Introduction
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885119890075 |
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium on Andrea Sangiovanni's Humanity without Dignity |
Symposium on Andrea Sangiovanni’s Humanity without Dignity EJPT
Introduction
Johannes Haaf , Jan-Philipp Kruse and
Luise K Mu
¨ller
Dresden University of Technology, Germany
Keywords
Human dignity, human rights, Kant, moral equality, Sangiovanni
Introduction
In Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights (hence-
forth: HWD), Andrea Sangiovanni challenges the ways contemporary moral and
political philosophers usually justify basic human equality. He powerfully argues
that while we all believe that persons are of equal moral value, the reasons for this
belief are often wrongly understood: the moral equality of persons is not grounded
in our human dignity, meaning the common possession of a status-conferring
property or capacity, but in the wrongness of cruelly treating each other as inferior.
We are all to count as equals, because such cruel treatment obstructs the ability to
develop and maintain an integral sense of the self. Hence, our commitment to
moral equality and human rights ‘is not ultimately grounded in our rationality
but in our sociability’ (Sangiovanni, 2017: 6)
Transgressing the boundaries of Kantian moral thought and dignitarian
accounts of the moral equality of persons more broadly, Sangiovanni’s
Negative Conception of moral equality opens a novel path for explaining our
equal status. As Sangiovanni emphasizes, taking inequality as a starting point is
not simply a heuristic device, but leads to a complex justification of the moral
duty to treat each other with equal respect. Because we are all vulnerable social
beings, we fundamentally depend on others to make sense of ourselves. A par-
ticularly interesting implication concerns the field of human rights: here,
Sangiovanni attempts to show why we should not aim for a master list of
Corresponding author:
Johannes Haaf, Technische Universitat Dresden, Nu¨rnberger Str. 31A, Dresden, 01062, Germany.
Email: johannes.haaf@tu-dresden.de
European Journal of Political Theory
2020, Vol. 19(3) 396–398
!The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1474885119890075
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
To continue reading
Request your trial