Understanding Of Human Dignity Research Articles

Lidská práva a pravoslaví: přehled a vyhodnocení současné debaty

In the Orthodox world, the debate on human rights has been one of the most interesting in recent years. There is an influential tendency among Orthodox priests, monks and laity to completely reject the idea of human rights as a mere Western invention without any cultural or spiritual basis among Eastern Christians. The critical problems are to be found in the different understanding of human dignity and the resulting emphasis on freedom or morality. Our task and question, therefore, is to identify the key points in this debate and to see what possible solutions to the existing dilemmas are available. In this article, we will attempt to map out the main players and arguments for the Czech reader, critically present and evaluate them.

The Dilemma of Postmodern Business Ethics: Employee Reification in a Perspective of Preserving Human Dignity.

Management practices prevailing in business organizations receive considerable criticism for often treating the employee as one of many resources or an instrument to achieve the organization’s goals. As employee reification has so far been largely investigated in the scientific literature from the perspective of neo-Marxist approach, this article seeks to broaden the discussion by showing how social teaching of the Catholic Church can serve to solve the problem of reification. Although there is no doubt that universal norms of business ethics can serve as protection of the employee dignity from the individual’s reification tendencies, moral relativism operating in postmodern life tends to call into question any universal moral norms. Therefore, this article discusses how responses to challenges posed by moral relativism can be obtained by applying methodological approaches proposed by the neo-Marxist classics Lukács, Honneth, and Catholic Social Teaching. The similarities and differences of these approaches are identified, and attention is also drawn to the possibilities and limitations of their application in business ethics practice. It is also demonstrated how understanding of human dignity and the attitude to a virtue, offered by social teaching of the Catholic Church, broadens the discussion on addressing the dangers posed by the person’s reification in organizations.

Violence against the person - criminal offenses against human dignity

The article proves the need to determine human dignity as a generic object of violence against a person. The article describes the state of the description of criminal offenses against human dignity under the Criminal Code of 2001 (as of 2021). According to the author, the author considers the presence of violence against a person to be an act of "crime against dignity" in the actions of the group "crime against dignity".
 The article proves the need to determine human dignity as a generic object of violence against a person. The article describes the state of the description of criminal offenses against human dignity under the Criminal Code of 2001 (as of 2021). According to the author, the author considers the presence of violence against a person to be an act of "crime against dignity" in the actions of the group "crime against dignity".
 In the content of the article, the author argues that crimes against human dignity include: all forms of domestic violence, discrimination, bullying and stalking. Under these conditions, the main unprecedented objects of these acts is the dignity of man in its psychological sense. It is this dignity that suffers in the case of abusive actions against the individual.
 The author, however, does not combine the understanding of mental safety and human dignity, because he considers these phenomena not identical. This approach is due to the understanding of the understanding of human dignity as a unity of components: self-assessment of their own qualities, abilities, worldview, their behavior and social significance.
 The text of the article provides proposals for the prospects of correct inclusion of such acts in the draft Criminal Code in the process of developing Section 4.5. "Crimes against personal freedom and human dignity."

The Legal Defect in the Conditional Prohibition of Manual Scavenging in India

This article problematizes the definitional discourse of manual scavenging in Indian legislative interven-tions and its judicial treatment by the Supreme Court of India. It assesses the evolution of the definition of manual scavenging and the judicial treatment of it to cull out the insufficiency of legal doctrines and judicial interpretations in its elimination. It is argued that the career of legal prohibition of manual scavenging, despite deploying new measures to promote the elimination and rehabilitation, is antithetical to the very objectives of the legislations due to a paradoxical definitional discourse. The paradox is discerned by problema-tizing the condition-based permissibility of manual scavenging, where the usage of protective gear is the excluding criterion for identifying manual scavengers and perpetuates the practice. This condition-based permissibility has been a key burden on the discourse of elimination, as no such measures, it is argued, can mitigate discrimination, humiliation and stigma faced by manual scavengers. After identifying the conditional prohibition of manual scavenging, the article makes normative suggestions towards the adoption of a non-condition–based complete prohibition approach rooted in the understanding of human dignity. This must be complemented with the complete rehabilitation of individuals and complete mechanization of sewage work.

John Paul II, Dialogue with Muslims and the Question of Religious Freedom

John Paul II was committed to dialogue with Muslims, and to the defence of religious freedom. This article reflects upon how John Paul II held these commitments together as threats to religious freedom from within the Muslim World emerged during his papacy. This article argues that the central theological insight of the Council, that Christians and Muslims together adore the one God, provided a framework into which John Paul II brought deepening reflections on the different ways in which Christians and Muslims understand God, the person and truth and freedom. In his dialogue with Muslims, John Paul II witnessed to the Christian understanding of human dignity and set out a theologically grounded defence of religious freedom.

Human Dignity and the Intercultural Theory of Universal Human Rights

This paper examines how the intercultural conception of human rights, fueled by the modes of reciprocal recognition associated with Hegel’s social philosophy, draws on traditional understandings of human dignity while avoiding the essentialism associated with those understandings. Part 1 summarizes core elements of an intercultural theory of human rights while addressing the general question of how that theory accommodates an understanding of the relationship of human dignity and human rights. Part 2 presents the intercultural approach as committed to a view of human dignity focused on the intrinsic worth of individuals, but understood, not—with Kant—as an anthropologically inherent property, but as one forged in relations of intersubjective recognition. Part 3, critically engaging arguments of C Beitz and J Habermas, claims that an intercultural approach entails a status-based conception of human dignity, one that construes the latter, not as a metaphysically conceived inherent quality, but as a function of membership in a social order supportive of both liberal right claims and a republican commitment to rights systems generally. Drawing on the work of Hegel and critically engaging the position of A Sangiovanni, Part 4 construes human dignity in terms of a doctrine of human rights expressive of a common humanity, one understood, however, not as an essential attribute of human beings, but in terms of a globally realized legal-political order whose members are dispositionally committed to the worth of all members of the human community and the value of human community itself. Critically appropriating the work of H Arendt for the intercultural theory, Part 5 considers the centrality of actual politics to a dignitarian account of human rights. Part 6 construes human dignity, again with Kant, in terms of the principle of autonomy, but one understood, not abstractly, but—engaging Pico della Mirandola—as the fallibilistically conceived process of social learning on the part the members of the human community. Part 7 considers how the intercultural view, with the idea of social practice expressive of collective human agency, accommodates a concept of human dignity understood as the “foundation”—nuanced and variegated—of human rights. Part 8 details the specific normativity of an intercultural conception, asserting that despite and even because of its attention to the empirical realities of social, historical, and political life, that conception remains committed, as with essentialist views, to context-transcending norms capable of calling into question actual practices and policies. Here, recourse is had to a concept of recognition understood both as a principle of evaluation and as a social practice encompassing the activity of individuals and groups engaged in the discourse on human rights.

The legal defect in the conditional prohibition of manual scavenging in India

This paper problematises the definitional discourse of manual scavenging in Indian legislative interventions and its judicial treatment by the Supreme Court of India. It assesses the evolution of the definition of manual scavenging and the judicial treatment of it to cull out the insufficiency of legal doctrines and judicial interpretations in eliminating manual scavenging. It is argued that the career of legal prohibition of manual scavenging, despite deploying new measures to promote the elimination of manual scavenging and rehabilitation of manual scavengers, is antithetical to the very objectives of such laws due to a paradoxical definitional discourse. The paper further goes on to discern this paradox by problematising the condition-based permissibility of manual scavenging, where usage of protective gear is the excluding criteria for identifying manual scavengers, if not the underlying disadvantage and stigma. This condition-based permissibility has been an additional burden on the discourse of elimination, as without even going into the question of the quality and suitability of these protective gear, no such measures, it is argued, can mitigate discrimination, humiliation and stigma attached to the practice. After identifying the conditional prohibition of manual scavenging, the paper makes normative suggestion towards adoption of non-condition based complete prohibition approach rooted in the understanding of human dignity. The point of inquiry thus must not be about the quality of these protective gear or providing them, it ought to be of completely eradicating such a practice by removing of this condition, to begin with.

BETWEEN SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS – DIGNITY AS THE HIGHEST VALUE OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

It is analyzed that the secular assertion of human dignity, rights and freedoms in its practical plane in certain periods of human history has been and is a great challenge for Christian churches. It is studied that the Christian understanding of human dignity, balancing on the border of its theoretical proclamation and its practical implementation, served to promote the ideas of humanism, its ability to resist destructive, degrading manifestations of social life forms, in the dialectic of social and religious forms of life. It is shown that the dignity of the individual is inseparable from the understanding of his rights and freedoms, and therefore, the struggle for dignity and human rights is an integral part of the preaching of the truths of Christianity.

Human Dignity: Final, Inherent, Absolute?

In the traditional understanding, human dignity is often portrayed as a «final», «inherent», and «absolute» value. If human dignity as the core of the status of a human being did indeed have thos characteristics, this would yield a severe limitation for obligations that stem from the moral status of non-human animals, plants, eco systems and other entities discussed in environmental ethics; for obligations that arise from human dignity standardly take priority over the duties toward entities with non-human moral status. Yet, many theorists of human dignity nowadays have given up the traditional picture in favour of a more «contingent» understanding of human dignity that abandons one or more of its traditional characteristics.In this paper, I argue that to the contrary, we have good reasons to think that the three characteristics of human dignity just mentioned can indeed be attributed to a value that deserves the name «human dignity». In a first part, I argue for a specific understanding of the three value characteristics under consideration. After these preliminaries, I show in a second part that given such an understanding, we have ample evidence that we can indeed say that human dignity is an inherent, absolute and final value; and also that these three characteristics are properties of a single value.

Imago Dei as a critique of capitalism and Marxism in Nikolai Berdyaev

This study aims at showing how at the basis of Nikolai Berdyaev’s criticism of capitalism and Marxism lays the concept of Imago Dei. The Russian religious philosopher puts forward the Imago Dei as fundamental to the Christian understanding of human dignity. Berdyaev believes that in both capitalism and Marxism an objectification of the person takes place, and therefore a denial of basic human dignity. Berdyaev’s criticism of capitalism refers to its internal principles, partly building on Marx’s early criticism of capitalism. Although he shared some of the same concerns with Marx and other Marxist theorists, ultimately his was a critique from a Christian perspective that was deeply humanistic, whereas Marxism in its Hegelian orientation had failed in achieving what Berdyaev understands as true humanism. Having confronted and engaged both systems of thought during his own life, Berdyaev’s insights are most interesting, and I argue in this paper that they are also relevant for our own reflections on these subjects today.

U-23 A Research Analysis of Human Dignity and Medical Cases from the Perspective of Islam and Western Philosophy

The principle of human dignity is one of the universally accepted principles among nations and peoples, thus it is considered the most important human right. It is a necessary attribute for human being that cannot be separated since first breath in the womb of mother; and it continued even after the death. Hence the man deserves respect and dignity before birth in mother’s womb, in this worldly life and after death too. A person himself, as a bearer of this value of dignity, must respect the dignity of others in all his dealings. It a comparative study between the understanding of human dignity by Western philosophers and the Islamic Shrī’ah. Further there is an attempt to apply the both understandings on modern day medical cases; like abortion without any reason, cloning of human organs, blood transfusion without permission, artificial respiration after death, mercy killing by patient or medical staff, etc.

Philosophy of Human Dignity in the Problem Field of the Global World

The article discusses human dignity in the aspect of modern challenges of technological civilization, which has entered a new stage of its development. Human dignity as a category of ethics remains underestimated, since in the first row of ethical values humanitarians, as a rule, put the categories of freedom and justice. Today, “dignity” acquires a special and higher status, the concept of human dignity is being rethought, going beyond the ethical category itself as a virtue. In the global world, human dignity is a response to such contemporary challenges as the formation of a communicative world community with a focus on digital civilization, the anthropological problem of the future of humanity, the ecological situation on a global scale, the reorientation of the ethical and legal relations of a globalizing world. Human dignity is a problem of national-ethnic and national-state relations in the transition to transnational regulatory interactions. In the interpretation of the nation, the authors do not share the well-known two approaches to understanding the nation, on the one hand ethnocultural, and on the other - national-civil. Both approaches lead, whenever possible or necessary, to the transnational posing of the question, when human dignity becomes a priority regardless of nationality. In this connection, the utopian idea of the possibility of a global ethos is touched upon. The authors focus on the anthropoxy-axiological approach to the understanding of human dignity, where the cosmological principle of human existence is determined by his creative power. The urgency of the problem of human dignity is due to the fact that, as it were, in the modern life world a person did not put the economy above morality, the basis of human dignity in its being is a value moral consciousness, in the depth of which basic human values of transnational nature “work”, contradicting values consumer society driven by practical interests. Human dignity in this regard should be interpreted as an absolute value and at the same time one should take into account the multidimensionality of the problem of dignity in the context of modern globalization processes. Based on the ontological understanding of globalization as megatrends in the self-movement of the natural historical process, the authors substantiate the anthropological value of human dignity, which has universal, transcultural significance. The use of an anthropoxy-axiological approach and interdisciplinary methods reveals the universal value of virtue, based on the anthropo-social moral nature and the creative value of man. The creative transformational activity itself will not be worthy in quality without moral responsibility. The modern concept of human dignity is addressed to the ethics of responsibility, which means responsibility, which highlights the moral and axiological attitude to life, the adoption of responsible decisions in modern conditions of sociocultural interactions. In the context of globalization, the philosophy of human dignity becomes the dominant of all conscious-volitional activities, the core of the moral rethinking of the transnational and national ratio in the light of tolerance, the ability to non-violence. At the same time, the authors indicate in the formulation of the main issue of the philosophy of human dignity the possibility of going beyond the ethical category of human dignity, since the unchanging core of the universal human values of goodness-beauty-truth does not lose its meaning in the global, changing world.

EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF UBUNTU IN RELATION TO DYING WITH DIGNITY IN PALLIATIVE AND HOSPICE CARE

The Supreme Court of Appeal in Minister of Justice and Correctional Services v Estate Stransham-Ford raised more questions than the answers it provided. However, of note is the enquiry it made regarding the implications of palliative care in relation to whether the criminality of physician-assisted suicide and physician- administered euthanasia infringes a person’s dignity. In response, this paper aims to reconstruct – through the lens of Ubuntu – our understanding of human dignity and draw links with how the values of compassion and survival, which underpin Ubuntu, enjoin us as a re-affirmation of human dignity, to strive towards making hospice and palliative care readily available. Ultimately, this is done for the benefit of providing constitutionally sound reasons for why greater emphasis should be placed on palliative and hospice care when it comes to dying with dignity. To this effect, a conceptual framework of human dignity that is based on Ubuntu is summarised. This is done for the purpose of properly aligning the understanding of the right to dignity to one that represents our constitutional dispensation and ethos. Flowing from this is an extract of the values of compassion and survival that underpin Ubuntu. These values are then used to gain a lucid perspective, as to why – in our pursuit of providing a dignified death for terminally ill patients – greater emphasis should be placed on hospice and palliative care.

Overcoming Doctrinal School Thought: A Unifying Approach to Human Dignity

AbstractThe concept of human dignity is criticized due to its vagueness, but by discussing the most important schools of thought, we can identify a core meaning that is common to most understandings of human dignity: Whether we conceptualize human dignity in terms of autonomy, self‐respect, social acts, or equal status, we always refer to some kind of personal identity. This personal identity consists in those aspects that we consider to be constitutive of our individual personality. Instead of remaining within doctrinal school thought, this core meaning can be taken as a common denominator for human dignity discourse.

Human dignity and the logic of the gift

This paper seeks to bring together the notions of human dignity and gift exchange in a mutually enriching relation. Two interpretations of the gift and of gift exchange are investigated, and in each case brought to bear on the understanding of human dignity. To start, dignity understood as the gift of uniqueness in relation is considered, followed by a consideration of dignity as the gift of absolute responsibility. The conclusion reached at the end of the paper is that an understanding of human dignity in terms of gift exchange will allow for the irreducibly social aspects inherent in the notion to be appreciated complementary to the more objective, factual and individual elements usually associated with human rights. The paper argues for a plurivocal interpretation of dignity as gift that allows for both the relational and the absolute elements gathered together in this conception to be appreciated.

Absurd Dignity: The Rebel and His Cause in Améry and Camus

In “On the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew,” Jean Améry admits that in Europe, “the degradation of the Jews was...identical with the death threat long before Auschwitz. In this regard, Jean-Paul Sartre, already in...his book Anti-Semite and Jew, offered a few perceptions that are still valid today.” In no uncertain terms, Améry aligns his own project to “describe the...unchanging...condition” of the Reich’s victims with Sartre’s 1946 book on anti-Semitism, a philosophical gesture that was not uncommon for left- leaning Jewish intellectuals after the war. According to Robert Misrahi, who discusses at length what he calls Sartre’s “evident good will,” “his manifest care to render justice, and his desire, in the face of the Jews’ great suffering, to address himself to them,” Anti-Semite and Jew was primarily a “powerful affirmation of sympathy” for European Jews and, moreover, “an effective weapon against anti-Semitism.” Misrahi insists that French Jews were “astonished, even stunned for what we (Jews) were used to was hatred and contempt.” Sartre’s repeated assertions that the suffering of European Jewry was undeserved and unwarranted, are underscored by his declaration that Europe’s problem was not, after all, ‘the Jew’ but the anti-Semite, whose sadistic Manichaeism and profound fear of himself and his own instincts and responsibilities, had inverted European values so profoundly as to make genocide ethical. And although Sartre repeatedly emphasizes his intention to analyze primarily the situation of French Jews, he does not fail to connect European anti-Semitism with other forms of racialized hatred; ‘the Jew’ is only a “pretext,” since “elsewhere [the anti-Semite’s] counterpart will make use of the Negro or the man of yellow skin” because anti-Semitism, “in short, is fear of the human condition.” Given the profound radicalism of such declarations at the time, it is not a surprise that Améry confessed and enacted a deep affinity for Sartrean existentialism. And yet, despite Améry’s understandable eagerness to wave the Sartrean flag, Améry’s existentialism is less like Sartre’s, and, consciously or unconsciously, far more like that of Albert Camus. Although Améry never mentions Camus in At the Mind’s Limits, Améry shares Camus’ reverence for rigorous analysis that simultaneously resists the kind of moral and political rigidity that often leads to a falsification of human experience and history. This is perhaps most evident in their overlapping treatments and understandings of human dignity and its solitary champion, the absurdist ‘rebel.’

Honor and Human Rights: A Comparative Study of Russia and Ukraine

This article discusses the relative importance attached to honor and human rights in two cultures, Russian and Ukrainian. These cultures have elements of honor cultures, both historically and in the present. There are also elements of a more universalistic interpretation of human dignity that are expressed through the concept of human rights, especially in the case of Ukraine. However, the movement towards the universalistic understanding of human dignity slows down or may even be reversed in the context of a protracted war. Two sources of data inform the analysis: primary (two surveys conducted on representative samples in Russia, N = 1602, and Ukraine, N = 2020) and secondary (the complete works of two poets considered representative of the two cultures, A. Pushkin and T. Shevchenko, as well as documents in the Russian-language and Ukrainian-language segments of the Google online databank). The data were processed using methods of descriptive statistics, binary statistic regression and quantitative content analysis.

Death with dignity from the Confucian perspective.

Death with dignity is a significant issue in modern bioethics. In modern healthcare, the wide use of new technologies at the end of life has caused heated debate on how to protect human dignity. The key point of contention lies in the different understandings of human dignity and the dignity of death. Human dignity has never been a clear concept in Western ethical explorations, and the dignity of death has given rise to more confusions. Although there is no such term as "dignity" in Confucian ethics, there are discussions of a number of ideas related to human dignity and the dignity of death. Therefore, Confucian bioethics can offer a new perspective for understanding the theoretical difficulties associated with the dignity of death and new methods for solving them. In this article, we attempt to reconstruct Confucian views on human dignity and the dignity of death and, based on those views, to analyze the following issues: the relationship between the dignity of death and biological life, the relationship between the dignity of death and suffering, the relationship between the dignity of death and the autonomy of human beings, and the relationship between the dignity of death and social justice. This article will also compare the Confucian views on these issues with the views of Western philosophers. Confucian ethics can offer distinct answers to the above issues and help resolve some confusions concerning concepts and theories in Western research on the dignity of death.

Labour Rights and the Impact of Human Dignity, Religious Belief and Perception of Society

The present study was part of a large research project on human rights. This paper focuses on attitudes towards labour rights of German adolescents (N = 2244) The labour rights under investigation are the right to work for everyone, the right to equal pay for equal work, the right to working hour limitations, the right to paid holidays, and the right to support for the unemployed. Although human rights in general are considered as universal, egalitarian and indivisible, attitudes towards these rights can be positive, negative or ambivalent, and may depend on the context. The aim of this study is to investigate adolescents’ attitudes towards labour rights, and to examine whether and which contextual factors are related to their attitudes towards labour rights. The contextual factors under examination were: human dignity, religious beliefs, the socio-political perception of society, and socio-demographic characteristics. The findings show that labour rights are very positively valued, except support for the unemployed. From all predictors the strongest is the understanding of human dignity as inherent to humans, followed by dignity through moral behaviour.

Democracy, society and truth: an exploration of Catholic social teaching

AbstractThis article maintains that modern Catholic social teaching took shape by positioning itself between revolutionary ideologies that sought to destroy the church and reactionary forces that sought to instrumentalise it. Among the factors that contributed to this development were the emergence of a theologyical and socio-political conception of the laity, reflection on the question of how humans participate in Christ's rule, the development of a consociational vision of sovereignty in distinction from top-down or monistic views, the importance of labour to a proper understanding of human dignity, and the discovery of ‘society’, as distinct from the market and the state. Appreciation of these factors resulted in the magisterial defence of democratic politics as a necessary condition for telling the truth about what it means to be human.