Abstract
Human dignity is the supreme principle that defines the ultimate limits and frontiers of the whole system of basic rights. We must therefore identify its legal meaning, range and specific content. Duties to oneself and self-harm are beyond the limits of law. Legally speaking, only otherness, only one’s relationship to others, is relevant. The legal principle of human dignity demands that the humanity in each person should be treated by other people and by the state as an end in itself. This primarily means respecting people’s autonomy, freedom of choice and personality. However, it also implies understanding the phenomenic reality of the human being as an embodied and vulnerable creature. People’s capabilities must be developed within certain favourable social conditions: some people are especially fragile and therefore need special care from others and/or protection provided by the state and the law; moreover, people’s bodies, life and health are vulnerable and technology increases natural risks and dangers. Limit situations in biolaw, such as euthanasia and so-called designer babies, should be discussed in the light of an integral conception of humanity. In fact, treating the humanity in each person as an end in itself implies respecting their autonomy and personality, but also demands that we take human vulnerability into consideration. This conception is essential to defining the boundaries of law.
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Notes
- 1.
This means that the two basic principles of justice affirmed by Rawls (1971, 1999), p. 266, are based on the recognition of the equal dignity of each and every person.
- 2.
Kriele (2004), p. 169, states that human dignity implies that every person, regardless of her capacities or behaviour, possesses a certain nobility, simply by being human.
- 3.
- 4.
Habermas (2014), p. 15.
- 5.
Habermas (2014), p. 16.
- 6.
Dworkin (1997, 2014), p. 326: “Government must treat those whom it governs with concern, that is, as human beings who are capable of suffering and frustration, and with respect, that is as human beings who are capable of forming and acting on intelligent conceptions of how their lives should be lived. Government must not only treat people with concern and respect, but with equal concern and respect.”
- 7.
Grimm (2013), pp. 386–391, especially, p. 388.
- 8.
On the influence on Kant’s philosophy of the traditional paradigm of human dignity developed by Cicero, Leo the Great and Pico della Mirandola, see Sensen (2011), pp 152–161.
- 9.
Grimm, “Dignity in a Legal Context… .”, p. 385. See also Gross (2013), pp. 92–93.
- 10.
For a “Kantian background” to the inviolability of human dignity in the German Basic Law, associated with a Catholic influence, see Rosen (2018), pp. 80–104.
- 11.
Kant (1994), p. 52: “Handle so, daß du die Menschheit, sowohl in deiner Person als in der Person eines jeden anderen, jederzeit zugleich als Zweck, niemals bloß als Mittel brauchst”.
- 12.
Sensen (2011), pp. 102–103 and 110.
- 13.
Kant (1997), p. 347.
- 14.
See Sensen (2011), p. 130, et passim.
- 15.
Schaber (2016), p. 259.
- 16.
See Welzel (1990), p. 172, where he observes that “humanity” has a double meaning: “homo noumenon” and “homo phaenomenon”.
- 17.
Domingo (2010), p. 150.
- 18.
Today we consider human dignity from the perspective of rights: Kant stressed the perspective of duties implied in the consideration of people as autonomous beings. See Cortês (2005), pp. 610–614.
- 19.
Aquinas (1947), Question 58, Article 2.
- 20.
Mill (1989), p. 13.
- 21.
Kaufmann (1993), p. 216.
- 22.
See Dürig (2011), p. 218: “Human dignity is violated when the concrete human being is degraded to an object, to mere means…”.
- 23.
Kant (1997), p. 345: “The innate right is only one: liberty (the independence towards others’ arbitrariness)”.
- 24.
For an emphasis on this point, see Holzleithnerm (2009), p. 88.
- 25.
Dworkin (2009), p. 166.
- 26.
See Seelmann and Demko (2014), p. 259.
- 27.
See Scott (2013), p. 74: In the ownership of slaves as property the person is reduced to the legal status of a “thing”, but even after its formal abolition, slavery still exists in situations of extremely humiliating and degrading work conditions.
- 28.
See Rosen (2018), p. 158: “When you torture me, you humiliate and degrade me, but the harm is not just that: you cause me extreme pain and thereby deprive me of effective self-control”.
- 29.
Linhares (2007), p. 51.
- 30.
Sedmak (2013), p. 566: “The concept of human dignity is linked with the concept of vulnerability in at least two ways: first, because the concept of human dignity has emerged in confrontation with the fragility of human existence; second because situations of experienced vulnerability prove to be the acid test of human dignity in its entirety”.
- 31.
Nussbaum (2011), p. 127.
- 32.
Nussbaum (2011), p. 127.
- 33.
MacCormick (2008), p. 30, argues that “Humanity […] is not in radical contrast with animality. […] There are therefore things that are of value to us simply in virtue of our animal nature”.
- 34.
Kant (1994), p. 53.
- 35.
Kant (1994), pp. 44–45.
- 36.
Kant (1997), p. 446: “It is rightful for the government to oblige [through taxes] the rich to supply the means of subsistence to those who are incapable to provide their own most basic natural needs”.
- 37.
Nussbaum (2011), pp. 33–34: capabilities such as life, bodily health, senses, imagination and thought, emotions or capabilities referring to each person’s relation to others, to animals and to material things. On page 94, Nussbaum stresses that “the principle of each person as an end [which she defends] is a version of Kant’s idea of the duty to respect humanity as an end and never as mere means”.
- 38.
See Rawls (1996), p. 166: “below a certain level of material and social well-being and education, people simply cannot take part in a society as citizens”.
- 39.
- 40.
Ricoeur (2001), pp. 85–105.
- 41.
Hart (1994), pp. 194–195. In fact, “human vulnerability” is the first truism that justifies the “minimum content of natural law”.
- 42.
Jonas (1984), p. 21.
- 43.
Jonas (1984), p. 11.
- 44.
Dworkin (1993), pp. 179–241.
- 45.
Dworkin (2000), p. 452.
- 46.
Dworkin (2000), p. 452.
- 47.
Sandel (2007), pp. 82–83.
- 48.
Dworkin (2000), p. 452.
- 49.
Jonas (1984), p. 32.
- 50.
Jonas (1984), p. 31.
- 51.
Jonas (1984), p. 139.
- 52.
Jonas (1984), p. 156.
- 53.
Kant (1997), p. 515. According to Kant’s universalistic premises, the two supreme ends and duties of virtue are “self-perfection” (which presupposes the autonomy of the self) and “others’ happiness” (which also presupposes the autonomy of the other).
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Cortês, A. (2022). The Legal Meaning of Human Dignity: Respect for Autonomy and Concern for Vulnerability. In: Aroso Linhares, J.M., Atienza, M. (eds) Human Dignity and the Autonomy of Law. Law and Visual Jurisprudence, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14824-8_9
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