Why Dehumanization is Distinct from Objectification

Mari Mikkola starts with the observation that dehumanization seemingly involves a complex of the following: an assault on human dignity, treating someone as a something or reducing someone to something, comparison of human beings to animals and inanimate objects, denial of agency and distinctly human capabilities, and a psychological attitude of conceiving others as subhuman. Feminist philosophical discussions commonly treat dehumanization and objectification as being largely equivalent. Mikkola's chapter outlines how this connectedness between dehumanization and objectification is usually understood, and then challenges the equation. In short, there is a difference between treating someone literally as something and treating them as if they are something, where the latter presupposes a prior recognition of another's humanity to be reduced while the former does not. The chapter then advances two central views. First, we should not treat prominent feminist accounts of objectification as equivalent to dehumanization. Second, there is an odd ‘paradox of dehumanization,’ which ill fits these accounts of objectification: for dehumanization to involve denial of or disrespect toward important person-related capacities, one must first attribute those capacities to others in order to deny or disrespect them—one must acknowledge the humanity of another in order to dehumanize them. This further demonstrates that dehumanization is not equivalent to objectification.