The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (henceforth, ‘Declaration’) brought together, in close conceptual proximity, the ideas of inherent human dignity and human rights. The document recognizes ‘the inherent dignity and […] the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family’, while going on to assert, ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’ (Declaration 1948). The release of the Declaration focused international scholarly attention on human rights, attention which has not abated in the past decades. However, there is a lesser, but still extensive, examination of the concept invoked in the Declaration – that of inherent human dignity. Though widely appealed to within law, philosophy and theology, the concept of human dignity is increasingly subject to sharp criticism. The question is: Can the concept of inherent human dignity be rescued from its critics?

Preliminary Clarifications

Before hearing from critics of inherent human dignity, two points of clarification are necessary.

First, though it is widely assumed that human dignity grounds human rights in the Declaration, it should be noted that the document never makes explicit that ‘inherent human dignity’ is in fact the basis of human rights. Dignity is declared to be the ‘foundation of freedom, justice, and peace’, but otherwise, inherent human dignity and inalienable human rights are simply asserted and juxtaposed without clearly attributing one as the cause, root or foundation of the other (Declaration 1948). Indeed, though they could have easily affirmed that human dignity is the basis of human rights, the framers chose not to make this connection explicit. Hughes notes the framers of the Declaration intentionally avoided making assertions about the metaphysical, philosophical or theological basis of human rights, but Gewirth rightly highlights evidence that the principal framers clearly understood ‘it is because humans have dignity that they have human rights’ (Gewirth 1992, 10).

Despite a friendly disposition towards human dignity as a basis for human rights, the principal authors of the document followed Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain's advice to produce a practical document that would steer clear, as much as possible, from taking stands on foundational debates (Hughes 2011, 2–3). The Declaration, after all, did not purport to be a religious, theological or philosophical document as much as a practical, legal standard for protecting future generations from re-experiencing the barbarous acts committed during World War II.