Abstract: Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the (...) concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those "dignities" that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, "human dignity" still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status—in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody. (shrink)

Recent historical work on changing perceptions of the human body has been influenced by Michel Foucault’s contention that the self of western individualism was created by new regimes of disciplining the body. A different approach is taken here, one that focuses on how individual bodies came to be viewed as separate and inviolable, that is, as autonomous. The separateness and inviolability of bodies can be traced in the histories of bodily practices as different as portraiture and legal torture. After 1750, (...) regular public exhibitions, themselves a new feature of the social landscape, showed increasing numbers of portraits in London and Paris. The proliferation of individual likenesses encouraged the view that each person was an individual, that is, single, separate, distinctive and original. At the same time, the tide turned against judicially sanctioned torture and cruel punishment. Long-held notions of sacrificial punishment and truth through pain withered under the pressure of new experiences of the body that in turn facilitated the emergence of new conceptions of rights of individuals. (shrink)

I LAW AND NATURE i. The "Pure" Theory The Pure Theory of Law is a theory of positive law. It is a theory of positive law in general, not of a specific legal ...

The right not to be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is invariably associated with ‘human dignity’. The idea of dignity plays some role in this right’s interpretation, although the content of the idea in this context, as in others, is unclear. Making sense of the dignity idea involves a number of challenges. These challenges give rise to the methodological-type question at the heart of this article: how should human rights lawyers go about articulating the content (...) of ‘dignity’? The article proposes, and models, a methodological approach in response. Its core argument is that human rights law needs the vocabulary provided by theorizations of dignity but that these theorizations should be anchored in authoritative human rights jurisprudence. It argues that this approach can help make sense of the dignity idea in a way that facilitates a richer understanding of its influence on interpretation. (shrink)

Six issues that seem particularly important for examining human dignity as an ethical and legal concept are explored. First, the problems of its genealogy and second, the elements of its content are critically reconstructed. Third, questions of justification are addressed, in particular drawing attention to the axiological power of secular, egalitarian humanism for the theory of legitimacy of human dignity. Fourth, problems of concretisation are discussed that concern the precise circumscription of the scope the limits of dignity if it is (...) to be applied convincingly in concrete legal circumstances. Fifth, the problem of universality is examined. Finally, some thought is given to a curious but, in practice, very important aspect of human dignity: its persistent human appeal. (shrink)