The Kantian Concept of Human Dignity Today

Abstract

Although Kant was born three hundred years ago, his practical philosophy is still relevant and helpful for understanding difficult and crucial issues of today. One example is the strange transformation the concept of human dignity has undergone in post-Soviet Russia — in everyday language, in ideological doctrines, and in legal documents. While in ordinary life dignity is increasingly reduced to access to material benefits, in its legal sense — above all in the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation — anti-communist ideology has turned it into the “right” to enjoy comfortable living conditions, being almost totally divorced from duties and from morality. Such interpretations of human dignity lead to a dead end, creating problems for its perception and for its relationship to other constitutional provisions — problems that are impossible to resolve in the framework of such an interpretation of right. By turning to Kant, one of the pillars of the modern egalitarian universalist conception of human dignity, we can trace the idea of personal dignity back to its origin as an absolute inner value which, unlike external material benefits, has no equivalent, and involves self-legislation, restriction of freedom, and the fulfilling of moral duty.