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Human Dignity of the Vulnerable in the Age of Rights pp 257–272Cite as

Is Vulnerability the Foundation of Human Rights?

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Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 55))

Abstract

The chapter begins by describing the various understandings of vulnerability in ethical and legal discourse. The discussion then proceeds to outline the central place of vulnerability in the work of some contemporary thinkers such as Levinas, Ricoeur, Rorty, Goodin, and Turner. This is followed by asking whether vulnerability can be regarded as the foundation of human rights. It is argued that, although the devastating nature of the Second World War led to a heightened awareness of human vulnerability and played an important role in the recognition of universal human rights, it is not vulnerability as such but human dignity that provides the normative foundation for human rights. Finally, the chapter claims that the notion of vulnerability can be applied not only to existing individuals, but also to humankind as a whole. Techniques like germline interventions and human reproductive cloning may indeed jeopardize basic features of the human species and our understanding of what it means to be “human.”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    C.H. Coleman, ‘Vulnerability as a regulatory category in human subject research’, Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2009, 37(1) at 14.

  2. 2.

    E. Reichert, Understanding Human Rights (London: Sage Publications, 2006) at 71.

  3. 3.

    A. Gallagher, ‘Ending the Marginalization: Strategies for Incorporating Women into the United Nations Human Rights System’, Human Rights Quarterly, 1997, 19(2) at 290.

  4. 4.

    E. Pellegrino and D. Thomasma, The Virtues in Medical Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) at 35.

  5. 5.

    S. McLean, ‘Respect for human vulnerability and personal integrity,’ in Handbook of Global Bioethics, ed. H. ten Have and B. Gordijn (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014) at 110.

  6. 6.

    R. Andorno, ‘The dual role of human dignity in bioethics,’ Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 2013, 16(4), at 967.

  7. 7.

    H.M. Chochinov, ‘Dignity and the essence of medicine: the A, B, C, and D of dignity conserving care,’ British Medical Journal, 2007, 335(7612), at 184.

  8. 8.

    World Medical Association (WMA), Declaration of Helsinki: ethical principles for clinical research involving human subjects, 2013, article 19.

  9. 9.

    Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, Geneva, 2002.

  10. 10.

    See, for instance, Council of Europe’s Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo Convention), Art. 17; World Medical Association (WMA), Declaration of Helsinki, Art. 20.

  11. 11.

    E. Levinas, Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 2000) at 215.

  12. 12.

    Ibid. at 217.

  13. 13.

    P. Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1990) at 202: “Appelons ‘visée éthique’ la visée de la ‘vie bonne’ avec et pour autrui dans des institutions justes”.

  14. 14.

    Ibid. at 225.

  15. 15.

    Ibid. at 226.

  16. 16.

    Ibid. at 318.

  17. 17.

    Ibid. at. 223.

  18. 18.

    P. Ricoeur, ‘Fragility and responsibility’, in Paul Ricoeur: The hermeneutics of action, ed. R. Kearney, (London: Sage Publications, 1996) at 16.

  19. 19.

    Ibid.

  20. 20.

    B. Turner, Vulnerability and human rights (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) at 6.

  21. 21.

    Ibid. at 13 ff.

  22. 22.

    R. Rorty, ‘Human rights, rationality and sentimentality,’ in On Human Rights. The Oxford Amnesty Lectures, ed. S. Shute and S. Hurley (New York: Basic Books, 1993) at 112.

  23. 23.

    R. Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) at 109.

  24. 24.

    Ibid. at 112.

  25. 25.

    McLean, ‘Respect for human vulnerability and personal integrity,’ at 109.

  26. 26.

    “Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind…” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Preamble).

  27. 27.

    J. Mann, ‘Dignity and Health: The UDHR’s Revolutionary First Article’, Health and Human Rights, 1998, 3(2) at 31.

  28. 28.

    See C. Brown, ‘Universal human rights? An analysis of the ‘human-rights culture’ and its critics,’ in Universal Human Rights, ed. R. Patman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000) at 38.

  29. 29.

    See Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inherent.

  30. 30.

    R. Andorno and C. Baffone, ‘Human rights and the moral obligation to alleviate suffering,’ in Suffering and Bioethics, ed. N. Palpant and R. Green (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) at 187.

  31. 31.

    Andorno, ‘The dual role of human dignity in bioethics,’ at 971.

  32. 32.

    R. Andorno, ‘Four paradoxes of human dignity’, in Menschenwürde und moderne Medizintechnik, ed. J. Joerden, E. Hilgendorf, N. Petrillo and F. Thiele (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2011) at 131.

  33. 33.

    Ibid.

  34. 34.

    A. Masferrer, ‘The fragility of fundamental rights in the origins of modern constitutionalism: its negative impact in protecting human rights in the ‘war on terror’ era,’ in Counter-Terrorism, Human Rights and the Rule of Law, ed. A. Masferrer and C. Walker (London: Edward Elgar, 2013) at 51.

  35. 35.

    J. Nickel, Making Sense of Human Rights: Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) at 561.

  36. 36.

    Ibid.

  37. 37.

    M. Midgley, ‘Towards an ethic of global responsibility,’ in Human Rights in Global Politics, ed. T. Dunne and N. J. Wheeler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) at 160.

  38. 38.

    R. Dworkin, Life’s Dominion. An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia and Individual Freedom (New York: Vintage, 1994) at 236.

  39. 39.

    H. Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979).

  40. 40.

    Ibid. at 36.

  41. 41.

    The HGP was an international project launched in 1990 by the US Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health with the primary goals of identifying the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA, and of determining the sequences of the chemical base pairs that make up human DNA. In addition to the United States, the international consortium comprised geneticists in the United Kingdom, France, China, Australia, and Japan. The project was declared completed in April 2003. See: F. S. Collins et al., ‘A vision for the future of genomics research,’ Nature, 2003, 422(6934) at 835.

  42. 42.

    See for instance G.J. Annas, L. Andrews, and R. Isasi, ‘Protecting the Endangered Human: Toward an International Treaty Prohibiting Cloning and Inheritable Alterations,’ American Journal of Law and Medicine, 2002, 28(2–3) at 151.

  43. 43.

    H. Gros Espiell, ‘Introduction’, in Genèse de la Déclaration universelle sur le génome humain et les droits de l’homme, ed. UNESCO’s Division of Ethics of Science and Technologies (Paris: UNESCO, 1999) at 3.

  44. 44.

    H. Jonas, Technik, Medizin und Ethik. Zur Praxis des Prinzips Verantwortung (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1985) at 182 ff.

  45. 45.

    See J. Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity, 2003).

References

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  14. Jonas, H., Technik, Medizin und Ethik. Zur Praxis des Prinzips Verantwortung (Frankfurt am Main, Insel, 1985).

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  1. School of Law, University of Zurich, Rämistrasse 74/65, 8001, Zurich, Switzerland

    Roberto Andorno

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain

    Aniceto Masferrer

  2. Department of Political Sciences, Ethics and Sociology, CEU Cardenal Herrera University, Alfara del Patriarca, Valencia, Spain

    Emilio García-Sánchez

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Andorno, R. (2016). Is Vulnerability the Foundation of Human Rights?. In: Masferrer, A., García-Sánchez , E. (eds) Human Dignity of the Vulnerable in the Age of Rights. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 55. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32693-1_11

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