Human Dignity

Perspectives from a Critical Theory of Human Rights

Amos Nascimento, Matthias Bachmann, Amos Nascimento, Matthias Lutz Bachmann, Matthias Bachmann, Amos Nascimento, Matthias Lutz Bachmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781315468273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Connecting three generations of critical theorists, this edited collection focuses on the mutual complementarity between the concept of "human dignity" and the theory and practice of human rights.

Human dignity has recently emerged as a controversial theme in the philosophy of human rights and has become the subject of a growing debate involving theological, political, juridical, moral, and biomedical perspectives. Previously, interpretations of this concept took for granted specific definitions of this term without accounting for the perspective offered by a "Critical Theory of Human Rights." This interdisciplinary perspective relies on a tradition that goes from Immanuel Kant to Jürgen Habermas, influences new generations, and sheds more light on how human dignity is used (and abused) in contemporary discourses. Based on this tradition, the contributors sustain an engaged discussion of the topic and address issues such as domination, colonialism, multiculturalism, globalization, and cosmopolitanism. Informed by different contexts, each author offers a unique contribution to distinctive aspects of the necessary internal correlation between human dignity and human rights.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers in human rights in Europe, North America, and Latin America and readers in the areas of political science, philosophy, sociology, law, and international relations.

1 Human dignity in the perspective of a Critical Theory of Human Rights

Amos Nascimento, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann

In this introduction, we would like to define a “Critical Theory of Human Rights,” provide some background to illustrate its development, explore its relation to the concept of human dignity, and introduce the authors in this volume who are contributing to the task of considering the role of human dignity in the justification of human rights. We also highlight how these authors share some basic premises and pursue a common project, albeit in a plurality of ways and informed by different contexts. If we start with the commonality, they all refer to the Kantian tradition of philosophical criticism, but transform this legacy according to various stages in the development of Critical Theory. Regarding their differences, each author offers a unique contribution to distinctive aspects of the theory and practice of human rights. It is based on these considerations that we can talk of plural perspectives on human dignity informed by a Critical Theory of Human Rights.

1. A critical tradition in human rights

The Philosophy of Human Rights is an emerging field that has attracted the attention of many philosophers whose contributions to this area have helped to clarify the theories and practices in the worldwide promotion of human rights.¹ Within this broad framework, there are several approaches to human dignity, including religious or theological, ethical, political, and legal perspectives.² Many philosophical programs could be defined as representing “critical theories,” are informed by diverse theoretical backgrounds, and reflect on contemporary questions concerning human rights and human dignity according to their particular contexts.³ In this book, the reference to a Critical Theory of Human Rights – conventionally written in capital letters to allude to the Critical Theory of Society proposed by the Frankfurt School in the 1920s and 1930s – denotes an interdisciplinary method that reflects on the relationship between human rights and human dignity in Immanuel Kant’s writings, considers his legacy of a secular definition of these topics, observes what influenced subsequent conceptual developments related to the German context, and discusses global contemporary issues related to these matters.⁴

Kant’s views on human rights and human dignity are informed by the “critical turn” in his philosophy, which occurred in 1781 and shaped his systematic work in areas such as morality, politics, law, international relations, religion, and aesthetics. In his writings on practical philosophy, Kant defines humanity in terms of rationality, freedom, and autonomy. In his ethics, he derived basic rights and duties from the human ability to self-legislate and, thereby, he defined the concepts of human rights [Menschenrechte] and human dignity [Menschenwürde] based on the premise that the human being is an “end in itself” [Zweck an sich selbst].⁵ However, in his legal and political writings – such as in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795) and in his Doctrine of Right (1797) – he expands these notions in order to propose a broader legal framework with different levels corresponding to a public domestic component [staatliches Recht], a comparative dimension involving the plurality of peoples and their juridical traditions [Völkerrecht], and a right to world citizenship or cosmopolitan right [Weltbürgerrecht] based on a universal right of humanity [Recht der Menschheit].⁶ Kant’s so-called formula of humanity in the second formulation of his categorical imperative – i.e., the demand to treat humanity as an end in itself – is, therefore, an inescapable element that informs the entirety of his practical philosophy, a principle that influences the tradition of critique inaugurated by him, and an important basis for a contemporary philosophy of human dignity and human rights.⁷

Some of these ideas were adopted by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, although he criticized Kant’s views as too abstract, formal, rigid, and disconnected from social and political reality. For Hegel, Kant was not critical enough because he refused to open reason to the dialectics of natural evolution, historical experiences, and concrete social practices. Thus, Hegel prefers to emphasize how individuals are dialectically subsumed to a family structure whose unity is based on love, a unity which is then negated when civil society supersedes both individuality and family to forge a community based on law and rights, subsequently sublated by a more general conscience of a national Spirit [Volksgeist] expressed in a Constitution – or, more precisely, in a law-giving system based on a particular ethos.⁸ Like Kant, Hegel recognized the international and global dimensions of politics and rights. For instance, he initially saw the French Revolution not simply as a national political realization, but rather as the manifestation of an absolute free will that expressed a larger event, the Spirit of the world [Weltgeist] – a view he later changed due to Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Germany. He also developed his Philosophy of Right, in which an earlier version of what we now call human rights is related to the advent of civil society [bürgerliche Gesellschaft] and the association of self-sufficient individuals under the protection of legal institutions.⁹ This legacy has been taken up later in Critical Theory, in the work of Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and, among others, Axel Honneth.¹⁰

For Karl Marx, however, Hegel’s stress on the bourgeoisie contradicted the revolutionary impetus, so Marx and Friedrich Engels rescued the tradition of criticism and added a radical twist to the meanings of “critique” and “dialectics.” In his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, Marx required a consideration of real humans in real historical conditions and identified a new collective agent for historical change: the proletarian class of workers who were treated as objects, so that the bourgeoisie could accumulate capital at the expense of natural and human exploitation. Based on this perspective, in his article on “The Jewish Question” Marx compared several bills and declarations of rights available at his time and showed that one of the problems with the Hegelian philosophy was its individualistic interpretation of natural rights.¹¹ This critique of bourgeois rights eventually led to Marx’s most important contribution to the tradition of critique: his “critique of political economy.”¹² His rather disapproving references to human rights and human dignity were framed by his critique of ideology and critique of political economy.¹³

2. The Frankfurt School and the question about human dignity

In the Critical Theory of Society developed by intellectuals affiliated with the University of Frankfurt – and therefore, identified as members of the “Frankfurt School” of philosophy and social sciences – these previous ideas were adapted to the conditions of contemporary European society and connected more directly with the concepts of human rights and human dignity. Following a typology suggested by Joel Anderson, we can identify several generations of philosophers connected to the Critical Theory of Society of the Frankfurt School, identified by their ages, mentors, contexts, and intellectual concerns.¹⁴

The first generation of critical theorists included intellectuals such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and many others who contributed to the design of a new interdisciplinary methodology that allowed them to expand on the early considerations of Kant, Hegel, and Marx. Their innovative re-reading of the critical tradition reflected the transformations occurring in Germany and Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. The transition from the Weimar Republic to the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany and retrocessions in the guarantees of equal rights motivated an ongoing dialogue among critical theorists, who denounced blatant violations and indirectly affirmed the importance of values that are now related to discourses on human dignity and human rights.¹⁵

For instance, in lectures at the University of Frankfurt around 1928, Horkheimer connected the theme of human dignity to his critique of science, thus preparing the ground for what he would later propose as a differentiation between traditional theory espoused by positivist science and the interdisciplinary social methodology of Critical Theory:

If no other realities existed beyond the world of physics and psychology, then the ideals which had guided the early development of this society and which justified the efforts of its individual members – be it human dignity, morality, freedom or something similar – were at best imagined or even fictitious.¹⁶

Horkheimer and Adorno collaborated in the writing of Dialectics of the Enlightenment in 1944, where they denounce the philosophical themes underlying authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and the violation of human dignity during the dictatorship of National Socialism and World War II.¹⁷ They also present their diagnosis that this evil has its origins in the very project of the Enlightenment. Adorno had a few but explicit references to human rights and human dignity as well, which became more poignant “after Auschwitz.” In Minima Moralia, he writes – in his peculiar hermetic language – about the triviality and banality of insisting on doing art or philosophy as if nothing had happened.

Something of the usurpation which dwells within all lecturing and indeed all reading aloud, has permeated the lucid construction of the periods, which reserve so much leisure for the most uncomfortable things. An unmistakable sign of latent contempt for human beings in the last advocate of human dignity is the dauntlessness with which he expresses platitudes, as if no-one dared to notice them: “L’artist doit aimer la vie et nous montrer qu’elle est belle. Sans lui, nous en douterions.”¹⁸

In another aphorism of Minima Moralia, he states that “human dignity insisted on the right to walk a rhythm not extorted by the body through command or terror.”¹⁹ Finally, in his Negative Dialectics, he concludes that “in the concentration camps it was no longer an individual who died, but a specimen.”²⁰ These statements correspond to initial elements of a “Critical Theory of Human Rights” which remained dormant, waiting for further considerations.

Although Ernst Bloch and Hannah Arendt were not part of the group involved with the Frankfurt School, they participated in this same context and developed much more explicit references to human rights and human dignity.²¹ Bloch dedicated a whole publication to the concept of human dignity, showing how central it was to historical struggles against domination, oppression, and humiliation. In showing these struggles, he mapped the ongoing demand for human dignity, seeing it as the condition based upon which a right may be claimed and achieved.²² This is very similar to Arendt’s consideration on the “right to have rights.” She started with the negative condition she observed during the dictatorship of National Socialism in Germany, when Jews were denied citizenship and stripped of their rights, and then noticed that the failure of nation-states in guaranteeing the rights of peoples is more prevalent that often assumed. Thus, in The Origins of Totalitarianism Arendt concluded that “Human dignity needs a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth, whose validity this time must comprehend the whole of humanity.”²³ This tradition of reflection on social and political issues related to human dignity is still relevant today in a variety of contexts. Therefore, these initial elements of a “Critical Theory of Human Rights” have been rescued and advanced in a different direction by many other authors related to the tradition of Critical Theory.

3. Critical Theory of Human Rights and human dignity

The many violations of rights, the various forms of oppression, and the multiple structures of domination denounced by the first generation of critical theorists became visible at the end of World War II, when documentation about the systematic outrages against human dignity by means of crimes against humanity and the Holocaust gained wider public attention. After Auschwitz, as Adorno expressed it, a new world order began to emerge with the founding of the United Nations, restructuring of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Human dignity in the perspective of a Critical Theory of Human Rights
• 2. Human dignity as a path to modernity in Ficino and Pico della Mirandola?
• 3. Human rights and human dignity
• 4. The concept of human dignity and the realistic utopia of human rights
• 5. The ground of critique: On the concept of human dignity in social orders of justification
• 6. Should we take the “human” out of human rights? Human dignity in a corporate world
• 7. Dignity, communicative freedom, and law
• 8. Human dignity and plurality in justifications of human rights
• Index