Human Dignity and the Foundations of Human Rights

The principal philosophical dimensions introduced here are metaphysical and moral or ethical, while the legal dimensions are found in municipal or State constitutions as well as in international law and human rights. After Kant, because human animals alone have dignity they can make necessary and compelling or objective claims on each other (hence reciprocal notions of 'obligation' or 'duty' and 'right'), and thus our actions are capable of embodying or expressing the "motive" proper to morality, one that also accounts for the (rational) recognition of the objective worth of others as "ends in themselves." Dignity is an intrinsic value that signifies absolute worth, "a value that

Human Rights Review

This Chapter explores four prominent objections to the overarching role that human dignity plays in constitutional and human rights law. In the eyes of its critics, human dignity is objectionable because it (1) is too variable to be captured by a coherent constitutional theory; (2) stands in opposition to a liberal vision of constitutional governance; (3) fails to offer guidance for resolving constitutional disputes; and (4) is incapable of justifying anything until it is itself justified. My aim is to unearth the presuppositions that generate these objections, explain why these presuppositions are controversial, and to formulate a set of plausible alternatives that do not give rise to these objections. Since the leading objections stem from presuppositions that need not be accepted, these objections do not preclude the formulation of a comparative constitutional theory of human dignity.

Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal , 2016

The concept of human dignity is relatively new in international and domestic constitutional law. Dignity is protected as a value or a right, or both, in international law and many domestic jurisdictions. It is difficult to define human dignity in a legal context, as the concept is not defined in the first international document which recognizes inherent human dignity and the protection thereof, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1946) and many international (and national) documents enacted thereafter. Despite dissensus regarding the widespread use of the concept, dignity has come to display three elements in constitutional adjudication post World War Two: the ontological element which entails that human beings have equal inherent human dignity that cannot be waived or diminished; the second element being the claim that inherent human dignity has to be recognised and respected; and the limited-state claim as the third element which entails that states have a positive obligation to progressively realise human dignity through the mechanism of socio-economic rights. It is widely accepted that these elements root in Kantian moral ethics which holds that man's autonomy is based upon universal dignity, as a result of which man should never be used as a means to an end, but only as a means in himself. Kant expressed this idea through formulation of a categorical imperative, namely that everyone's inherent human dignity has to be respected and protected universally. The preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1946), article 1(1) of the German Basic Law and section 10 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 embody the elements of Kant's categorical imperative. As a result, the three elements are applied as a definitional term of human dignity in German and South African constitutional adjudication. Based on these elements, it can be argued that the current idea of universal inherent dignity, at least in German and South African law, comports with Kant's ideal that man should never be used as a means to an end.

Ratio Publica, 2023

This paper explores the possible relations between human dignity and human rights and identifies the appropriate account of the relations. There are at least three crucial issues concerning human dignity as a ground for human rights. The first is whether dignity is a useful notion for human rights. Some say dignity is a useless or incoherent notion by itself, while others say dignity cannot justify human rights because it cannot demonstrate why people have the rights equally. The paper rejects both of these. The second issue is about the connection between the two notions. Some say that support for dignity does not entail support for human rights, while others say that the support for human rights does not involve support for human dignity. Through examination, the paper supports the statement that the support for human rights entails the support for human dignity (primarily, the article supports the justification that grounds human rights, at least in part, on dignity). The third issue is that of grounding: How does human dignity ground human rights? Some claim capacities are appropriate for understanding dignity, while others claim that we should add vulnerabilities in understanding the notion when it grounds human rights. The paper offers a dualistic view that accommodates both by treating interests concerning agency and equality as grounds for human rights. Finally, the paper elucidates the advantages of dualism compared to the capacity-based pluralism recently posited by Pablo Gilabert.

Global Jurist Topics, 2000

The concept of Human Dignity has become more and more prevalent in legal, moral and philosophical discourses. However, as much as linguistic functions of the concept have become widespread, its meanings have become ambiguous and blurred. This paper seeks to map and depict the main functions and meanings that the concept of human dignity encompass, and, hence, to enable both those concerned with law and its interpretation, and moral-philosophers to discern the different linguistic-spheres and the different meanings this concept encircle. The analysis will show that the meanings of human dignity are socially constructed in accordance with particular cultural and historical contexts. There is no one "true" meaning of human dignity, but rather different levels of "thickness" and "thinness" that are culturally determined in each society. The paper advances insights regarding the use of human dignity in both the legal parlance -as a justification for human rights in legal documents; and in the moral-philosophical parlance -as compared to a worldview on the one hand, and as related to humiliation on the other.

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2014

Many venerable legal documents suggest that human dignity is the ground of human rights. The German Constitution (1945) opens in Article 1 with the captivating declaration: 'human dignity is inviolable' , and goes on in Article 2 to state: 'The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world' (emphasis added). 1 The Helsinki Accords (1975) even more explicitly claim that human rights 'derive from the inherent dignity of the human person'. On this view human beings have rights because they have dignity. On an even stronger view, which is also quite common in constitutional law, it is the very function of those rights to protect the dignity of human beings. In that case, all human rights are specifications of one fundamental right: the right to have one's dignity (or the dignity of the human species?) respected. At the other end of the spectrum of possible views we find the sceptical idea that all appeals to human dignity are entirely vacuous: they can be made for any specific claim about human rights whatsoever, they are routinely being made for opposing views, for example about euthanasia, and have no argumentative, butonlyrhetorical,force.'Dignityisauselessconcept...andcanbeeliminated without any loss of content' (Macklin 2003). 2 I shall argue that both views are mistaken. Appeals to human dignity have a proper role in human rights discourse, but it is not a foundational and also in some other respects a limited role.

Policy Sciences, 2011

Dignity seems to be something that virtually all people want. It is a seminal expression of the human experience that gains authority through the convergent demands of people worldwide. Even so, the human dignity concept is in unhelpful disarray. Dignity is variously viewed as an antecedent, a consequence, a value, a principle, and an experience, from philosophical, legal, pragmatic, psychological, behavioral, and cultural perspectives. We ask which if any of these human dignity concepts will likely serve our global common interests best, as both common ground and policy diagnostic? We examine four broad themes: dignity as (1) a metaphysical justification for human rights and duties, (2) virtuous comportment or behavior, (3) a perspective of “other,” and (4) a subjective experience of the individual, contingent on a broad and equitable sharing of values. We recommend viewing dignity as a commonwealth of individually assessed well-being, shaped by relationships with others, affected by the physical world, and framed in terms of values. Viewed this way, the idea of dignity accommodates the priorities of both individualistic and communitarian cultures. Conceiving of human dignity as a commonwealth of subjectively experienced value production and enjoyment has many practical policy implications.

Oxímora. Revista Internacional de Ética y Política, 2016

This paper will evaluate the convenience of using the legal concept of human dignity in the human rights discourse and its effectiveness to address injustice in a twenty-first century democratic society. This article will argue that the difficulty of defining human dignity does not diminish its merits and allows it to be both solid and adaptable to new challenges. Then, this paper will argue that human dignity is a powerful concept due to its capacity to bring change and modernise society and will conclude that there is a strong relationship between time, human dignity, human rights and democracy.

This chapter aims, first, to briefly present how the notion of human dignity has been conceptualized over centuries of philosophical thought; second, to stress the foundational role it currently plays in international human rights law; third, to emphasize its even more crucial role in the international policy documents relating to bioethics; fourth, to present the reasons for the recourse to human rights in the formulation of global bioethical standards; and finally to briefly address the challenge to the universality of human dignity and human rights posed by cultural diversity.