Subjects Out of Compassion

A Conscience-Based Justification of Subjectivity

Abstract

The Kantian view that autonomy is the sole ground of human dignity continues to shape not only prevailing conceptions of dignity but also our understanding of subjectivity in philosophy and in law. This article argues that the autonomy-centred framework systematically fails to protect the most vulnerable – non-autonomous humans, animals, and nature itself – and reinforces an unsustainable mastery of reason over nature. To remedy these blind spots, the article proposes a reconceptualization of subjectivity based on vulnerability and the mediating role of conscience and compassion. Understood not as a religious notion but as an objective faculty, conscience performs a dual function: it constitutes the subjectivity of suffering natural beings through empathetic recognition of their vulnerability, and it corrects purely autonomy-based moral maxims through empathetic judgment.