Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Appeal to Separate the Conjoined Twins

Why should all people have certain rights by virtue of being human? One justification is to appeal to religious authority. However, in increasingly secular societies, this approach has its limitations. An alternative answer is that human rights are justified by human dignity. This article argues that human rights and human dignity are better separated for three reasons. First, the paradox of justification: the concept of human dignity does not solve the problem of justifying human rights, but rather exacerbates it in secular societies. Second, the Kantian blind spot: if human rights were based on a Kantian conception of dignity rather than on theistic grounds, these rights would lose their universal validity. Third, the threat of associationism: human dignity is currently more controversial than the concept of human rights, especially given the unresolved tensions between aspirational dignity and inviolable dignity.