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Human Dignity as an Existentiale? On Paul Ricoeur’s Phenomenology of Human Dignity

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Abstract

Apart from being a pervasive concept of present-day law, human dignity is a phenomenon regularly experienced by people in their lives. Yet before any protection for it can be advanced, it is imperative that an explanation of how human dignity is at all possible be established, including a description of its constitutive figures. Paul Ricoeur made a significant contribution to the lacking phenomenology of human dignity. Despite only rarely using the term dignity directly, he identified and described its three constitutive and interdependent figures—self-esteem, self-respect, and recognition—and embedded them amongst such notions as self, identity, narrative, passivity, bodiliness, fragility, morality, and law. He activated the phenomenological, existentialist, and hermeneutic legacies in understanding human dignity and succeeded in modifying certain sharp-edged structures that have periodically been associated with the notion of human dignity. In this paper I argue that human dignity is a high-ranking topic in Ricoeur’s writings, identify and synthesize the phenomenology of human dignity scattered throughout his works, and reveal the profound existential aspects he attributed to it. Finally, I discuss and evaluate his phenomenological-existentialistic account of human dignity, particularly taking into consideration the contemporary use of human dignity in law and its associated discourses.

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Notes

  1. The constitutional framework right is a certain, relatively general, mother-right, from which are derived other specific constitutional rights.

  2. Universal legal status, which is ascribed to every human being, is contrasted with statuses ascribed only to specific groups, as, for instance, the status of nobles in aristocratic society.

  3. The reasons for which self-esteem is the first figure of dignity (or, in Ricoeurʼs words, the first in the course of recognition) have been rightly labeled phenomenological reasons: I do not have direct access to the inner world of other people (Marcello 2011: 116).

  4. It has been pointed out that Ricoeur made a transition (via Arendt) from the concept of fallibility, conflated with the idea of fragility in his early works, to the concept of fragility operating as a distinct and dominant one in his later works (Joy 2016: 72). The latter primarily denotes the possibility of interference with, or of the abolition of, primary human capabilities; the incapacity to act (Joy 2016: 72).

  5. He established the connection between attestation and self-recognition (Williams 2008: 468), or, more generally, between attestation and human dignity. The nexus in this relation is the concept of capability or capacity, which implies self-attestation. ‘I can’ “implies recognition in the sense of self-avowal and self-attestation” (Williams 2008: 468).

  6. The seeds of the topic of recognition have been traced back to Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of symbols from 1960-ies (Greisch 2006: 151).

  7. Some authors have noted (Williams 2008: 470), while criticizing Riceour’s reading of Hegel, that in his understanding of the telos of recognition lies the reason why Ricoeur does not rely heavily on Hegel’s famous theory of recognition. The logical structure of recognition along with the interpretation of recognition as “Spirit’s return”—the lenses through which Ricoeur reads Hegel—would prevent human plurality and authenticity from being manifested and taken account of (Williams 2008: 470).

  8. The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine.

  9. The International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1976) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (1976).

  10. Extensively, on Kant’s and Dürig’s understanding of human dignity and their inherent problems therein: Franeta 2015: 107–110; 166–194; Franeta 2011: 825–842.

  11. The term second generation rights most often refers to the so-called positive rights (a term introduced by Georg Jellinek 1979: 87ff.)—the right to education, the right to work, etc., while the third generation rights—still a contested concept − are held to include the right to a healthy environment, the right to natural resources, the right to participation in cultural heritage, the right to the cosmos, the rights to intergenerational equity, etc.

  12. He explicitly addressed Isaiah Berlin’s notorious difference between negative and positive liberty (freedom from external restraint and capacity to act upon free will) with the intention to show that recognition and dignity could not be realized upon the grounds of this strict division.

  13. The concept of attestation has been a focus of academic analysis and debate over the last two decades. While certain authors think that Ricoeur’s concept of attestation in the end boils down to Heidegger’s anti-scientific alētheia, others claim it is a misconception and interpret attestation as a subtler, not anti-scientific, understanding of truth (Purcell 2013: 140, 149ff.), placing the concept ultimately close to the idea of trustworthiness (Romano 2016: 44), or even situating Ricoeurʼs later definition of attestation as transformed into recognition (Marcello 2011: 112).

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  • BVerfGE 125, 75 on 9th Feb 2010

  • BVerfGE, 1 BvL 10/10 on 18th July 2012

  • The Charter of Fundamental Rights of EU (2009)

  • The Constitution of Andorra (1993)

  • The Constitution of the Czech Republic (1992)

  • The Constitution of Finland (1999)

  • The Constitution of Poland (1997)

  • The Constitution of Portugal (1976)

  • The Constitution of Serbia (2006)

  • The Constitution of Slovakia (1992)

  • The Constitution of South Africa (1996)

  • The German Grundgesetz (1949)

  • The Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, Israel (1992)

  • The Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation (1999)

  • The UN International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights (1976)

  • The UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1976)

  • The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine (The Oviedo Convention) (1997)

  • The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984)

  • The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006)

  • The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)

  • The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

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Acknowledgements

The E-discussions with my colleague, Michael George, inspired me to examine in detail the later works of Paul Ricoeur.

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  1. Fakultet za pravne i poslovne studije dr Lazar Vrkatić, Bulevar oslobođenja 76, 21000, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Duška Franeta

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Correspondence to Duška Franeta.

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Franeta, D. Human Dignity as an Existentiale? On Paul Ricoeur’s Phenomenology of Human Dignity. Hum Stud 44, 63–86 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09560-5

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