Abstract
This chapter is devoted to pointing out in more detail the normative fundamentals of human rights and addresses foundational questions. A key idea here is that multiple paths exist to philosophically ground the idea of human rights. At the same time, we have to mind that grounding the idea of human rights is not the same as grounding concrete rights. In addition, another differentiation has to be observed, namely between grounding the idea of human rights horizontally (why should individuals respect/care for human rights?) and justifying it vertically (why should States subject to/protect them?). The favorable account of foundational pluralism is completed by a comparison and discussion of the different theoretical approaches in that regard.
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- 1.
In the words of Amitai Etzioni: “Self-evident precepts may indeed elude people whose vision is obscured, either because they live in closed societies, such as fundamentalist theocracies or secular totalitarian states, or because they have closed minds even if they live in open societies” (2010, p. 194).
- 2.
I borrow this term from Rainer Forst (2010), although I do not share the subsequent theoretical implications he draws according to which in this right to justification we have a quasi-Archimedean point for grounding human rights. One could interpret this maneuver as an ingenious perpetual motion machine or, less favorably, a circular argument. Cf. also Benhabib 2011, p. 11.
- 3.
Someone can have a motive to affirm human rights norms because, for example, “they make the world a better place,” and still be unaware of the reasons why they hold this position and what precisely they mean with “better place.” Without normative reflexivity, in this case pertaining to the source of norms, mere motives remain blind and untranslatable. In practical matters, the difference shows when asking someone “why” they have a certain moral point of view. Pre-reflective motives will most likely be lost for words.
- 4.
This systematic distinction is challenged by Jeremy Waldron’s phenomenological-historical claim “that human dignity involves universalizing, rather than superseding, the connotations of status, rank, and nobility that ‘dignity’ traditionally conveyed” (ibid., p. 67). Maintaining that “we are like a caste society with just one caste” (ibid.) and that human dignity is but the “nobility for the common man“ (ibid., p. 22), is however ignoring that no egalitarian universalization of honor can take place without at least marginalizing the concept of honor or nobility as such. For a critique of Waldron’s theory pertaining to his refusal to acknowledge moral ideas leading to the rise of human dignity, see Rosen 2012b.
- 5.
This refining approach is akin to Stephen L. Darwall’s differentiation between recognition respect and appraisal respect (1977).
- 6.
Cf. esp. Art. 1 UDHR; Preamble and Art. 10 ICCPR; Preamble and Art. 13 ICESCR; OSCE 1975; Preamble Protocol Nr. 13 to the ECHR on the Abolition of the Death Penalty in all Circumstances (2002); the Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Person with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine (1997).
- 7.
An example for such an interpretation is provided by Avishai Margalit. According to him, human rights are not grounded in human dignity, but justified precisely because they protect human dignity (1996). This is similar to Griffin (2008) as well as Thomas Hoffmann who states: “[T]he role of human rights is, ultimately, to preserve the dignity of each human being” (2014, p. 44). See also Glensy 2011.
- 8.
Cf., e.g., Art. 3 of the Protocol to the ACHPR on Rights of Women in Africa (2003): “Every woman shall have the right to dignity inherent in a human being and to the recognition and protection of her human and legal rights […].”
- 9.
On the relevance of the Irish constitution, see esp. Moyn 2014. In his assessment, this constitution was “epoch-making” and gave human dignity “its highest profile entry in world politics to that date” (ibid., p. 49).
- 10.
“Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority” (Art. 1). See also Matthias Herdegen’s commentary (2009), whose rather relativist account of this passage sparked heated discussions among German legal theorists. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (2000) has adopted the German dignity-formula almost verbally (Art. 1).
- 11.
The first line of the UDHR preamble reads: “[R]ecognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world […].” Art. 1 states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” According to René Cassin, member of the drafting commission, the adoption of human dignity into the text expresses the thought “that the most humble men of the most different races have among them the particular spark that distinguishes them from animals, and at the same time obligates them to more grandeur and to more duties than any other beings on earth” (UN 1947).
- 12.
Its preamble states: “We the Peoples of the United Nations [are] determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person.”
- 13.
Thomas Paine writes: “When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel […] for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud […]” (2003 [1791–1792], p. 172).
- 14.
In the course of the UDHR’s drafting, an explicit reference to God was discussed on the basis of a proposal from Brazil. Due to resistance from France and the USSR, it was rejected.
- 15.
This principal openness of the human dignity concept has, however, been criticized by some for its vagueness, which would amount to meaninglessness (cf. esp. Bagaric and Allan 2006).
- 16.
- 17.
Manetti explicitly challenged Innocent III. and his De miseris humanae conditionis (1195) where the pope depicted the human condition as miserable and in need of salvation. Reformed Christianity later did not break with this perspective, often even enhancing the argument (“sola gratia”). The controversy between Martin Luther (De servo arbitrario, 1525) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (De libero arbitrario, 1524) is quite telling in that regard.
- 18.
Kant’s own examples of such reductionist instrumentalization extend over a wide spectrum, including polygamy, denying death penalty to a murderer out of utilitarian reasons, suicide, and religious self-humiliation (cf. 1797/1836).
- 19.
According to Margalit, any candidate for a dignity-endowing property should satisfy in particular the following criteria: They “must not be graded” and “must not be of the sort that can be abused” (1996, pp. 62f.). Since in his view no such property can be found, he opts for a “negative foundation” of human dignity which revolves around the claim that human beings must not be humiliated (ibid., pp. 84ff.). This, however, is but a change in focus from dignity as status to a right to dignity and raises the obvious question of its respective justification.
- 20.
For a reconstruction of Arendt’s views on human dignity—a term she herself did not refer to explicitly but nevertheless a notion of profound importance in her thought—see Macready 2018.
- 21.
Translation by the author.
- 22.
By arguing against a God’s eye point of view in the tradition of Renaissance humanism, Williams also undermines the vigorous effect of the “speciesism” charge regularly raised against the concept of human dignity in the context of animal rights advocacy (cf. esp. Singer 1980/2011, pp. 64ff.). There are, according to Williams, no specific “reasons” for the prioritized moral consideration of humans except that we, as humans, are just more important to us. Although that need not result in moral disregard of other species, it is a preference not to be ashamed of. In his reply to Williams, Peter Singer leaves to doubt that from a “view of nowhere,” where preferences of non-human animals and human animals are considered indiscriminatorily, human rights would not be a meaningful concept. Referring to Williams’ thought experiment—wise aliens with good intentions are about to extinct humans (for the sake of other species on the planet) (2006, pp. 148ff.)—Singer confesses: “Although it is fantastic to imagine that a fair-minded, well-informed, far-sighted judge could ever decide that there was no alternative to the removal of our species in order to avoid much greater injustice and misery, if this really were the case, we should reject the tribal—or species—instinct and answer Williams’ question in the same way” (ibid., p. 70).
- 23.
In this light, criticism that in Kant’s dignity ethics “[c]riminals […] are not worthy of respect” (Margalit 1996, p. 64) or that Kant’s focus on moral self-legislation would even exclude “small children to begin with, but at an extreme, everybody who is sleeping” (Schroeder 2012, p. 330) is in dire need of reconsideration.
- 24.
- 25.
Similar to the formulation in the Russian Orthodox Church’s position paper on human dignity and rights (2008): “[T]here is a direct link between human dignity and morality.”
- 26.
- 27.
Translation by the author.
- 28.
Translation by the author.
- 29.
Even though Nussbaum repeatedly stresses the open character of this list of capabilities allowing for further modifications (ibid., pp. 78ff.; 296), she also holds that at least those ten capabilities are not up for discussion (“we ask you to agree on these ten basic entitlements”, ibid., p. 297).
- 30.
Among these entitlements Nussbaum sees only limited scope for conflicts as long as a certain threshold in the case of each capability is observed: “[I]f the capabilities list and its threshold are suitably designed, we ought to say that the presence of conflict between one capability and another is a sign that society has gone wrong somewhere” (ibid., p. 401).
- 31.
For a philosophical discussion from a range of perspectives, see also Albers et al. 2014.
- 32.
The question of animals is explicitly raised in Nussbaum’s account (cf. 2006). In defense of the human dignity approach, however, one must add that nothing in the concept of human dignity excludes the idea of dignity of certain animals if elaborated appropriately.
- 33.
Other than the name “Hume’s law” would suggest, the Scottish philosopher did not actually set up a law according to which inferences from is-statements to ought-statements were always invalid. He merely raised the skeptical question as to how such inferences could work at all and criticized previous moral philosophers and others for not being aware of this problem (1739/1817, p. 172).
- 34.
Translation by the author.
- 35.
- 36.
Jürgen Habermas was quite clear about the limits of his theory of communicative reason when he insisted that it is no perfect source for normativity or that a weak transcendental compulsion is not yet the “must” of a rule of action (cf. 1996, 1992, pp. 135ff.). It thus comes as no surprise that in trying to ground human rights, Habermas recently departs from transcendental argumentation and trusts in human dignity instead (cf. 2010).
- 37.
- 38.
For the text, its interpretation as an early affirmation of rights and popular sovereignty as well as speculations on its influence on Thomas Jefferson and others, see Klieforth and Munro 2004, pp. 190ff.
- 39.
For the impact of these ideas on the English Civil War 1640–1651, see Zaret 2000.
- 40.
On another occasion, he writes: “[T]hat the state of men without civil society […] is nothing else but a mere warre of all against all” (1642/1998, p. 34).
- 41.
This characterization of the human condition has been criticized by many, including Scottish moral sense philosophers Anthony-Ashley Cooper (1683/1984) and Francis Hutcheson (1753). Their anthropological counter-narrative according to which (wo)man is rather inclined to cooperate than to hostility is, however, no confutation of Hobbes’ position since he would still be able to argue that the perils in a state of nature remain so long as there are a only few who lack the respective moral sentiments. After all, that human beings are able to lift themselves above the state of nature by forming a political commonwealth is but another proof that Hobbes was far from denying that human nature entails the capability to fruitful cooperation. What is true, is that altruism has no substantial relevance in Hobbes’ theory, whereas self-interest doubtlessly is the key motivational factor.
- 42.
In his demand for a division of powers, Locke differs from Hobbes but also Rousseau. Locke thereby proposes a solution to Hobbes’ dilemma, according to which one always needs a greater power to confine another.
- 43.
This is most obvious from Hobbes’ writings who concedes he is not certain if such a state of nature ever has existed in the past (although Native Americans would come fairly close to it) (1651/1985, p. 187). It is, however, less clear in the work of Rousseau, who seems to believe that his perfect original state embodies a historical truth still echoed in the life forms of “noble savages” (cf. 1755/2004).
- 44.
- 45.
“When therefore our refusall to obey, frustrates the End for which the Soveraignty was ordained; then there is no Liberty to refuse; otherwise there is” (1651/1985, p. 269).
- 46.
“[W]henever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence” (1689/2012, p. 412).
- 47.
“And if we should obey a good prince, it will not therefore follow that we should not resist a wicked prince” (Buchanan 1583/1766, p. 75); “[T]he people as oft as they shall judge it for the best, [may] either choose him [the ruler] or reject him, retaine him or depose him though no tyrant, merely by the libertie and right of free born men […]” (Milton 1649/1911, p. 15).
- 48.
- 49.
Hobbes indeed is “one of the first writers to think seriously about the fundamental rights of individuals” (Gearty 2006, p. 73). The rights of the individual include such fundamental guarantees as the freedom from self-incrimination and torture or also to resist one’s own capture or execution (cf. Hobbes 1642/1998, pp. 58ff.; 1651/1985, pp. 199ff., 269). The last example is especially instructive about the nature of these rights to resistance, which is not a guarantee to resist effectively, but rather consists in the freedom to try to resist without fearing sanctions for the very act of resistance. In this way, Hobbes’ right to resistance at least binds the State authority in foro interno (cf. Finkelstein 2005, pp. 437ff.).
- 50.
Genuine popular sovereignty always has to be understood as the sovereignty of a certain people for the time being only. In the words of Thomas Paine: “There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the rights or the power of binding and controuling posterity to ‘the end of time’ […]. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies” (2003 [1791–1792], p. 138). Cf. Frick 2017.
- 51.
- 52.
For a critical assessment of the actual effect of this idea in the early Islamic period, see Afsaruddin 2006.
- 53.
On the potential of Islamic constitutionalism, see Feldman 2010.
- 54.
- 55.
For the influence of Western political philosophy on Chinese legal discourse in the past, see Angle 2002.
- 56.
“Religion forbids us from assuming a God-like character. […] Limiting the power of the state, division of power and the doctrine of checks and balances are established in order to prevent accumulation of power that might lead to such Godly claims” (ibid., p. 64).
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Frick, ML. (2019). Foundational Paths. In: Human Rights and Relative Universalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10785-7_3
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