Human Rights and Human Dignity

Arnd Pollmann (University of Magdeburg / Germany)

What does it mean to live a life in “human dignity”? Obviously, answers to this

question are closely interconnected with answers to the other central question,

what is the spirit and purpose of human rights. But how exactly are we to explain

and interpret this interrelation? From the point of view of philosophy (I tried to

show that in my paper yesterday) human rights can be defined as “morally

justified claims to fundamental civic rights, that should be enforced through

politics”. The basic idea was: Every human being has the – so to say – prior moral

right to be a member of a political community that guarantees those human rights

as fundamental constitutional rights. Therefore human rights had to be situated

somewhere between morality, law and also politics: It was a moral definition, I

tried to show, because the fundamental basic claim to be a member of a state

community of rights follows from the mutual moral obligations of all human

beings. It was also a legal definition, since concrete and substantial constitutional

rights result from that fundamental “right to have rights”, as Hannah Arendt said.

And at the end it was also a political notion of human rights, for the addressees of

corresponding duties are all those people and institutions that are responsible for

the political system concerned – But the question now is: What does it all has to

do with “human dignity”?

In what follows I will start by focussing on the history of human rights, which we

have not really touched yet. In this history of human rights and also human

dignity a deep and fundamental break has to be bookmarked: namely the year of

1945. Not until 1945 began – what we can call – the political presence of human

rights under totally altered circumstances.1 The European totalitarianism, World

War II and the systematic obliteration of jews brought about a fundamental, a

decisive turn within modern human rights thinking – namely a turn towards

human dignity. It goes without saying that there had been reflection on the

interrelation between human rights and dignity also before. But the constitutive

See Christoph Menke/Arnd Pollmann (2007), Philosophie der Menschenrechte zur

Einführung, Hamburg: Junius, ch. 1.

premise of present human rights politics is the experience of a catastrophy so

monstruos that the history of human rights was shaked to its very foundations.

It is the catastrophy of political totalitarianism – primarily that of German

National Socialists but also that of Russian Stalinists – against which the most

prominent document in the history of human rights is explicitly targeted: the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948. In its preamble we are

reminded of the “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind“.

So these were acts of barbarism, the global regime of human rights after 1945 are

innitially grounded on as some kind of a global promise that things like this will
never happen again.2 Therefore we will not grasp the very idea of human rights

after 45, if we do not interpret it as an explicit answer to the global terrifying of a

moral and political catastrophy; a catastrophy, in which there had been monstruos

violations and obliterations of what we call “human dignity”.

So article 1 of the Universal Declaration proclaims: “All human beings are born

free and equal in dignity and rights”. And article 2 adds: “without distinction of

any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion,

national or social origin, property, birth or other status”. Likewise “my” German

constitution, the Grundgesetz, which was passed in 1949, startes right at the

beginning with the idea of a dignity, that every human being has, just because it is

a human being. In article 1 it is said (I translate): “The dignity of the human being

is untouchable. It is the main obligation of all state power to respect and protect

it”. And also “your” Peruvian constitution from 1993 claims right at the beginning
in article 1 (I do not translate, please excuse my Spanish): “La defensa de la

persona humana y el respeto de su dignidad son el fin supremo de la sociedad y

But if we take a closer look on the term “human dignity” and its philosophical and

legal interpretations, we become aware of a striking contradiction: On the one

hand most interpreters of human dignity assume that dignity is something that

cannot be lost; a kind of inborn or even native value or “dower” by birth.

Therefore human beings simply do have human dignity, just because they are

human. On the other hand it cannot be denied, that there are in fact fundamental

violations or even losses of dignity. And the question is: How is it possible to

See M. Glen Johnson/Janusz Simonides (1998), The Universal Declaration of Human

Rights:

A History of its Creation and Implementation 1948-1998, Paris 1998.

deprive someone of something that is inborn or inalienable in principle? Or to put

it slightly differently: Why should something be protected by the state, that you
cannot lose anyway? If human beings already have human dignity, why should

state institutions care for it?

In what follows I will try to explain and clear this confusion. In the first part of

my paper the historical and philosophical interrelations between human rights and

human dignity shall become a little more traceable (1). In the second part it will

be shown that in philosophical and legal debates there are basically and at large

four different interpretations of human dignity; each with quiet different

consequences regarding human rights (2). In the third part of the paper I then will

subsribe to only one of this four interpretations by showing what exactly has to be

understood as the substantial content of dignity (3). At the end I want to adress

and solve the terminological contradiction I just sketched, the contradiction

between the philosophical idea, that human dignity is a inalienable, inborn value

and the empirical observation, that it indeed can be violated or even lost (4).
1. The relevance of human dignity for human rights

Even if human rights have not unfold their true potential before the second part of

the 20th century, its very idea is obviously much older. From the philosophical

point of you what primarely mentions here is so-called “natural law”.3 The

philosophical roots of natural law can be traced back up to antiquity, but it reaches

its philosophical heights much later – with the European enlightment of the 17th

and 18th century. As different thinkers of natural law tradition might be in detail,

their common premise is the following: We are allowed to state certain natural

rights that all human beings have just because of their anthropological condition

or natural essence. These rights must be understood as pre-state rights insofar as

their validity as well as our status as subjects of this natural rights do not depend

on a certain nation state or political system to codify them. We simply have those

rights, whether a certain state does respect them or not, just because our being
It is exactly this natural law belief that is reflected in the revolutionary

constitutions of 18th century’s young modernity: namely in the Virginia Bill of

Vgl. Ernst Bloch (1961), Naturrecht und menschliche Würde, Frankfurt a.M.

Rights from 1776 and in the French Déclaration des droits de l´homme et du

citoyen from 1789. The groundbreaking innovation is the following: Since human

beings have some of their most important rights – for example the right to live, to

freedom, property or religion – because of a “higher”, natural or devine order,

those rights have to be made independent from the historically contingent

circumstances of their application; what at that time mainly meant to protect them

from the disposal of absolutist rulers and monarchs.

But there was also a major second step nessessary within the historical

development of rights for the central claim of human rights to get its

breakthrough. The historic sources and documents do indeed and explicitly speak
of “rights of man” or “human rights”, but if we take a closer look at them, it

becomes more than doubtful, whether in fact every human being was meant.

These historic documents were first and foremost tailored to the national contexts

of those states and peoples, whose constitutions they were to be. The chartered

rights in these documents applied only to people, who were citizens of the nation

states concerned. Therefore these rights were “only” civic rights. Neither residents

who did not count as full citizens nor any foreign persons or non resident aliens

were mentioned. Not until political fights and social movements in the aftermath –

such as the liberation of slaves, the wars on decolonisation, the workers’

movement, the women’s movement or flows of refugees caused by the two World

Wars – not until such fights took place, the true dynamics of humans rights were

released: namely the insight, that every human being should count equally as a

subject of human rights. Only these fights for recognition of marginalized groups
– slaves, workers, indigenous people, women, refugees, homosexuals et cetera –

lead to an expansion of the realm of basic rights’ addresses from citizens to

human beings in the literal sense.

With the totalitarianism of the 20th century it than became obvious, that human

rights do not only need national state protection, but also effective international

cover. Human beings are to be protected from the threat of nation state

dictatorship. And who else could guarantee such protection if not the global

community of states? It was Hannah Arendt who – shortly after World War II –

pointed out a fundamental “aporia of human rights”4. The nation state, Arendt

said, can no longer be seen as the neutral instrument to enforce human rights, but

Hannah Arendt (1951), The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York, Kap. 9.

has to be regarded and criticized – take for example Nazi-Germany – as the

biggest threat to human rights. The “Aporia” consists in the following: The state,
whose power is constitutive and needed to enforce natural rights of every citizen,

has at the same time proved himself as the most serious enemy of those rights.

What follows from this? Facing Arendt’s aporia, the global community of states

has to assume responsibility. Hence on Dezember 10th of 1948 the General

Assembly of the United Nations passes the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights; which is unquestionable still the most deeply symbolic document of

human rights development, allthough it is well known that this document was

followed by a whole series of other important human rights covenants and

Let me sum up what I said so far and raise the rather systematic question, what is

new with the idea of human rights after 1945. Human rights primarely are claims

against the state. But the state plays the somewhat paradoxical double role of a

protector and violator of those rights. Insofar as he has proved himself as the most

serious threat to human dignity, both human rights and human dignity call for an
additional international institutionalization and protection. – Well, I do not really

give away a secret, when I tell you, that the global enforcement of human rights is

still a controversial matter (I spoke about this problem yesterday). Indeed many,

but not all states have signed relevant covenants and conventions in international

law. Every now and then some states in the UN have just signed those

conventions with a proviso or expressed political, cultural or religious

reservations, if the human rights treaty in question touched deep rooted traditional

convictions or values.

However worth considering such anti-universalist objections might be (I don´t

have the time to discuss them here), these objections more than often misjudge a

simple truth of human existence, to which we cannot shut our eyes any more;

especially not after 1945. And this truth is: Every human being, from whatever

country or culture it may come, is a highly vulnerable being, that is dependent on

the social protection of its dignity. And as long as we, from whatever country or

culture we might come or which language we speak, all use the term “human”, we

all presuppose common interests in respect and protection, that are typical for

human beings and therefore help us justifying corresponding rights. – So let us

now focus on the question, which kind of common interests we can legitimately

2. Different notions of human dignity

Let us consider more precisely the argument that I have just sketched: That human

rights are tailored to protect the fragile preconditions of human existence, does

obviously mean more than just the protection of “mere”, “naked” living or

viability. As cynical as it may seem: imprisonment, slavery, torture,

discrimination – all this can be in accordance with mere survival. So humans

rights call for a form of life of “higher” quality. And exactly this higher form of

life, this purpose of justification is meant by the notion of a human life “in
dignity”. As I want to show now: The term “dignity” is the normative and

philosophical linchpin of justifying human rights.

If we look back to the historical sources the present use of the term “dignity”

stems from, a change of meaning in three stages can be revealed: First, in Roman

antiquity the term dignity (lat. dignitas) was reservated for high-ranking persons

of public life with special responsibilities or achievments. Statesmen, politicians

or generals with important functions or duties could achieve a good reputation,

which explained their fame and dignity. Then came, second, christian theology of

the middle ages and gave the term a universalist shift. The ancient idea of a

specially privileged particular person was generalized by transferring this idea to

the central position human beings as such had as the “pride of gods creation”.

From now on human beings as such, that means despite all individual differences,

were supposed to simply have dignity as “god’s image”; a special dignity, that
other creatures would not have. Third, it was European Renaissance then,

especially Pico della Mirandola, and later on enlightment, above all Immanuel

Kant, who in addition secularized this already universalized notion of dignity by

“freeing” it from theological implications. From than on human beings had

dignity, not because they simply reflected a divine splendor, but because they

were capable of reason and autonomy and therefore by themselves were goodlike

But how do we use the term today? Philosophers in Germany just had an intensive

debate on the notion of dignity. It was because the German government had to

decide some serious “bio”-political topics in medical law and ethics. With view

on questions of for example reproductive medicine, stem cell research, cloning,

embryonic research, abortion et cetera there is politically to decide, when exactly

human life begins and when it gets the moral and legal standing of rights and

dignity. As a result of this intensive debate by at large four very different

conceptions of dignity must be kept apart. And this can be done by first

distinguishing between two main sets of problems5:

(a) Who actually does count as a member of the group of human beings, who are

supposed to have dignity? Do we have do understand the term in the way that

every human fom of life already participates from the beginning? Or does

“dignity” mean some sort of a salient feature that can only be adjudged to persons

(b) Is human dignity an inalienable good, that simply cannot or must not be

graded; a value that everyone has in exactly the same and equal way? Does a 14-

days-old embryo really have the same dignity as for example a grown up adult?

Or can or even must we distinguish legally and morally between different grades

of having dignity and deserving respect?

The main difference between these two sets of problems can be marked as

follows: In the first case we are confronted with the question wheter to distinguish
between human beings in the “full” sense and “other” human forms of life;

whereas only the first may then have dignity. Following the second set of

questions it could be possible, that the dignity of two different human beings are

only realized to a different extend, even if every human being – without exception

– already participates in human dignity. From a combination of these two sets of

problems four different conceptions of human dignity result:

(1) Dignity as a “dower”: The first and most widely accepted interpretation of

dignity presupposes, that dignity is given from the very beginning of human life

and in each case in exactly the same non-graduated form. Here the assumption

becomes central, that morally graduating different forms of life or stages of

human development is forbidden, since it finally has to be based on arbitrary

normative criteria. Whether a biological, an anthropological, a theological or a

philosophical argument is presented here: They all do agree, that every human
Arnd Pollmann (2005), Menschenwürde nach Maß, in: Deutsche Zeitschrift für
Philosophie,

Nr. 4/2005.

being has dignity from the very beginning, just because it is human. Therefore

“dignity” has to be understood as some kind of a “dower” or “gift” by human

(2) Dignity as a “potential”: The second group of interpreters does agree with the

first by assuming, that indeed every human being already participates in human

dignity. But at the same time they are convinced, that it is possible to differentiate

between sometimes “more” and sometimes “less” dignity. The central argument

here is: Allthough every human being – as a member of human mankind – has the

potential to live a life in dignity, since we all carry its “kernel”, the question

whether we really are able to fully unfold this kernel and potential is up to our

concrete life conditions. In other words: The extend to which our potential to

dignity is actually realized always depend on – by and large – decent and humane

circumstances. Therefore human beings live in dignity sometimes more and

(3) Dignity as a “personal property”: The third group of interpreters is explicitely

denying, that every human being already has dignity. They rather want to make

clean cuts, that are morally significant, between for example certain pre-forms of

human life and those stages of development, in which typical characteristics of

human “persons” emerge. In consequence only persons do have dignity, and that

means – the other way around – that those human beings who do not count as

persons – for example embryos, people in coma or old people suffering from

dementia – accordingly lack dignity. So this conception of dignity means a specifc

“personal property” that – by definition – only persons could have; that means a

certain subset of human kind. In the Kantian tradition for instance one might think

of the capability of autonomy and moral respect. If you might find this restriction

intuitively implausibel, let me remind you of the heading of chapter 1 of the

Peruvian constitution: „Derechos fundamentales de la Persona“. Here as well the

lawgiver explicitly spoke of rights, that only persons seem to have, and not human

(4) Dignity as an “achievment”: The fourth group of interpreters shares with the

third the assumption that we have to distinguish between human and personal

human life, but at the same time it adopts the conviction of the second group, that

people always do have dignity more or less. Here a persuasion becomes central

which reminds us of Roman antiquity: Persons not only have to gain the status of

dignity in public, but also to defend it against offenses and aggressions. Fellow

people will only adjudge dignity to a person, when she lives a public life worth of

that kind of social estimation. Only then she will experience, what we usually call

“respect” for the dignity of a person. In consequence dignity must be understood

as an “achievement”, that has to be made in social life. From there it follows, that

neither all human beings can have dignity nor in exactly the same way, but only

persons, who in fact make this special achievement.

3. Dignity as “embodied self-respect”

It is a salient feature of the ongoing philosophical debate on dignity, that their

participants too often miss the difference between two important, but separate

problems: The question, whether all human beings do in fact have human dignity

and to what extend, is very much dependend but different from the second

question, what exactly has to be seen as the content of dignity. Whether you want

to define human dignity either as a dower or gift, a potential, a personal property

or even a social achievement will in each case have very different consequences

for the realm of addressees regarding human rights protection.

But however you want to decide here: All four different conceptions of dignity

actually do agree on the basic presupposition, that there must be certain or typical

features of the human lifeform, that allow us generally to speak of a special

dignity of the human species. Which special features are meant here? I will start
by listing just some quiet popular definitory characteristics of dignity. The

ascending order of those characteristics will at the same time reflect the extend, to

which they are contested in contemporary debates.

(a) When we first ask for the specific or original feature that makes us count as

potential addresses of human dignity, we simply come up with the fact of being

human as such. Our mere belonging to the human species is already sufficient for

qualifying us as – at least potential – repositories of human dignity. In other

words, the almost trivial premise is: Being human is in every way a nessessary

condition for having human dignity.

(b) The special form of social recognition, we are obliged to, when we adjudge

dignity to another person, we usually call “respect”. When a person sees herself

treated decently or in an humane way – that means treated as an equal being from

human “flesh and blood” and not as a mere thing, a maschine or an animal – she
probably will feel respected; respected as an equal beneath equals.

(c) From this experience of mutual respect may result a very special form of

personal self-relation, that is of vital importance for the idea of dignity. We call

this special form of self-relation “self-respect”. A person has gained self-respect

in social relations, if she feels convinced, that – as a human being – she really is

an equal beneath equals; that she is of the same worth as every other human being

(d) Whereas self-respect first and foremost is an “inner” self-relation, people want

to authentically express or embody this self-relation in social life. What counts

here is mainly the outward appearance of a person in public life; an appearance,

which is obviously sometimes more and sometimes only less in accordance with

her inner conviction of self-respect. What we sometimes adjudge to those people

than – and not just metaphorically – is “erectness” or “spine” or we say that they

show some “backbone”

(e) This very important fact, that people want to express and embody self-respect

in public life makes them vulnerable. If people live in deep inhuman and

derogatory circumstances, how should they keep their self-respect? How should

they live up to it and express it, when life or other people knock them down again

and again. We call such violations of human dignity “disrespect”, “humiliation”,

“discrimination” or “debasement”.

If we now sum up these five characteristics, we get a quiet disturbing picture of

dignity: Allthough the protection of human dignity can be seen (a) as a universal

good, that is in all human beings’ interest, just because we are human, we (b) can

only really share this good, when other people do actually respect our equal

worth. Additionally, this good is only realized completely, when the person

concerned is c) carried by a deep feeling of self-respect, when she is d) capable of

expressing and embodying her self-respect in public life, what presupposes e) that
she must find adequate and decent life conditions, so that a life in dignity, that

means in “embodied self-respect” becomes possible at all. This quiet complex

conception might be disturbing, since it seems to imply the assumption, that

human dignity – at the end – is some kind of an embodied “attitude” based on

self-respect. If that was true, than a concrete loss of or damage to dignity still

might be the result of social disrespect, but at the end it had to be interpreted as

the absence or lack of self-respect. – Can this really be the right interpretation?

Let me give you a literary example from a novel written by the swiss author

Pascal Mercier, who in “real” life is a well known philosopher from

Berlin/Germany named Peter Bieri. In his novel „Nachtzug nach Lissabon“

(“Night-Train to Lisbon”) a man named João Eça, who has once been victim of

the Portuguese military dictatorship, tells his friend Gregorius, what it meant to

suffer from torture:

„»As they lead me to torture, I soiled my pants, and they laughed about it. It

was a horrible humiliation, but I did not get the feeling of losing my dignity.

But what is dignity then?«

Whether he would have lost his dignity, when he had confessed,

Gregorius asked.

»I did not say a word, not a single word.« [...]

And if they had loosen his tongue with a drug?

This he had asked himself again and again, said Eça, and he had dreamt

about it. He came to the conclusion, that they really would have destroyed

him with that, but still, his dignity, they would’t have deprived him from. To

lose your own dignity, you have to gamble it away [...]

That there are certain things in life, that one would never do or accept at

any price. Maybe that is, what dignity is made of, said Gregorius. These

limits don’t have to be just moral limits. You can gamble away your dignity

in many ways. A teacher, who is pretending to be a crowing cock in circus,

just because of subjection. Toadyism for the carrer. Boundless opportunism.

Constant lying and conflict avoidance to save a marriage. Such things.“6

Let us assume, both friends involved in this conversation as well as the author of

the novel did not totally miss the point of dignity. If that is really true, that we can

“gamble away” our dignity, what follows than is: (f) Keeping our dignity is – last

but not least – also dependent on our ability and power to preserve self-respect.
Therefore also g) is true, that there are no simple causal or automatic relations

between a personal attack on dignity and its actual loss. People might often be

victims of massive assaults – and the case of torture is probably the most

terrifying example. And there is obviously a high risk of losing self-respect

because of withhold recognition. But no other person can totally deprive us from

our dignity as long as we do not lose our self-respect. However cruel it may

sound: At the end we all have to keep our own personal dignity.

Pascal Mercier (2004): Nachtzug nach Lissabon, München: Hanser.

Though at this point we must avoid the missunderstanding, that an actual violation

of dignity is partly the fault of the victim concerned. Of course not. From reasons,

people do not have much influence on, some persons simply have more strength

than others to preserve their self-respect. What I only wanted to say was: There is

no loss in dignity without a loss in self-respect. That does not mean, to be sure,
that persons themselves are – fully or even not partly – in charge of preserving

their own dignity. It is still true that a person will only then possess full dignity,

when no one is affecting the quality of her life in a way, that it becomes likely,

that she loses her dignity. Acts of disrespect, humiliation or discrimination still are

serious threats to dignity, because they constrain the social scope of freedom, that

people need to preserve and embody it. But if they really do so, is finally also up

As a consequence – and with this central argument I slowly aproach the end of my

paper – there can only be a human right to “protect” dignity, in the sense of a right

to protect the social scope of embodied self-respect, but there can never be a right

“to” dignity. However limited our own contribution to our personal dignity may

be, a mutual guarantee of such a life in dignity is impossible because of that own

contribution. What we can only mutually guarantee is the best possible social or

state protection (and this is what I want to show finally).

4. The difference between possessing and protecting dignity

If we sum up the definitory characteristics of dignity (a) to (f), it follows, that

every human being has to be regarded as equal insofar as we all are deeply

interested in a life of self-respect and dignity. But people are different inasmuch

as the extend to which they actually realize self-respect and dignity may differ.

Not all human beings and not even all persons have full dignity, but they all

participate in human dignity and therefore all have exactly the same universal

right to be protected. Precisely at this point a decisive but often ignored difference

has to be marked: The question, whether people are actually possessing dignity

and to what extend, has to be distinguished properly from the related, but

divergent question, whether we all have exactly the same right to the protection of

our dignity. Well, at the end, such a right to the protection of our dignity only then

becomes reasonable and meaningful as a human right, if we distinguish between

possessing and protecting dignity. Why is that?

From reasons I sketched before the human right concerned can only guarantee the

protection and not the possession of dignity. This particular right shall allow us

room for living an upright life in embodied dignity and self-respect without

discrimination and humiliation. For we can presume – so to say by proxy – that all

human beings and even non-persons do have a vital interest in an humane and

decent social treatment, we can also presume a common or universal interest in

dignity. Because of the fact that this common interest will only then be realized

truly as an universal interest – that means if every human being respects the living

space of every other human being – we can also postulate a mutual and general

right to get the nessessary social conditions of our dignity protected. Hence from

the point of view of human rights we must come to the conclusion, that human

dignity neither is a “dower” nor a “personal property” nor a “social achievment”,

but a “potential”, that we all want to realize. All human beings already participate

in that potential, but not all human beings are allowed to realize it in the same

satisfying way. That is why they need the human right in question. In other words:

Human dignity is a fragile good – therefore it is dependend on legal protection.

And this special human right shall allow us room for an unhindered realizing and

embodying our dignity and self-respect.

So the solution to the terminological contradiction I started with at the beginning

of my paper is the following: One should not make the mistake to extrapolate

from a categorical and unrestricted right to protection, that we indeed have, to a

likewise full and unrestricted possession of dignity, that we unfortunately cannot

assume. Again: Not all human beings and not even all persons have full dignity,

but they all have the same universal right to the protection of their dignity.

At this point and at the end we have to avoid a last misunderstanding: Of course
not only those people, who already fully posses dignity, have such a right. This

people might need it least of all. No, every human being as a human being has

such a right, because we all are vulnerable and can lose our self-respect. And so

we all are allowed to realize and embody our dignity only to a different extend.

And in fact legal and moral protection is needed especially, when the dignity of a

person gets lost or is at least in an acute and severe danger.