Taking Human Dignity More Humanely: A Historical Contribution to the Ethical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy

Abstract

The chapter argues that Kantian autonomy has sometimes been misunderstood, as if Kant would have viewed any choice as lawful, whatever its content might be. It should be noted that Kant followed earlier thinkers who had already found human rights (or natural rights) in the ‘dignity of human nature’. Thus Kant was not the first thinker to connect human rights with dignity, and the latter with human nature. The link between human rights, human nature and the expression ‘dignity’ appeared in the eighteenth century, but earlier than Kant. The chapter is composed of an introduction (Part I) and four other parts. Part two describes the emergence of human rights and human dignity after the World War II in Public International law and constitutional law. Part three deals with the revival of Kantian thought on human dignity. Part four shows how some seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century thinkers linked the notion of ‘dignity’ to human nature, using – before Kant – the expression ‘dignity of human nature’. Finally, Part five argues that a sound foundation of human rights is required to protect those who are most vulnerable, and that this foundation in turn requires the recognition of a human nature which makes all human beings equal, without any kind of discrimination. In other words, taking human nature more seriously will make us take human dignity more humanely.