"Human dignity is inviolable." All governmental actions must be in accordance with this highest principle of the German constitution. Human dignity is therefore the regulative principle of the legislative, executive and judiciary branches of government. A short history of the development of this concept.
The concept of human dignity first enters the mainstream of western consciousness through the work of the Italian Renaissance philosopher and humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In De hominis dignitate (Über die Würde des Menschen), published in 1496, he demonstrates why human beings are characterized by a unique dignity: God placed human beings at the center of creation and, in contrast to plants and animals, gave them free will to decide for or against divine will. They can anbandon themselves to their drives or dedicate themselves to ethics and morality.
Friedrich Schiller, a Kantian thinker and author, writes in his treatise of 1793, On Grace and Dignity (Über Anmut und Würde) that human dignity is the expression of a noble disposition. Nobility does not imply arrogance or haughtiness, but rather being in possession of oneself, self-possessed, or in Ernst Bloch’s words, having "an upright gait." For Friedrich Schiller, human dignity is in its essence freedom of mind and spirit, and by virtue of ethical and moral faculties is able to master human drives. This quality does not distinguish human beings from one another, but is instead what distinguishes human beings from animals.
Schiller proceeds to focus on education, thereby excluding animals from the issue. For Schiller, education is a dialectical concept; on one hand, it encompasses the aesthetic education of human beings in the sense of an internalization of the ethical and moral values that make human beings distinguishable in terms of their appearance from the state and condition of animals. On the other hand, education also entails shaping society as a whole, i.e. the creation of a society in which human beings are enabled to perceive Kant’s "starry heaven" above them and "moral law" within them in the first place, so that they are then able to practice virtue.
Natural Law and Human Dignity
The idea that human drives can be mastered by virtue of moral faculties leads directly to the theory of natural law. According to Thomas Hobbes, human beings in the state of nature are as wolves to each other (Latin: homo homini lupus). Human beings are in a state of war of all against all (Latin: bellum omnium contra omnes), because not everything is equally available to all, and consequently a state of material deprivation arouses greed. Hobbes wishes to have human beings emerge from this state of nature, and therefore envisions a social and sovereign contract that entails an obligation to peaceable conduct, i.e. to the renunciation of violence, provided that all are protected from arbitrary despotism, violence and destitution. The Leviathan, as Hobbes calls this state, both protects and obligates its citizens. But if the state is no longer able to guarantee this protection, its citizens are no longer obligated to recognize its monopoly of force. In this case, human beings fall back into the state of nature, and the war of all against all returns: with everyone enforcing his interests as best he can, on his own.
For Hegel, it is absolutely clear that a return to the state of nature must never be allowed to occur. For this reason alone, it is necessary that the state not be too authoritarian, thus running the risk of provoking resistance to it. The civil state must advance from being a (rational) authority to being an authority of reason, because mechanical authority, imposed from above is confrontational and cannot enjoy universal recognition. But sovereignty rests on recognition. This in turn presupposes democracy, which ensures human dignity in the first place.
The Social Welfare State, Constitutional Rule of Law, and Human Dignity
Not democracy alone, but a state explicitly based on constitutionality and social welfare is what guarantees adherence to the principle of human dignity. The political scientist Ernst Fraenkel refers to the explicit anchoring of the principle of the welfare state in natural law; a concept that has taken its place among the principles of western constitutional theory. Towards the end of the 19th century and during the first third of the 20th century, the German workers’ movement succeeded in establishing and implementing the concept of "social security" – for example, through the principle of full employment and protection from arbitrary dismissal; through the institutionalization of insurance in case of illness or accident leading to absence from work, or where disability leads to incapacity to work, etc. – as a standard, i.e. a regulative concept, of "western democracies." At first, resistance to this regulative concept arose in other western countries. In the USA, for instance, the notion of social security was regarded as "un-American," because the idealization of laisser-faire liberalism – the continuation of the war of all against all with the means of civil law - had established itself in the culture.
Between 1933 and 1945, during the Third Reich, the principle of "social security" was not abrogated, but instead was thoroughly perverted as an ideology of the "racial community" ("Volksgemeinschaft"), and in particular ensured nothing but hell on earth for those excluded from it. After 1945, the concept of "social security," now based on the principle of the equality of all, was taken up again. Likewise, a normative doctrine was derived from the barbarism that had just been defeated by the Allies, that manifests itself above all in the 20 fundamental normative principles of the German constitution. Thus, Article 1 of the Constitution states: "Human dignity is inviolable."
As a social welfare state based on the constitutional rule of law, the newly-founded West German state committed itself to guaranteeing a life in human dignity to all people living within its territory, i.e. to guaranteeing human and civil rights as well as social security. This does not include guaranteeing a right to housing and employment for all – but it does guarantee a basic social safety net that prevents unemployed persons from being compelled to act in ways deemed criminal by civil law in order to survive. Put in terms of the theory of natural law: the individual is prevented from falling back into the state of nature and thus ceasing to be morally bound by the social contract.
Dr. Marcus Hawel
Is a journalist, sociologist, and co-editor of the online magazine "Sozialistische Positionen" (i.e. socialist positions). He is currently a lecturer at the Institute of Political Science of Leibniz University in Hannover. December 2007
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