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Human dignity: comparative and conceptual debates*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2010

Stephen Riley
Stephen Riley*
Affiliation:
Sheffield Hallam University
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Abstract

Is there a stable set of practices or assumptions surrounding dignity, and would these necessarily denote a single foundation sustaining that stability? Two contemporary debates offer contrasting approaches to these questions. In the first, two jurists, who share agreement over the appearances of dignity in post-1945 jurisprudence, disagree as to whether these appearances form an emerging ius commune or a contingent set of conceptions. The second, comparative, debate explores the functional consequences of dignity’s aristocratic resonances. One position posits a continuing relationship between dignity and aristocratic nobility; the other, a functional division between dignity-within-aristocracy and dignity-within-democracy. This article insists that clarification of these debates depends upon a distinction between the epistemology and ontology of dignity, and, further, a distinction between dignity’s genealogy and its grammar. It concludes that a complex genealogical inheritance is at the heart of much disagreement, and that attention to dignity’s use clarifies its deficiencies and its continuing appeal.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Law in Context , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 117 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press2010

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