The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights

Abstract

In this article, Habermas wants to defend the thesis that a conceptual connection between the moral notion of human dignity and the juridical conception of human rights has always existed, even if it has only become explicit in the recent past. Against skeptical positions or deflationary strategies, he wants to maintain that the concept of human dignity is not merely an empty classificatory expression, but rather, the source from which all the basic rights derive their sustenance (in concrete experiences of violations of human dignity), as well as the key to ground the indivisibility of all the categories (or generations) of human rights. Through a historical and conceptual reconstruction of the interconnections of two different traditions, he demonstrates how the idea of human dignity becomes the “portal” through which the egalitarian and universalistic substance of morality is imported into the law.