but a reality” (p. 10). Later in the book we find a similar
conclusion, drawn by Marjolijn Drenth von Februar: “Everyone is
concerned, in their own way, about the well-being and moral identity
of global citizens. It is as if one cannot speak about globalisation
except in ethical terms” (p. 70).
Before arriving at this conclusion, however, the author of the central
essay A Better Life for All!
provides us with a very wide overview of the concept of human dignity.
She deals three of the different meanings for it: dignity in the sense
of value, dignity in the sense of right, and dignity in the sense of
an ontological leap in the context of a globalised world. It is
fascinating that she does not a priori reject any of these
senses of human dignity, but discovers the usefulness of each of them,
even of the materialistic approach to human dignity. Let us take a
look at these three ways to interpret human dignity.
Human dignity as a material value focuses on our physical
state. This is a scientific, materialistic and functional view of
human dignity. According to this approach, we do not all possess the
same dignity. “At most we possess dignity if we are of some value, if
our lives are worth the trouble, or if our bodies are worth the
trouble of saving” (p. 22). It is useful to note that this view is
very popular in today’s discussions about life and death, abortion and
euthanasia, where much attention seems to be focused on material
value. Never-theless, as the author argues in the chapter “In favor of
material man: the poverty line”, there are certain advantages to this
materialism that applies the economic and biological approaches to
human dignity. “Because if we measure human dignity by the value of
man, in terms of his material func-tioning, it becomes possible to
determine that human dignity fairly accurately. And such accurate
information on the dimensions of human dignity undoubtedly has
advantages for policy-making” (p. 34).
Marjolijn Drenth von Februar cites Houellebecq who attributed the
victory of material man to the fundamental agnosticism of the French
Republic. However, this victory, according to the author, does not
necessarily regard dignity as a material value, or as the ability to
enjoy and to suffer. “Particularly in the agnostic tradition of the
French Republic, man’s dignity has also become associated with his
political life, his position in society” (p. 23). At this point we
encounter the understanding of human dignity as a right.
Accord-ing to this view, we acquire dignity, and with it, the right to
protection, on the basis of our vulnerability. Dignity is given to us
purely on the basis of our existence, and this means that everyone is
equal in dignity. Nevertheless, the author rightly notes: “Yet the
human rights approach, with its attribution to dignity, calls a formal
equality into being, by which it seems to give too little thought to
the very real inequality among people” (p. 25). Further in the
essay it is demonstrated to us that global equality is hardly
possible. It is so because it is impossible to allow the entire world
population to grow and grow until it reaches
the level of the Western citizen. “In order to offer everyone the sort
of life that the Western citizen leads, one planet Earth wouldn’t be
nearly enough: for the globalisation of the Western footprint, we
would need no fewer that 3.4 planets!” (pp. 56-57). At the same time,
the economy of the West cannot be allowed to shrink because this would
seriously impair the global economy. According to James Ogilvy, who is
also presented in the book, the Western citizen must not only live
better, but also produce and consume better, for it is his materialism
that makes the economy sing. That is why a rigorous view of
dignity-as-a-right has great appeal for him.
Marjolijn Drenth von Februar concludes the chapter
about dignity as a right with an emphasis on the idea that in poor
countries, the human rights’ approach must be supplemented with a more
economic approach to dignity.
The approach of human dignity as an
ontological leap recognizes man as a mysterious and complex being,
one who cannot be reduced to the sum of a few simple qualities. In the
essay A Better Life for All! we are introduced to Francis
Fuku-yama’s ideas about human dignity. Drenth von Februar writes that,
in an effort to abolish the distinction between the two forms of human
dignity discussed above, Fukuyama recently made a plea for a return to
the Christian view, according to which “dignity is an essential part
of each of us; it is not dependent on circumstances, nor it is
attributed to us – it is at the core of our humanity” (p. 25).
Marjolijn Drenth von Februar gives much attention
to Fukuyama’s idea of ‘Factor X’, that is, the factor uniting all
people and remaining behind after we have gone beyond all the
accidental or inessential qualities of a person. In reality, this
factor is very complex and we are not able to isolate it simply. The
view of the social encyclicals of the last century is similar and
actually served Fukuyama as a point of reference. They also sought the
meaning of human dignity in a description that would be as non-reductionist
as possible, and this approach found the basis of human dignity “in
the possession of a spiritual soul: our value is transcendental and
God-given. A person’s dignity cannot be reduced to a value, or to
community feeling, or identity, or any other of these qualities…We
derive our dignity from the Creation.” (pp. 59-60).
Finally, Marjolijn Drenth von Februar acknowledges that all three
forms of dignity are open to criticism; “the third form of dignity,
too, is disputable – if only the fact that the ontological claim is
disputable” (p. 27). Nevertheless, according to the author, despite
the objections, all three definitions of dignity have their
advantages. “They each shed their own light on globalization, and
reveal, in very different ways, the sort of problems with which man is
faced in his growing and shrinking world” (ibid.)
The central essay is followed by three comments that render the
book an excellent example of how interdisciplinary dialogue can enrich
the discussion: the first comment is written by a professor of
international law; the second is by an expert in finance, while the
third is written by a professor of ethics. Let us pass quickly through
the main points of agreement and disagreement between these comments
and the central essay.
Ernst Hirsch Ballin in his Dignity in Difference agrees with
Marjolijn Drenth von Februar’s understanding of the third sense of
human dignity as an effort to do away with the distinction between
dignity as a value and dignity as a right and adds that the “view on
mankind, rooted in the Judaeo-Christian belief in creation but not
limited nor intended to be limited to believers, sets one’s dignity
free from any value-based conditionality” (p. 73). Ernst Hirsch Ballin
complements the central essay of the book with a very important
distinction between the history transcending character of human
dignity and the historical contingent manifestations of the
value-rights dynamics.
The next comment entitled Globalisation and the Realities of
Poverty and written by Onno Ruding is of particular interest
because it provides a deeper analysis of the reality of poverty. This
new aspect leads the author to conclusions that are, in part,
different from the essay of Marjolijn Drenth von Februar. First of all
Onno Ruding explains the link between globalisation and poverty. It
appears that globalisation is only one of five main reasons of the
poverty in many countries of the world. First, there are countries
that have deliberately not joined the wave of globalisation and thus
have lost all the benefits of it. Then there are countries who are in
trouble because of awfully bad domestic policies. “A third category of
developing or poor countries finds itself in dreadful conditions as
the result of war and its dismal economic and humanitarian
consequences” (p. 84). In similar condition we find the fourth
category of countries and areas which suffer from poverty, famine and
death caused by developments beyond human control: drought, floods,
fire. In the fifth place we find countries that suffer because
globalisation has had a negative impact related to worsening of the
terms of trade or to loss of production.
The last comment Globalisation and the Dignity of the Poor,
written by Johan Verstraeten, is philosophical, theological and
sometimes even mystical. That is why it is very different from the
rest of the essays in the book. The author distinguishes four meanings
of the concept of human dignity: relative, moral, philosophical and
theological. Another innovative contribution of Johan Verstraeten is
the idea of a communitarian rein-terpretation of human rights. At this
point he recalls the pastoral letter of the North American Conference
of Bishops Economic Justice for All where rights are defined as
“the minimum conditions for life in community” (p. 102). Ultimately
this commentator introduces the concept of human dignity as a
process, based on the mystical theology of Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin. These are the pages that are the most difficult to understand
in the book; the idea of dignity as a process is not explored as much
as it could be, and the contributions to the analysis of it could
continue the discussion. “Human dignity and globalization are not
necessarily opposed to each other, since globalization itself can be
interpreted as a process of humanization” (p. 109).
By the book Globalisation and Human Dignity. Sources and Challenges
in Catholic Social Thought we are easily inspired to further
dis-cussion and to deeper analysis of the concept of human dignity in
a globalised world and the effects of globalisation. Despite the fact
that the book has so many contributors and thus different styles of
writing, it seems rather integral, surely reflecting the discussion of
the Catholic thinkers from various disciplines that took place during
the workshop at Tilburg University. The reader that expects to find a
coherent and deep analysis of human dignity or globalisation will
probably be disappointed. This is only a collection of essays. However
the book serves as an optimal point of departure for starting the
study and thus continuing discussion about one particular aspect
chosen from many inspirational ideas of the book. It is certain that
with this marvellous
publication the goal of the Tempora-project to stimulate Catholic
contributions to the public debate has been achieved.
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