When privilege as a concept occupies the center of political discourse and politics is leaned towards identitarian recogniton of minorities, it is useful to study how the concept of dignity worked within the Roman world.

Simply put, dignitas means merit, value. But it also has a more definite meaning: that of office, magistracy or more broadly prerogative or a certain privilege. As a juridico-moral concept it defines a moral right that one merits (hence the need for exemplarity).

The concept of dignity, in the more definite sense, is tied to that of ordo, order as in a society of orders, estaments so to speak. So each order is linked to a certain dignitas, dignity. An ordo (order) defines one's place in a census.

What's interesting is that orders can be multiplied almost ad infinitum. We see degrees of dignity and differences in rank among slaves. Slaves varied in dignity, each having its own dignity recognized. A «villicus» was not the same as the member of the gang of the Apulians ---

who were herd slaves. "It appears that servile rank depended on the slave's cost" (Radin, 1923). What's decisive to understand that recognition of each minorities rank and dignity implied rights and duties (immunities and «munera»). So one had a certain right and a certain duty.

"Any order necessarily had «dignitas», specially compared to the one below" (Radin). Even lawful punitive measures depended, at a certain point, on the dignity of the person harmed.

Minority recognition fits the analogy with the Roman concept of dignity attached to rank as ordo. It is not transformative. It only distributes recognized moral rights among the subjected, but it is not transformative in itself and most importantly it is not egalitarian in nature

Bluntly put, it says "I'll harm you up to an agreed point, but no more, because you've the right not to be harmed further from that point. But in exchange you'll fulfill certain duties in accordance to your dignitas, to what you merit"

Rome was a society of ordines, of orders. Hence Cicero's critique of equality. He wrote that equality is unjust because it lacks degrees of dignity (De Rep.). At some point, during the Empire (after Hadrian) dignities and orders multiplied massively (Radin, 1923).

Creating a sort of melting pot of spheres of spheres of moral rights that suited particular ranks and orders. This can be called the Roman politics of recognition.

I wonder if we're leading in the same direction. I find the critique of identity is crucial in this context in order to avoid the classifying compulsion of ruling classes. It only benefits the hierarchical distribution of moral rights but it does not make us freer.