Human Dignity and Human Rights

Description

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this network is a core notion of human dignity as an inherent, non-instrumental, egalitarian, and high-priority normative status of human persons. People have this status in virtue of their valuable human capacities rather than as a result of their national origin and other conventional features. Second, it shows how human dignity gives rise to an inspiring ideal of solidaristic empowerment, which calls us to support people's pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to block or destroy, and positive duties to protect and facilitate, the development and exercise of the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. The most urgent of these duties are correlative to human rights. Third, this book illustrates how the proposed dignitarian approach allows us to articulate the content, justification, and feasible implementation of specific human rights, including contested ones, such as the rights to democratic political participation and to decent labour conditions. Finally, this book's dignitarian approach helps illuminate the arc of humanist justice, identifying both the difference and the continuity between the basic requirements of human rights and more expansive requirements of social justice such as those defended by liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists. Human dignity is indeed the moral heart of human rights. Understanding it enables us to defend human rights as the urgent ethical and political project that puts humanity first. Cover Human Dignity and Human Rights Copyright Acknowledgments Contents 1: Introduction 1.1. PROJECT AND CONTRIBUTIONS 1.2. OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK 1.3. HUMAN RIGHTS: CONCEPT AND CONCEPTION 1.4. HUMANITY FIRST Part I: Preliminary Debates: The Relations between Human Rights and Political Practice, Feasibility, and Power 2: Humanist and Political Perspectives on Human Rights 2.1. INTRODUCTION 2.2. CONTENT 2.3. COHERENCE WITH PRACTICE AND JUSTIFICATION 2.4. SELF-DETERMINATION AND DIVERSITY 2.5. CORRELATIVE DUTIES 2.6. FEASIBILITY 2.7. CONCLUSION 3: The Feasibility of Human Rights 3.1. INTRODUCTION 3.2. DESIRABILITY, FEASIBILITY, AND OBLIGATION 3.3. KINDS OF FEASIBILITY 3.4. KINDS OF OBLIGATION AND FEASIBILITY 3.5. DYNAMIC DUTIES AND POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT 4: Human Rights and Power 4.1. INTRODUCTION 4.2. EXPLORING POWER-RELATED WORRIES ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS 4.2.1. What Might Be the Upshot of the Worries? 4.2.2. Specific Power-Related Worries and Desiderata for Shaping Human Rights Practice 4.2.2.1. Parochialism and Imposition 4.2.2.2. Hegemonic Manipulation 4.2.2.3. Humiliation and Solidarity 4.2.2.4. Bourgeois Ideology and Deep Change 4.2.2.5. Political Action in Non-ideal Circumstances 4.3. BUILDING EMPOWERMENT INTO THE HUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT 4.3.1. Power as an Obstacle and as a Resource for Human Rights 4.3.2. An Expressive-Elaboration Model 4.3.3. Power and Solidarity Part II: The Dignitarian Approach 5: Understanding Human Dignity in Human Rights 5.1. INTRODUCTION 5.2. USES AND ROLES OF HUMAN DIGNITY 5.3. AN ACCOUNT OF HUMAN DIGNITY 5.3.1. Dignitarian Norms and the Distinction between Status-Dignity and Condition-Dignity 5.3.2. The Basis of Dignity 5.3.3. The Circumstances of Dignity 5.3.4. Dignitarian Virtue and Dynamic Dignity 5.3.5. Basic and Maximal Dignity 6: Defending the Significance of Human Dignity 6.1. INDETERMINACY OF MEANING AND ROLE 6.2. INCOHERENCE 6.3. PERNICIOUS USES AND “IRRESOLVABLE DISPUTES” 6.4. ELIMINABILITY AND BUCK-PASSING 6.5. EXCLUSION OF NON-HUMAN ANIMALS AND “NON-TYPICAL” HUMAN BEINGS 6.6. SINGULARITY, DIVERSITY, AND CHANGE 6.7. ABSTRACT AND SPECIFIC RIGHTS AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE HUMANIST PERSPECTIVE BASED ON HUMAN DIGNITY 6.8. MORAL, LEGAL, OR POLITICAL? 7: Dignity and Solidaristic Empowerment 7.1. DEVELOPING THE DIGNITARIAN APPROACH 7.2. DIGNITY, POWER, AND SOLIDARITY 7.2.1. Solidarity 7.2.2. Dignity 7.2.3. Power 7.2.4. Exploring the Relations 7.2.5. Dignitarian Approach and Solidaristic Empowerment 7.3. RANK, STATUS, AND POWER 8: The Dignitarian Approach as a Program 8.1. DIGNITARIANISM 8.2. HUMAN CAPACITIES AND INTERESTS: A BROAD VIEW 8.3. SOLIDARISTIC EMPOWERMENT, THE BRIDGE PRINCIPLE, AND THE SCHEMA OF JUSTIFICATION 8.4. THE ARTICULATION OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES AND CONTRACTUALISM 8.5. DIGNITARIANISM AND ETHICAL PLURALISM 8.6. DIGNITARIANISM AND CRITICAL THEORY 8.7. DIGNITARIANISM AS A THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL PROGRAM Part III: Implications of the Dignitarian Approach 9: Labor Rights 9.1. INTRODUCTION 9.2. SURVEY OF MAJOR HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTS 9.2.1. Rights regarding Access to Work 9.2.2. Rights to Decent Conditions at Work 9.2.3. Rights to Form and Join Unions 9.2.4. Framing Considerations 9.3. LABOR HUMAN RIGHTS AS MORAL HUMAN RIGHTS 9.3.1. Labor Human Rights as Possible Moral Human Rights 9.3.2. Labor Human Rights and Human Interests 9.3.3. Labor Human Rights and Human Dignity 9.4. ISSUES REGARDING LABOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMAN DIGNITY 9.4.1. The Importance of Decent Work 9.4.2. Is Work Really So Important? 9.4.3. Basic and Maximal Dignity 9.4.4. Dignity, Independence, and Solidarity 9.5. CONCLUSION: DIGNITY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR LABOR HUMAN RIGHTS 10: Political Rights 10.1. INTRODUCTION 10.2. THE HUMAN RIGHT TO DEMOCRACY 10.2.1. General Case for Democracy 10.2.2. Developing the Case for a Human Right to Democracy 10.2.2.1. Is Democracy a Human Right? 10.2.2.2. Toleration, Self-Determination, and Intervention 10.2.2.3. Instrumental Considerations about the Protection of Other Rights 10.2.2.4. Institutional Specificity and the Problem of Generalization 10.2.2.5. Intrinsic Considerations of Freedom and Equality 10.3. HUMAN RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY, AND THE PURSUIT OF GLOBAL JUSTICE 10.3.1. Basic and Non-basic Global Justice 10.3.2. The Pursuit of Basic Global Justice 10.3.3. The Pursuit of Non-basic Global Justice 11: Minimalist versus Expansive Views of Human Rights: Dignity and the Arc of Humanist Justice 11.1. INTRODUCTION 11.2. MINIMALISM ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS: A CRITICAL SURVEY 11.3. A TWO-TIERED, DYNAMIC HUMANISM 11.4. HUMAN RIGHTS AND EQUALITY 11.5. HUMAN DIGNITY AND THE ARC OF HUMANIST JUSTICE 11.6. CONCLUDING REMARKS APPENDIX 1: Survey of Uses of “Human Dignity” in Major Human Rights Documents APPENDIX 2: Scalar Feasibility, Dynamic Power, and Solidarity A2.1. Illuminating Difficult Choices and Avoiding Unduly Harsh Judgments A2.2. Understanding Social Power and the Injustices Related to It A2.3. Enhancing Solidarity A2.4. Bolstering the Accessibility of Desirable Social Arrangements Bibliography Index