Journal of Political Sciences & Public Affairs
Open Access

Human Dignity

The mercurial concept of human dignity features in ethical, legal, and political discourse as a foundational commitment to human value or human status.  The source of that value, or the nature of that status, are contested.  The normative implications of the concept are also contested, and there are two partially, or even wholly, different deontic conceptions of human dignity implying virtue-based obligations on the one hand, and justice-based rights and principles on the other.  Added to this, the different practical and philosophical presuppositions of law, ethics, and politics mean that definitive adjudication between different meanings is frustrated by disciplinary incommensurabilities.