Edited by Angus J. L. Menuge and Barry W. Bussey

For the 2019 IVR World Congress of Philosophy of Law meeting in Lucerne, Switzerland, Drs. Barry W. Bussey and Angus J. L. Menuge organized a special workshop on the inherence of human dignity, featuring participation from philosophers, legal scholars, and legal practitioners from around the world. Many of the chapters in these volumes are the result of that invigorating two-day workshop. In addition, several new papers were solicited to round out each volume so that it offers broad coverage of the issues it addresses.

The first volume, Foundations of Human Dignity, focuses on the foundational questions concerning the meaning, nature, and scope of human dignity, and our ability to know it. It addresses the following questions: It addresses the following questions. How was dignity understood by the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Can human dignity be grounded in natural characteristics of human beings accessible by reason, or must it be grounded in God? How can we recognize and promote dignity? What is the connection between dignity and religious liberty? Should dignity be understood in terms of autonomy or well-being? What is the origin of the new dignity jurisprudence, and is it defensible? Can dignity be understood as social characteristic? Can it be extended to artificially intelligent systems?

Table Of Contents

Introduction, Angus J. L. Menuge

Part I Grounding Human Dignity

Chapter One Human Dignity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘Old’ or ‘New’?, Laura Kittel

Chapter Two How Do We Justify Human Rights and Dignity?, Keith Thompson

Chapter Three May Critics of ‘Inherent Dignity’ Be Answered? Rejoinders from Christian Anthropology, David Guretzki

Chapter Four Three Sources of Human Dignity, Erik J. Wielenberg

Chapter Five Atheism and Theism: A Comparison of Metaphysical Foundations for Human Dignity, Paul Copan

Chapter Six Dignity and Tolerance: A Tension and a Challenge, Claudia Mariéle Wulf

Chapter Seven Human Dignity: What to Do with It? From Fruitless Abstraction to Meaningful Action, Hendrik Kaptein

Part II Competing Conceptions of Human Dignity

Chapter Eight Two Concepts of Dignity: On the Decay of Agency in Law, Åsbjørn Melkevik and Bjarne Melkevik

Chapter Nine Human Dignity as Law’s Foundation: An Outline for a Personalist Jurisprudence, Michał Rupniewski

Chapter Ten The Social Ontology of Human Dignity, Nicholas Aroney

Chapter Eleven How Not to Interpret Human Dignity: A Common Fallacy, Friedrich Toepel

Chapter Twelve The Nominalist Foundations of Constructivist Dignity, R. Scott Smith

Chapter Thirteen Artificial Dignity: The Humanizing and Dehumanizing Implications of Polanyi versus Turing’s Ontology, Andy Steiger

Notes on Contributors

Index