KANT ON HUMAN DIGNITY: A CRITICAL APPROACH -- KANT E A DIGNIDADE HUMANA: UMA INTERPRETAÇÃO CRÍTICA

• Autor(a) principal: Pele, Antonio
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Espaço Jurídico/Espaço Jurídico Journal of Law
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unoesc.edu.br/espacojuridico/article/view/9782

In this article, I intend to reframe and qualify Kant’s moral philosophy for the understanding human dignity. Some Kant’s formulas seem to grant to the human being an inherent and absolute worthiness, when they are read (often) in a very decontextualized way. To achieve this objective, I identify the basic characteristics we commonly attribute to the contemporary model of human dignity. This model has some expressions in the axiological field (inherent and absolute worth), and, at the same time, in the legal-political field (cornerstone of human rights and guiding principle of the Rule of law). I intend to see if we can find some of these latter characteristics in the mentioned usages that Kant gives to the term “dignity” and of formulas supposedly connected (“end in itself”, “autonomy”, “humanity”). When contextualizing these expressions, either in the motivations or in the results of Kant’s philosophy, I arrived to the conclusion that Kant was less concerned with the intrinsic worthiness of the human beings, than with establishing the authority of morality.Keywords: Categorical imperative. Human dignity. Humanity. Kant. Rights.