- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- 1 In Pursuit of Human Dignity: An Introduction to Current Debates
- 2 Dignité/Dignidade: Organizing against Threats to Dignity in Societies after Slavery
- 3 Würde des Menschen: Restoring Human Dignity in Post-Nazi Germany
- 4 The Secret History of Constitutional Dignity
- 5 Constructing the Meaning of Human Dignity: Four Questions
- 6 Human Dignity: Experience and History, Practical Reason and Faith
- 7 Dignity: The Case Against
- 8 Socio-Economic Rights, Basic Needs, and Human Dignity: A Perspective from Law's Front Line
- 9 The Triple Dilemma of Human Dignity: A Case Study
- 10 Dignity Rather than Rights
- 11 Dignity, Person, and Imago Trinitatis
- 12 Human Dignity and the Image of God
- 13 Dignity as an Eschatological Concept
- 14 The Vanishing Absolute and the Deconsecrated God: A Theological Reflection on Revelation, Law, and Human Dignity
- 15 A Christian Theological Account of Human Worth
- 16 Human Dignity and the Foundations of Human Rights
- 17 In Defence of Human Dignity:Comments on Kant and Rosen
- 18 Citizenship and Dignity
- 19 Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Simply Trying to Do the Right Thing
- 20 Human Dignity: The Constitutional Value and the Constitutional Right
- 21 Dignity in a Legal Context: Dignity as an Absolute Right
- 22 Human Dignity in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
- 23 Justifying Freedom of Religion: Does ‘Dignity’ Help?
- 24 Which Dignity? Which Religious Freedom?
- 25 From Imago Dei to Mutual Recognition: The Evolution of the Concept of Human Dignity in the Light of the Defence of Religious Freedom
- 26 ‘A Communion in Good Living’: Human Dignity and Religious Liberty beyond the Overlapping Consensus
- 27 Dignity and Disgrace: Moral Citizenship and Constitutional Protection
- 28 The Dignity of Marriage
- 29 Response to Tollefsen and Cameron
- 30 Dignity and the Duty to Protect Unborn Life
- 31 Is Dignity Language Useful in Bioethical Discussion of Assisted Suicide and Abortion?
- 32 Dignity, Choice, and Circumstances
- 33 Human Dignity, Interiority, and Poverty
- 34 Dignity as Perception: Recognition of the Human Individual and the Individual Animal in Legal Thought
- 35 The Good Sense of Dignity: Six Antidotes to Dignity Fatigue in Ethics and Law
- 36 Human Rights, Human Dignity,and Human Experience
- 37 The Concept of Human Dignity: Current Usages, Future Discourses
- 38 Discourses of Dignity
- 39 Dignified Disciplinarity: Towards a Transdisciplinary Understanding of Human Dignity
- Select Bibliography
- Tables of Cases, and Other Legal Authorities
- Index
Dignity, Choice, and Circumstances
Dignity, Choice, and Circumstances
- Chapter:
- (p.539) 32 Dignity, Choice, and Circumstances
- Source:
- Understanding Human Dignity
- Author(s):
Denise Réaume
- Publisher:
- British Academy
Dignity is at least in part about choice, choices about the character and direction of one’s life. However, many do not enjoy autonomy-fostering circumstances and yet must still make choices. Such choices and the circumstances shaping them are often the context of social and economic rights contests in a wide array of concrete legal contexts. All too often, state actors, including judges, take the easy way out in resolving such contests—ratifying the choices made by desperate people as though they were autonomous and free. In doing so, they sometimes claim to be respecting the dignity of those whose choices they validate. This chapter offers a critique of simple invocations of choice in the name of dignity and argues for the need for a more complex understanding of the autonomy dimension of human dignity.
Keywords: Autonomy, Circumstances of Choice, Dignity and Choice
British Academy Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Preface
- Notes on Contributors
- 1 In Pursuit of Human Dignity: An Introduction to Current Debates
- 2 Dignité/Dignidade: Organizing against Threats to Dignity in Societies after Slavery
- 3 Würde des Menschen: Restoring Human Dignity in Post-Nazi Germany
- 4 The Secret History of Constitutional Dignity
- 5 Constructing the Meaning of Human Dignity: Four Questions
- 6 Human Dignity: Experience and History, Practical Reason and Faith
- 7 Dignity: The Case Against
- 8 Socio-Economic Rights, Basic Needs, and Human Dignity: A Perspective from Law's Front Line
- 9 The Triple Dilemma of Human Dignity: A Case Study
- 10 Dignity Rather than Rights
- 11 Dignity, Person, and Imago Trinitatis
- 12 Human Dignity and the Image of God
- 13 Dignity as an Eschatological Concept
- 14 The Vanishing Absolute and the Deconsecrated God: A Theological Reflection on Revelation, Law, and Human Dignity
- 15 A Christian Theological Account of Human Worth
- 16 Human Dignity and the Foundations of Human Rights
- 17 In Defence of Human Dignity:Comments on Kant and Rosen
- 18 Citizenship and Dignity
- 19 Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Simply Trying to Do the Right Thing
- 20 Human Dignity: The Constitutional Value and the Constitutional Right
- 21 Dignity in a Legal Context: Dignity as an Absolute Right
- 22 Human Dignity in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
- 23 Justifying Freedom of Religion: Does ‘Dignity’ Help?
- 24 Which Dignity? Which Religious Freedom?
- 25 From Imago Dei to Mutual Recognition: The Evolution of the Concept of Human Dignity in the Light of the Defence of Religious Freedom
- 26 ‘A Communion in Good Living’: Human Dignity and Religious Liberty beyond the Overlapping Consensus
- 27 Dignity and Disgrace: Moral Citizenship and Constitutional Protection
- 28 The Dignity of Marriage
- 29 Response to Tollefsen and Cameron
- 30 Dignity and the Duty to Protect Unborn Life
- 31 Is Dignity Language Useful in Bioethical Discussion of Assisted Suicide and Abortion?
- 32 Dignity, Choice, and Circumstances
- 33 Human Dignity, Interiority, and Poverty
- 34 Dignity as Perception: Recognition of the Human Individual and the Individual Animal in Legal Thought
- 35 The Good Sense of Dignity: Six Antidotes to Dignity Fatigue in Ethics and Law
- 36 Human Rights, Human Dignity,and Human Experience
- 37 The Concept of Human Dignity: Current Usages, Future Discourses
- 38 Discourses of Dignity
- 39 Dignified Disciplinarity: Towards a Transdisciplinary Understanding of Human Dignity
- Select Bibliography
- Tables of Cases, and Other Legal Authorities
- Index
