Course Code HRCU101 Student No.

B08190233

REFORMED CHURCH UNIVERSITY

(A REFORMED CHURCH IN ZIMBABWE INSTITUTION)

ASSIGNMENT MARK FORM

Faculty: COMMERCE Department: BUSINESS

Name DICKSON MUSONI. Reg No B08190233

Programme: BACHELOR OF COMMERCE HONOURS DEGREE IN LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Course… Christian Ethics and Disability Studies Course code HRCU101

Cell Number +263774748405 Email: dicksonmusoni5@gmail.com

ASSIGNMENT TITLE
QUESTION 2
Poverty is detrimental to human dignity and development .Discuss

Due Date 30 April 2020

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Course Code HRCU101 Student No. B08190233

Poverty is detrimental to human dignity and development .Discuss

Introduction
Poverty is not only deprivation of basic needs or material resources but a violation of human
dignity. The most harmful and unbearable characteristic of poverty is loss of dignity. The
meaning, scope and justification of human dignity have become increasingly controversial. In
legal terms, dignity is too abstract to be precise and attempts to consolidate it with a set of basic
rights have been denounced for not recognising that rights are rooted in dignity. For a mixed
and largely secular and cynical world, dignity is too reliant on religious scriptures. This
controversy stems from the ignorance about what human dignity actually constitutes and has
even cast shadows of doubt over dignity’s existence. Ruth Macklin made waves in 2003 as she
announced that ‘dignity seems to be nothing more than respect for autonomy. … Dignity is a
useless concept in medical ethics and can be eliminated without any loss of content. The
ignorance towards human dignity is no short-coming; rather it is inherent to our time and place in
human history.

In response to the question “Poverty is detrimental to human dignity and development .Discuss,I
will argue that it is and I will support this claim basing on Avishai Margalit’s ‘The Decent
Society’ and Jürgen Habermas’ essay ‘The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia
of Human Rights, these two perspectives deflates the above-mentioned controversy, offering a
reasonable and realistic interpretation of this notion. Margalit’s and Habermas’ views emphasise
the role that human dignity plays in society as in history. The infringements poverty commits on
human dignity will subsequently be made explicit. Finally, I will argue that poverty is merely a
symptom of the market-based financial system and that this system is the actual violation of
human dignity.

According to Avishai Margalit he chooses not to defend human dignity per se but he said a
negative justification of Human Dignity’ forgoes the process of justifying respect of all human
beings in favour of justifying the prevention of suffering. Margalit argues that humans can suffer
both physically and psychologically and that morality ultimately entails the eradication of all
cruelty. Physical and psychological cruelty can be summed up in humiliation and so morality

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implies the eradication of humiliation. Humiliation is defined as any sort of behaviour or

condition that constitutes a sound reason for a person to consider his or her self-respect injured,
Margalit discerns between various reasons one is entitled to feel humiliated. He stipulates that
only humans can produce humiliation, although they need not actually have any humiliating
intent and that conditions are humiliating, however, only if they are the result of actions or
omissions by human beings.

Avishai Margalit also addresses Kant’s arguments for human dignity. He concedes that Kant’s
reasons for respecting humans are morally relevant and not divine but laments that those reasons
breach the conditions of being equally shared amongst all humans (such as being a moral self-
legislator) and immune to abuse (in the case of the capacity to be a moral agent or to determine
one’s own ends). Hence Kant’s justification for universal and egalitarian respect of human
dignity fails in Margalit’s view. Using the quality of rationality as an example, Margalit
completely debases the idea that humans should be respected for their essential value. He argues
that rationality is a trait in which humans cease to be individuals and so, in some circumstances,
utilitarian arguments weighing up the use- and exchange-value of persons must become
acceptable. The idea is that in the worst case immorally predisposed scenario, some person or
persons must be attributed more respect than others. These situations sadly exist, and Kant’s
justification based on intrinsic value merely ignores the need to address such situations. Margalit
then dismisses radical freedom as a justification for respecting humans because he is forced to
conclude that ‘the ability of human beings to… abandon their evil ways’ is unfit as a justification
for respecting humans, due to the possibility that this capacity may be abused and perverted. Just
as any human might change for the better, every human could also change for the much worse.

According to Habermas he chooses to argue for a positive and cognitive identification of human
dignity. His argument is an empirical one, which ultimately agrees with Margalit’s argument.
Habermas argues that human dignity is the moral source from which all of the basic human
rights derive their meaning. Habermas defines human dignity as the portal through which the
unrestricted and universalistic substance of morality is imported into law. According to
Habermas, the feeling of indignation, caused by political tyranny, religious discrimination,
inequality and exclusion, has given birth to a generally acceptable justification whose epistemic

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dimension is beyond state control. The term human dignity has been implemented as a tool of
empowerment against the negative experience of humiliation, to create positive laws which
protect the equal claim of every person for respect from their fellow human beings. The result is
human rights.

Habermas emphasises the catalytic role human dignity has played in the development of human
rights. Addressing the translation of subjective moral responsibilities into objective legal claims,
he explains how the synthesis of internalised rationally based morality in the subjective
conscience and the organised force of judicial legislation have changed society from one where
individual moral subjects owed respect to other persons, into a society where individual legal
subjects may demand respect from other persons.

According to Margalit, poverty must be man-made- but not self-made- for it to be humiliating.
There are indeed rare instances of poverty which do not constitute humiliation, but these are
bound to be limited to voluntary poverty and the poverty of the childless. If poverty means
living below the minimum, which a society considers necessary to live a life fit for humans, then
poverty excludes persons from economic citizenship in that society. The institutions
responsible for a society may well be the cause, by their actions or omissions, of this financial
status. The consequences of this financial status are what forces poverty to indeed be a
humiliating condition to live under. Margalit views poverty as a violation of human dignity
because it leaves humans exposed, vulnerable and unable to help themselves labels one a failure
and seals this fate poses an existential threat; creates a class of humans who are compared to
animals denies the poor the glory of aesthetic charm withholds one from fulfilling their
responsibility to provide for their family; is often associated with filth leads to depression; causes
and encourages competition between those who share the same fate and detaches persons from
the human community. Furthermore, poverty robs the poor of reasons to respect themselves.
Seeing poverty as closing off possibilities of living that are worthwhile in the eyes of the poor
themselves makes them seem worthless to themselves as well, as if they are incapable of living a
life that is worthwhile even in their own eyes.

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Margalit brushes over the roots of welfare as a response to market-economy and touches on the
business-cycles in capitalist economies as a cause of poverty. The relationship between the
globalised market-economy and human dignity is something I will offer more attention in the
final section of this essay.

Habermas notes that the changes surrounding human dignity and human rights could and would
never have taken place without confusion and conflict resulting from experiences of humiliation.
The experience of marginalisation- of financial segregation and life in poverty is a humiliating
experience which has recurred throughout history.
Human Dignity performs the function of a seismograph that registers what is constitutive for a
democratic legal order, namely, just those rights that the citizens of a political community must
grant themselves if they are to be able to respect one another as members of a voluntary
association of free and equal persons.

Reading between the lines, in those instances, where poverty has led to tumult and revolt, it has
evidently been an infringement on human dignity. In those instances, where human dignity has
been called upon, it reflects the dissatisfaction of a population with the political priorities of the
society to which they belong. It is not lost on Habermas that the relationship between aspiring
self-legislating populations and the implementation of human rights allegedly protecting human
dignity is a partial, fragile and sometimes downright dubious one.

My thoughts:
The idiosyncratic relationship between morality and humiliation was illustrated by Martin Luther
King in his famous Nobel Peace Prize Lecture It is better suffer in dignity than to accept
segregation in humiliation. Luther King was telling us not that suffering is a violation of dignity
but the mistreatment of persons by others. Such mistreatment and its acceptance violate
humanity and give us reason to be implored. Morality exists not in the eradication of suffering,
but in the standard set by self-respect. The following argument is based on the idea that society
is human by extension. Society consists of and carries the responsibility for humans on a larger,
anonymous scale. Poverty, as far as it is man-made must now be viewed in our social system:
the market-based economy.

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I return to my defence of Kant, as those three misconceived points build the foundation of my
argument poverty is an inescapable result of our global market-based financial system and it is
this market-based financial system which constitutes a violation of human dignity.
Poverty is a constant concern as a social determinant to human development. Poverty underpins
many of the social determinants of human development. For example, access to education,
housing, transportation, and social support is more difficult in the absence of adequate income.

Conclusion
Poverty is an inescapable result of our global market-based financial system and it is this market-
based financial system which constitutes the actual violation of human dignity. The market-
based economic system denies persons their intrinsic worth by putting a price on their person and
treating them as a means of production. Poverty resulting from the market-based economic
system stigmatises those affected with a social status and typically accompanying social
conditions. The principle of competition encouraged and propelled by the market-based
economic system furthermore values persons in terms of the money spent, which injures their
inherent worth and principles of equality. The negative interpretation of human dignity in terms
of humiliation as supported by Avishai Margalit and Jürgen Habermas is a useful tool in the
legislation of human rights, intended to strengthen democratic interests against commercial,
religious, violent and other predators.  
References

1. Adorno, Theodor W., 1994. Minima moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben.
Bibliothek Suhrkamp, Bd. 236, 22nd edn. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
2. Bielefeldt, Heiner, 2011. Auslaufmodell Menschenwürde?: Warum sie in Frage steht und
warum wir sie verteidigen müssen. Freiburg i. Br, Basel [etc.]: Herder.
3. Birnbacher, Dieter, 1995. Mehrdeutigkeiten im Begriff der Menschenwürde. Aufklärung
und Kritik 2 (Sonderheft 1): 4–13.
4. Derbyshire, Jonathan and Jeremy Rifkin, 2014. Jeremy Rifkin: Intelligent technology and
the future of human labour. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/jonathan-
derbyshire/jeremy-rifkin-intelligent-technology-and-the-future-of-human-labour.

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5. Habermas, Jürgen, 2010. The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of
Human Rights. Metaphilosophy 41 (4): 464–480.