New research programme ‘Human Dignity as the Foundation of Human Rights?’

Is it possible to justify the foundational role of human dignity in the human rights framework? This is the central question of the new research programme ‘Human Dignity as the Foundation of Human Rights?’. This five-year project, funded by an NWO-VICI grant awarded to Prof. Marcus Düwell (Zeno / Ethics Institute), will start in February 2012.

Programme description

Human dignity has a foundational role in the international human rights framework. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) articulates that human dignity is the reason why we must grant rights to all human beings. By adopting the UDHR nearly all countries in the world have committed themselves to respect for human dignity.

But the concept of human dignity raises numerous questions: Who has dignity? Only members of the human species? All of them? What specific moral obligations follow from the attribution of dignity? How can human dignity provide a foundation for human rights? And why should we accept that human beings have dignity? Is the concept exclusively recognised by Western culture or are there reasons for expecting universal acceptability?

The core meaning of the concept, its historical roots and its philosophical justification are insufficiently understood. This generates an urgent problem because references to human dignity increasingly play a crucial role in debates on bioethics, new technologies and globalisation while there is widespread suspicion that references to human dignity only have a rhetorical function or amount to dogmatic manipulation. This could endanger respect for the human rights framework as a whole.

The research programme aims to reconstruct the core meaning and normative content of the concept of human dignity in current discourses. It will investigate, in dialogue with contemporary moral philosophy, how the justificatory function of human dignity can be conceptualised. This theoretical investigation will be conducted using case studies about future generations, global justice and bioethics, which are among the most challenging areas for the application of human dignity. The primary question is whether it is possible to justify the foundational role of human dignity in the human rights framework.

Read the full text of the research proposal (pdf).  

Job openings

For an overview of positions currently available within this programme, visit Utrecht University’s vacancies website.

Contact

For further information on this research programme, send an email.