Every human life has equal worth.
This worth is not earned. It is not granted. It is not dependent on achievement, wealth, identity, or status. The value of human life is intrinsic—built into our very existence.
Yet we live in a moment where the perception of human worth feels increasingly distorted. The problem is not that human value has changed. It is that our recognition of that value has become clouded.
The Problem: Distorted Perceptions of Worth
Although humanity inherently has equal worth, society often behaves as if worth is conditional. People are judged by their bank accounts, job titles, zip codes, skin color, gender identity, immigration status, or the sound of their names. These judgments are not reflections of human value—they are reflections of bias, prejudice, fear, stereotypes, economic systems, political narratives, and historical trauma.
These forces shape how people are treated, not who they are.
Humanity: The Moral Contradiction
Humanity means recognizing each person as equal in dignity. But we are pulled into a painful contradiction when society does not treat us equally (reflecting internalization of society’s biases, fear, stereotypes, etc.)
A difficult question emerges:
Can someone treat another person as unequal and still expect to be treated as equal? Philosophically, the answer is no.
To treat someone as inferior is to claim superiority—to assume the authority to decide whose life has value and whose does not. This is the root of oppression. It is also the beginning of moral collapse.
Dignity: Kant’s Unshakeable Principle
Immanuel Kant argued that every person possesses dignity, not price (Kant, 1785/2012). A price can be compared or traded. Dignity cannot.
Kant insisted that no person may be used merely as a means to an end. Human value comes from our rational agency and moral capacity—not from external conditions. When people are objectified, exploited, or treated as disposable, it is not their worth that changes. It is the moral failure of those who refuse to see it.
The Social Contract: When Societies Fail
Philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls argued that societies depend on agreements—explicit and implicit—about how we treat one another. Rawls (1971) introduced the Veil of Ignorance, asking us to imagine designing a society without knowing our race, wealth, gender, nationality, or abilities.
Behind that veil, no one would choose a world where some lives matter more than others.
When societies fail to honor human worth, they break the social contract that makes justice possible.
We Are Not Objects: Existentialist Insight
Existentialist thinkers like Sartre and Beauvoir emphasized that humans are subjects, not objects (Sartre, 1943/2003; Beauvoir, 1949/2011).
To treat someone as a thing is to strip them of agency and reduce them to an instrument. This is not just harmful—it is ontologically violent, an attack on the very structure of what it means to be human.
Power and Worth: How Hierarchies Distort Humanity
Critical theorists such as Fanon, Arendt, and Foucault showed how power structures create artificial hierarchies of human worth (Fanon, 1963; Arendt, 1958; Foucault, 1977). Power determines:
- whose pain is believed
- whose death is mourned
- whose voice is amplified
- whose body is protected
- whose humanity is recognized
Wealth, race, gender identity, nationality, or immigration status do not change the value of a life. But power structures distort how that value is treated.
Virtue: Humanity as a Practice
Virtue ethicists—from Aristotle to contemporary thinkers—remind us that morality is not just rules but character. Compassion, justice, courage, empathy, and humility are practices that allow us to see the humanity in others (Aristotle, trans. 2009).
When we fail to practice virtue, we fail morally—not because the other person lost value, but because we lost vision.
The Truth We Must Reclaim
- The value of human life is inherent, equal, and unchanging.
- What changes is whether people and systems recognize that value.
- And when they fail to recognize it, the failure is theirs—not yours.
- Humanity is not a ranking. It is a shared truth.
- And reclaiming that truth is one of the most urgent moral tasks of our time.
References
- Arendt, H. (1958). *The human condition*. University of Chicago Press.
- Aristotle. (2009). *Nicomachean ethics* (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published ca. 350 BCE)
- Beauvoir, S. de. (2011). *The second sex* (C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1949)
- Fanon, F. (1963). *The wretched of the earth* (C. Farrington, Trans.). Grove Press.
- Foucault, M. (1977). *Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison* (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Pantheon Books.
- Kant, I. (2012). *Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals* (M. Gregor & J. Timmermann, Eds. & Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1785)
- Rawls, J. (1971). *A theory of justice*. Harvard University Press.
- Sartre, J.-P. (2003).
*Being and nothingness* (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Routledge. (Original work published 1943)
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