Ethics of Citizenship: Dignity, Freedom and Equality

Ethics of Citizenship

The ethics of citizenship is an ethic of justice for two reasons: / 1 / it does not try to promote, much less to impose, an ideal of human excellence. Ethics of citizenship accepts that people have different conceptions of the good and have the right to attempt their realization. / 2 / because it seeks to describe an ideal of justice arising from moral values, rights, and duties owed by social coexistence. The required axiological principle that inspires the ethics of citizenship is the inalienable dignity of the person.

Principle: Dignity of the Person

Dignity of the person is a principle of prescriptive morality — a moral obligation we take as a commitment to respect others. It is a principle of moral legitimacy: legitimate rights, institutions, and laws should recognize and promote the dignity of the person.

Source of Moral Values

From the dignity of the person derive the fundamental moral values of freedom and equality, and the rights, duties, and the concrete and institutional conditions that make them possible.

Key Moral Values

• Freedom — personal sovereignty over ones life and projects.
• Equality — equal dignity and equal moral worth of all persons.
• Rights and duties — the legal and moral claims and obligations that arise from dignity.
• Institutions — the concrete and institutional structures that protect rights and enable justice.

Freedom and Non-Interference

People are sovereign over their lives — this is the fundamental value of liberty. Freedom relates to the political sphere (political participation): if a person has the right to decide their life project, they also have the right to determine the social conditions that favor its achievement; some political traditions (for example, socialists) emphasize state or collective measures to secure those conditions. Non-interference defines the scope of privacy whose sanctity the state must safeguard.

Considered spheres: political, economic, and private. Economic liberty includes initiative in the market within the framework of respect for existing laws and without invading the freedom of others.

Equality and Equal Opportunities

We are born equal in dignity; this constitutes the moral value of equality. Equality applies in several dimensions:

• Political sphere: equality before the law, equal rights and duties, and equal participation in political life — each person has the right to universal suffrage (the vote).
• Condition of opportunity: equal opportunities must be provided so that everyone has the same chance to pursue their life project.
• Private sphere: no one may be legally or socially discriminated against; there must be active struggle against discrimination.

Natural and Social Lotteries

Natural lottery distributes gifts (talents, circumstances of birth) without regard to the principle of equality. Social lottery arbitrarily allots social advantages. The state and institutions must guarantee minimum standards and decent working conditions to correct arbitrary social distributions and to ensure basic welfare.

In sum, the ethics of citizenship grounds a prescriptive moral account that emphasizes the inalienable dignity of the person as the source of moral values — freedom, equality, rights, duties, and institutional arrangements that enable just social coexistence.