- 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
The Secret History of Constitutional Dignity
The Secret History of Constitutional Dignity
- Chapter:
- (p.95) 4 The Secret History of Constitutional Dignity
- Source:
- Understanding Human Dignity
- Author(s):
Samuel Moyn
- Publisher:
- British Academy
Recent histories of human dignity have focused on long-range intellectual and social contexts that provide very little explanation of the presence of the concept in politics and law today. This chapter revisits the very brief historical window through which, between the late 1930 and late 1940s, dignity made its prominent entry into modern constitutionalism, largely under the auspices of Catholic social thought and with highly local political implications. As the evidence shows, the sources of this entry are to be found neither in Kantian cosmopolitanism, the democratization of high status, nor post-Holocaust recoil. The point is not to restrict the possible meanings of dignity in recent liberal philosophy or legal tactics to its predominant context of origin. It is to show that such later creativity arose not against the background of long traditions and promiscuous uses of the concept of dignity, but in concrete and sometimes necessarily polemical relation to mid-century Catholic transnational political ventures.
Keywords: Ireland, dignity, Éamon de Valera, Catholicism, constitutionalism
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
