The Puzzling Nature of Human Dignity: The Compatibility of MacIntyre’s Dignitas with Dignitas Infinita

Abstract

This article argues that Alasdair MacIntyre’s final lecture on dignitas and the 2024 declaration Dignitas Infinita are better understood as asymmetrically supplementary rather than contradictory. MacIntyre finds modern conceptions of dignity, particularly universalist ones, conceptually puzzling, and he proposes a Thomistic account of dignitas grounded in teleological excellence. Through a systematic analysis of his Thomistic framework, informed by the 1937 Irish Constitution and the metaphysical reflections of Charles De Koninck, this article contends that MacIntyre’s concept of dignitas functions primarily as a form of moral dignity. Drawing on contemporary theological distinctions, it argues that MacIntyre’s limitation is methodological rather than metaphysical. His theory supplies the positive moral content that universal declarations of dignity require but are often unable to generate, while the ontological dignity articulated in Dignitas Infinita provides the metaphysical foundation that his account does not address.