Human Dignity as the Ground of Human Rights: A Study in Moral Philosophy and Legal Practice

Abstract

How can we make sense of the claim that human dignity is the moral ground of human rights? And what does this assumption imply for our understanding of the interconnections and tensions between the moral and legal dimension of human rights? In my dissertation I address these questions by distinguishing systematically between a concept of human rights as a specific kind of moral norms and a specific kind of legal norms. I defend a hermeneutical approach to our understanding of the “nature” of human rights: As moral norms, human rights are grounded in the necessary practical self-understanding of every human agent. In judicial practice, the concrete meaning of legal human rights-norms is interpreted in the light of the particular self-understanding of legal communities. What a moral and a legal understanding of human rights have in common is the assumption that they have a universal moral ground – human dignity. I argue that human dignity should be understood as a universal moral status that expresses the fundamental moral obligation to respect every human being as a holder of moral human rights. Human dignity so understood implies a criterion for specifying human rights and for putting them into a hierarchy, while at the same time it leaves significant room for their context-specific interpretation. To the extent that the legal human rights practice claims to be morally committed to protecting human dignity, judicial interpretations of human rights should be guided by this understanding of human dignity.