Die Menschenwürde als Prinzip des Rechts

The concept of human dignity has experienced something of a crisis in recent years. Next to accusations of arbitrariness and lack of clarity, there are aporia which result from the idea that human dignity figures as a special right besides and above the other basic human rights. The philosophical discomfiture with human dignity as a principle of law is intensified by the fact, that for most of the time in European history it hadn't been understood as a concept of law, but rather as a ground of duties against oneself. In contrast, the contemporary concept of human dignity serves as the foundation of rights, and at the same time as a deontological constraint to the weighing of rights. By recourse to Fichte and Hegel, Markus Rothhaar shows how these two seemingly heterogeneous roles could reconciled on the basis of a recognition theory-oriented foundation of law.