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Understanding Human Dignity Edited by Christopher McCrudden Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press , Oxford , 2013, xxxvii + 743 pp (hardback £110) ISBN: 978-0-19-726564-2 ; (paperback £35) 978-0-19-726582-6
Book Reviews
The genesis of this truly remarkable collection of essays and papers, now rightly made available to a wider audience, was a conference held in Rhodes House, Oxford, in June 2012, which drew together a stellar, multidisciplinary group including historians, legal academics, judges, political scientists, theologians and philosophers, to discuss the concept of human dignity from their various disciplinary perspectives. The proceedings and papers have now been magnificently drawn together by Professor Christopher McCrudden, who sets the scene in a masterful opening chapter entitled 'In pursuit of human dignity: an introduction to current debates'. Anyone who has benefited from his seminal 2008 paper 'Human dignity and judicial interpretation of human rights' 1will already be fully aware of the depth and richness of his grasp of this subject.
McCrudden writes in opening:
The concept of human dignity has probably never been so omnipresent in everyday speech, or so deeply embedded in political and legal discourse. In debates on welfare reform, or in addressing the effects of the current economic crisis, appeals to dignity are seldom hard to find ... The concept of dignity is not only a prominent feature of political debate, but also, increasingly, of legal argument. Indeed, since the European Court of Human Rights, among others, tells us that human dignity is the foundation of all human rights, it is clear that human dignity will continue to be a central element in legal argument into the future. The power of the concept of human dignity is unquestionable. It appears to present a simple command to all of us: that we (individually and collectively) should value the human person, simply because he or she is human. But are we all singing from the same hymn sheet when we use the concept of human dignity, and is it a problem if we are not? Human dignity often seems to be used on both sides of many of the most controversial political debates: on issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, genetic experimentation, freedom of expression, and...