Human dignity and human rights / Pablo Gilabert.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gilabert, Pablo, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights.

Dignity.

Physical Description:

xi, 349 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Human dignity & human rights

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this network is a core notion of human dignity as an inherent, non-instrumental, egalitarian, and high-priority normative status of human persons. People have this status in virtue of their valuable human capacities rather than as a result of their national origin and other conventional features. Second, it shows how human dignity gives rise to an inspiring ideal of solidaristic empowerment, which calls us to support people's pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to block or destroy, and positive duties to protect and facilitate, the development and exercise of the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. The most urgent of these duties are correlative to human rights. Third, this book illustrates how the proposed dignitarian approach allows us to articulate the content, justification, and feasible implementation of specific human rights, including contested ones, such as the rights to democratic political participation and to decent labour conditions. Finally, this book's dignitarian approach helps illuminate the arc of humanist justice, identifying both the difference and the continuity between the basic requirements of human rights and more expansive requirements of social justice such as those defended by liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists.

Contents:

Introduction

Part I : Preliminary debates : the relations between human rights and political practice, feasibility, and power

Humanist and political perspectives on human rights

The feasibility of human rights

Human rights and power

Part II : The dignitarian approach

Understanding human dignity in human rights

Defending the significance of human dignity

Dignity and solidaristic empowerment

The dignitarian approach as a program

Part III : Implications of the dignitarian approach

Labor rights

Political rights

Minimalist versus expansive views of human rights : dignity and the arc of humanist justice.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780198827221

0198827229

OCLC:

1031049233