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Abstract

More than five decades ago, in the wake of great atrocities committed during World War II (WWII), the United Nations appealed to the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of equal and inalienable rights of all members of human family” as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” In the following year, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz, 1949) honored human dignity in its very first article as the controlling norm. Since then there has been a consensus among the nation states that human dignity is an important moral and legal concept that should be taken seriously at both national and international political order.

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Zhang, Q. (2016). Introduction. In: Human Dignity in Classical Chinese Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-70920-5_1

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