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Should Inherent Human Dignity Be Considered Intrinsically Heuristic?
Author(s) -
Ranganathan Bharat
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of religious ethics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.306
H-Index - 20
eISSN - 1467-9795
pISSN - 0384-9694
DOI - 10.1111/jore.12081
Subject(s) - dignity , human rights , heuristic , epistemology , salience (neuroscience) , environmental ethics , law and economics , political science , law , sociology , philosophy , psychology , cognitive psychology
What are “human rights” supposed to protect? According to most human rights doctrines, including most notably the U niversal D eclaration of H uman R ights ( UDHR ), human rights aim to protect “human dignity.” But what this concept amounts to and what its source is remain unclear. According to G lenn H ughes (2011), human rights theorists ought to consider human dignity as an “intrinsically heuristic concept,” whose content is partially understood but is not fully determined. In this comment, I criticize Hughes's account. On my view, understanding inherent human dignity as an intrinsically heuristic concept tethers it to an “indeterminateness of sense,” which leaves it open to exploitation from theorists unsympathetic to the moral salience of rights and what rights are supposed to protect.