Human Rights as a Matter of Self-Respect - Irmgard Coninx Stiftung

Human Rights as a Matter of Self-Respect
A Moral Argument for Social, Economic and Cultural Human Rights
(Henning Hahn, Berlin)
Abstract: This paper defends three very ambitious theses. First of all, I will present
the idea of self-respect as an alternative to legitimise Human Rights. Self-respect is
not just a transcultural value, it also stands for the desire of every person to
constitute oneself as an independent and valuable being. The awareness of being a
person is deeply connected with one’s self-respect, and no person can therefore
reasonably give up her fundamental will to respect herself. My second thesis says
that the idea of self-respect is interrelated with the idea of Human Rights. By
transfering the Kantian concept of self-respect in the framework of political
philosophy, I will try to show that the self-respect of a political person depends on
the sanction of universal rights. Rights are generally justified in their role to
promote and secure a person’s self-respect. The principle of self-respect therefore
justifies the universal validity of Human Rights and, above that, specifies their
interpretation. Building on this, I will eventually argue that the fundamental desire
to maintain one’s self-respect justifies a universal foundation of social, economic
and cultural Human Rights.
There are several ways to ground Human Rights. Some are pragmatic in nature and claim that
Human Rights help to secure peace, welfare or lead to other preferred consequences. Some
are dependent on cultural or religious traditions and claim that Human Rights correspond to
the will of god or to a customary ethos. Politically, it is advisable to welcome all sorts of
arguments pro the validity of Human Rights but the specific task of moral philosophy is to
construe a foundation of Human Rights that succeeds in convincing every person,
independent of her age, origin, cultural membership or belief. 1 We therefore have to find a
way to deduce Human Rights from minimal premises that every person accepts. Accordingly,
the most convincing attempts have based Human Rights on common human features, like the
1
Cf. Stefan Gosepath’s political and pluralistic conception of Human Rights, in: “Sinn der Menschenrechte”
(Die Menschenrechte: unteilbar und gleichgewichtig? – Studien zu Grund- und Menschenrechten, Heft 11, 21-
28.

desire for freedom or recognition, the interest to live a flourishing life, the desire to be self-
determined, the fear of death or the wish to realize one’s own idea of a good life. Obviously
these ideas are candidates for fundamental and perspective-independent values to which
almost every human being could agree.
Prima facie all of these alternatives seem to be attractive, but in the end we have to admit that
they remain very vague. In sorting out all cultural particularities, our attempt to find
universally accepted premises winds up with rather meaningless notions, and it is hard to see
how we can justify substantial Human Rights on the basis of ideas that are strictly speaking
empty. In fact, all our enlisted candidates come down to the idea that everyone has a
fundamental right to live his own life and that this life ought to be a somehow satisfying life
(while we may leave open how to define what that means). But why should that be so and
where does the normative claim to a right and even to a universal right enter the argument?
We are usually satisfied with the indication that our Human Rights are, so to speak, natural
rights protecting some sort of an inborn human dignity. Or we appeal, like the American
Declaration of Independence does, to a divine master plan that guarantees these rights. But
this is a relapse into a cultural-relative reasoning and, thus, we have to start again in order to
find a universal foundation of Human Rights.
In this essay I will introduce a prominent idea in recent moral and political theory, which
qualifies as a more suitable candidate to mark a universally shared and fundamental value and
which additionally explains why every person has, as a person, a right to liberty, political
participation, an appropriate living standard and all the claims that we intuitively take to be
part of a catalogue of Human Rights. This hopeful alternative is the well-known concept of
self-respect, as John Rawls has succesfully reintroduced it into political philosophy. 2
In this paper, I will try to show why I think that the concept of self-respect does a better
foundational job than its alternatives. I will therefore argue for three very ambitious theses.
First of all, I will pave the way for an understanding of self-respect that clarifies why selfrespect
is a fundamental value for every person regardless of her cultural background. In
defending the concept of self-respect against the reproach that it is grounded in western
individualism, I will argue that self-respect is the precondition for being a self-assured person
as such and that every person as a person has an interest to maintain her self-respect at almost
2 See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, 1999.

any price. 3 My second thesis says that self-respect goes hand in hand with a sense of justice.
Respecting oneself as a person implicates respecting oneself from the point of view of
objective and just laws. This Kantian idea means that our self-respect depends on universal
moral principles that we autonomously give to ourselves. By considering our lives in the light
of universal laws, we constitute ourselves as morally independent persons. I will transfer this
moral idea to political philosophy by trying to demonstrate that the self-respect of a political
person depends on the sanctioning of universal rights. 4 Rights are generally justified in their
role to promote and secure the self-respect of each person. As such, the concept of self-respect
marks a principle on which we can justify the universal validity of Human Rights and, above
that, which helps us to specify the legitimation, the meaning and the interpretation of existing
catalogues of Human Rights. Building on this, I will eventually and briefly discuss the
problem whether the principle of self-respect justifies solely the classical liberal rights of
enjoying freedom from constraint, or whether the protection of our self-respect endows us
with good reasons for guaranteeing further rights which promote the ability to spend a
satisfying life. In this context, I will hold and defend the view that the principle of self-respect
leads us to a foundation of social, economic and cultural Human Rights.
1. Self-Respect as a Fundamental Value
My first aim is to prove that self-respect is a fundamental value that everyone holds to be
indispensable regardless of her belief, origin or worldview. What renders the concept of selfrespect
more basic than other foundational concepts is that our self-respect is not related to a
specific idea of a person’s well-being, but to the more fundamental idea of a person’s being.
Self-respect stands for the self-understanding of a person who lives her own life free from
coercion. It is, furthermore, the sense that one’s plan of life is, as Rawls defines it, “worth [of]
carrying out”. 5 We may generally define self-respect as a sense that one’s own life is
independent, valuable and meaningful. This definition is explicitly kept free of any further
thoughts concerning the idea of an objectively good life. At first sight, self-respect is simply
the subjective state of mind that one has a grip on one’s life and experiences this life as
3
For the outstanding worth of self-respect in Rawls theory confer the passages where he emphasises that selfrespect
is the main primary good, ibid., 155-157 and 474-479. See also: Avishay Margalit, The Decent Society,
Harvard University Press, 1996.
4
I will mainly refer to the writings of Rawls, Joel Feinberg (“The Nature and Value of Rights”, in: Journal of
Value Inquiry 4 (1979), 243-257) and Axel Honneth (Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik
sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt a.M. 1992).
5
Ibid., 155.

meaningful. As Ernst Tugendhat puts it, “to have self-respect seems to imply that one has the
consciousness of being autonomous – a person that is not dependent on others and that
chooses his or her own way of living”. 6 In other terms, self-respect is the sense of being an
autonomous person living an autonomous life. Accordingly my thesis says that respecting
oneself is tantamount to understanding oneself as an independent and valuable person.
The wish to become an independent person is the most fundamental desire that we can ascribe
to human beings. We thereby abstain from specufying a preferred kind of identity or
championing a far-reaching individualism. All we state is that it is in everyone’s fundamental
interest to constitute herself as a person, i.e. as someone who is able to relate her life to
herself. No matter how a person translates her plans into action or how she realizes herself in
her community, she inevitably views her plans as an expression of her own self and identifies
herself with those principles that govern her live. The minimal definition of self-respect as the
sense of being an independent person thus serves as a universal precondition for the
foundation of universal Human Rights. It is hard to deny that every human being values her
rudimentary independence. This fact applies even to traditional cultures in which one’s life is
regulated by the standards of certain roles or customs, as well as to cultures in which the
individual is to a large extent subordinated to a collective body or community. Even in these
cases does it make sense to speak of self-respecting beings: they respect themselves as
independent persons in the sense that they agree to their life, role or status. If they don’t they
feel humiliated and ashamed. Shame and humiliation are counter-concepts to self-respect.
They express a lack of self-respect caused by the insufficient recognition by other persons.
Since an obvious way of illustrating the interdependence between self-respect and personhood
by pointing to cases where a person’s self-respect is undermined, it has become a prominent
figure in political philosophy to justify Human Rights as a precondition for living a life
without shame and free of humiliation. 7 Case-descriptions of torture, discrimination,
6
The complete quote contains a second part which will be important for the correlation of self-respect and the
consciousness of having rights that I will discuss in the next section. The continuation reads: “…and, secondly,
that one conceives oneself as having rights – and equal rights – to everybody else.” See Ernst Tugendhat,
„Liberalism, Liberty and the Issue of Economic Human Rights“, in: Philosophische Aufsätze, Frankfurt a.M.
1992, 352-370, 366.
7
To indicate just a few: Avishay Margalit has based his political theory on the idea of a decent society, which is
basicly a society in which all forms of humiliation are removed (ibid.). Axel Honneth presents a whole typology
of humiliation in order to justify claims of recognition (ibid). See also Rawls, “Self-Respect, Excellences, and
Shame” (ibid., 386-391); Martha Nussbaum (Hiding from Humanity. Disgust, Shame and the Law, Princeton
University Press, 2004).

deprivation of rights or legal incapacitation urgently make clear how humiliating treatment
affects our sense of personal integrity. An act of humiliation is such a fundamental vice
because it questions our personhood as a whole. It questions our sense of independence and
affects the very basis of our self-understanding as autonomous persons.
Up to now, we have defined self-respect as a subjective awareness of one’s independence, but
our self-respect depends nevertheless on the mutual respect of a life without humilation.
Therefore the emotion of self-respect cannot be reduced to a purely subjective selfassessment.
Our self-respect is always at risk to be violated by the disrespect of others. As I
will explicate in the next section it lies in our most fundamental interest to establish an
objective guarantee for the conditions of self-respect. This argument will finally lead us to the
foundation of universal Human Rights.
2. The Right of Self-Respect
So far, I have explained that the concept of self-respect serves as a fundamental value since
we can take for granted that every person has an interest to maintain her self-respect. 8 In this
section, I will build on recent writings that highlight the interdependence between self-respect
and (Human) rights.
It should be obvious that the self-respect of every person is a fragile good that is permanently
threatened. We nevertheless have to explain why our self-respect does not depend on
independent principles. Prima facie, the notion of self-respect has been introduced into moral
philosophy in order to show just this. To respect oneself means that one can value oneself
independently of social interference and humiliation. The stoic philosophy has emphasised
that we can maintain our self-respect, regardless wether we are emperor or slave.
Correspondingly, Kant has developed his concept of self-respect in terms of the sense for
one’s autonomous self-image as a rational (intelligible) being which values itself rationally. 9
Rationality in this context refers to a form of self-determination that essentially depends on
social esteem, but that is nevertheless grounded on freely chosen principles. In this context it
has proved to be very useful to distinguish between self-respect and self-esteem. 10 Whereas
self-esteem stands for the internalisation of an actual social esteem or recognition, our self-
8
Cf. footnote 4.
9
See Immanuel Kant, KpV, “Von den Triebfedern der reinen Vernunft”, in Kants gesammelte Schriften V,
edited by the Kgl. Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1908/13.
10
See David Sachs, “How to Distinguish Self-Respect from Self-Esteem”, in: Philosophy and Public Affairs
(1981), 346-360; Michael Walzer, “Self-Esteem and Self-Respect”, in Spheres of Justice. A Defence of
Pluralism and Equality, Martin Robertson & Company, Oxford, 1983, 272-280.

espect relates to reasonable principles. According to Kant we become self-respecting persons
by judging ourselves from the point of view of an universal law. We respect ourselves from
the perspective of an objectification of our rational nature and, as the Kantian argument goes,
we are filled with a feeling of reverence for our intelligible faculty and for the principles that
we autonomously give ourselves. It is exactly this experience that manifests the
interdependence between self-respect and personhood. We respect ourselves by facing
ourselves as independent lawgivers for a kingdom of ends. This is what autonomy essentially
is. We constitute ourselves as independent persons by judging ourselves from the point of
view of universal laws. For an orthodox Kantian, self-respect is the core concept of morality.
As rational and moral beings we are able to maintain our self-respect regardless of how much
we are humiliated, tortured or threatened.
I do not agree with Kant’s conception, but I think we can make sense of both his universal
foundation of morality and the counter-intuition that one’s self-respect can suffer from
humiliation by transferring Kant’s moral thoughts to a political framework. Within a
corresponding political anthropology, we conceive a person as an essentially political being.
Roughly speaking, a political person is someone who has to realize herself in an
interrelationship with other persons and who is therefore always forced to harmonize her
interests with the interests of everyone else. As genuinely political persons, we conceive
ourselves as autonomous lawgivers, not for a hypothetically construed kingdom of ends, but
for a real world order. The move from Kant’s moral theory to a political framework involves
that we view a person as mortal. Whereas the intelligible or moral person is immune against
all sorts of injuries, the political person is physically and psychologically vulnerable. As such,
the political person is not interested in being regulated by abstract principles that do not at the
same time apply to all other persons. For a political person, the only sensible choice is to
agree to effective rights that regulate the political order. It is thus reasonable to will
universally valid and robustly binding laws that protect first of all one’s life and secondly
one’s independence to live one’s own life. The perspective from which a political person wins
an objectively legitimated self-respect is the perspective of being a member of the
constitutional body of a just world order. We respect ourselves as a person who has
autonomously consented to universal rights and we claim respect for ourselves as bearers of
such rights from everyone else. The objective law has to secure our integrity and entitles us to
live our own life as long as we don’t interfere with the lives of others.
Since we view ourselves quasi as its founding fathers, the universal Human Right is the
political correlate to our self-respect. The awareness that we can claim respect for our lives by

appealing to an objectively codified law is the precondition for our self-respect – and vice
versa, because the fundamental interest to maintain our self-respect marks our motivation to
agree to the universal validity of Human Rights. It now becomes clear why our self-respect
can be violated. Though it might be morally possible to appeal to hypothetical human rights,
independent of whether these rights are actually granted to us, we are as political and
therefore vulnerable beings dependent on the actual sanction of these rights. Then,
humiliation can be understood as a denial of these entitlements. 11 We are humiliated whenever
we are treated as if Human Rights did not apply to us. The most serious cases of humiliation
like torture, slavery or apartheid offend our self-respect and thereby our status as a person.
Like the concept of self-respect, the very concept of being a person is already related to the
idea and, above that, to the realisation of a legal framework which guarantees the status of
being an equal person. 12 As Rawls points out, “self-respect normally depends on the respect of
others”, 13 and this respect of others for our equal status as persons is to be publicly expressed
and secured in the legal codification of just principles, such as an Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
To summarize, I have argued for a normative correlation between our self-respect, our status
of being a person and the codification of Human Rights. The framework of Universal Human
Rights expresses both the normative claim and the political precondition of self-respect. Up to
now, I have presented my ideas concerning the normative claim that self-respect makes in
support of the universal implementation of just rights. In the concluding section I will move
on to an investigation concerning the content of these rights. In detail, I will suggest that the
fundamental value of self-respect gives us a good reason to supplement the classical liberal
and civic rights with a guarantee of social, economic and cultural rights.
3. Justifying Social, Economic, and Cultural Human Rights
The tightrope walk in this section is to argue for social, economic and cultural Human Rights
without at the same time undermining a person’s self-respect. My aim is not only to underline
the dependence of self-respect upon these rights, but also to show that a person’s self-respect
11 We can think of other modes of humiliation than the denial of Human Rights, but the denial of one’s freedom
from constraint or one’s civic rights is surely a mode of humiliation that causes the deepest impact on our self-
respect. Cf. Richard F. Galvin, “Self-Respect and the Denial of Rights”, in Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 8, No.
1 (1986), 104-114.
12 For the classical text to the correlation between a personhood and right cf. Hegel, Grundlinien der
Philosophie des Rechts, §§34-40.
13 Ibid., 155.

is endangered by paternalistic regulations. Maintaining one’s self-respect after all means
managing one’s own life in response to one’s own values, abilities, preferences, etc. That’s
why our foundation of Human Rights leads to an interpretation that has to consider very
carefully whether social or economic rights undermine a person’s sense of independence. 14
In order to prepare the ground for a foundation of social, economic and cultural rights, we
have to explain that our foundational concept of self-respect implies a very far-reaching
concept of positive liberty. We usually take liberty to be the principle underlying all Human
Rights. Particular Human Rights are legitimated in respect of their function to secure a
person’s liberty. Accordingly, the key question is which concept of liberty reasonably justifies
a catalogue of Human Rights. If we apply the common liberal understanding of liberty as
freedom from constraint, we have to limit the Human Rights to the handful of rights that
protect a person from the unjustified interference of the state. But it is self-respect, not liberty
in the classical sense, that constitutes our underlying principle, and a self-respecting person
claims further rights and further liberties. The kind of liberty that the conception of selfrespect
implicates is the positive liberty to live an independent and meaningful life.
In a nutshell, I argue that it is absolutely necessary for a person’s self-respect to be able to
recognize her life as her own choice and as an expression of her own capabilities. It therefore
is of rational interest to her to implement rights that guarantee real alternatives and a
compensation for the lack of capabilities. Since poverty leaves us in fact with no alternatives
and limits our real choice, it undermines our self-respect. Poverty is humiliating, and we thus
have a strong reason to guarantee a standard of living that allows the possibility for choice. 15
Furthermore a lack of capabilities in the case of disability or illness is to be compensated in
order to enable people to live their lives as independent as possible. Obviously, the view that
we have a Human Right to possess the capabilities to live an independent life is in accordance
with a person’s self-respect, whereas the prospect of having to beg for help is degrading. 16
14
In order to avoid patronizing effects that undermine a person’s self-respect right from the beginning I suggest
to reduce social and economic Human Rights to a guarantee of equal capabilities and participatory parity by
which every person is enabled to live her own life. For the capability approach, see Amartya Sen, Commodities
and Capabilities, Oxford University Press, 1999; and for the principle of participatory parity, see Nancy Fraser,
“Recognition without Ethics?”, in: Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 18, 2001, 21-41.
15
This outline presents the crucial elements of an more elaborated argument foundation of all economic Human
Rights, as they are inscribed in the articles 23 and 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the
articles 2 and 6 in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
16
The capability approach, as it has been developed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, provides us with a
general procedure to ground social Human Rights as they are inscribed in the articles 22, 24 and 27 of the

What generally justifies social and economic Human Rights is the right to live an independent
life. Cultural Human Rights, on the other hand, are justified by everyone’s interest to live not
only an independent, but also a meaningful life. In this context, Will Kymlicka has elaborated
the idea that one’s self-respect depends on the membership to a cultural community in which
one develops one’s identity and evolves a sense of a valuable and meaningful life. Insofar as it
is rational to wish one’s identity and one’s meaning-generating community to be protected
against the unjustified interference of the state or against the dominant influence of a majority
culture, it is in the interest of one’s self-respect to appeal to a right of cultural self-
determination. 17
Let me briefly conclude this interpretation of Human Rights as means to secure a person’s
self-respect. As a first step, I have interpreted self-respect as a fundamental value that is
suitable to transculturally legitimise Human Rights. The fundamentality of this value consists
in its constitutive connection to the awareness of being an independent person, and the
suitability of the notion of self-respect dereives from the correlation between one’s selfrespect
and universal rights. In addition, I have condensed some arguments for a wide-ranging
conception of Human Rights. The legitimation of social, economic and cultural Human Rights
is based on the deep-rooted interest in a self-respecting life.
I wasn’t eventually able to say a word concerning equal opportunities. In fact, I am convinced
that the opportunity to participate in political decisions is crucial for maintaining one’s selfrespect.
Another issue in this context concerns the correlation between education and selfrespect.
In order to have real choices in one’s life, it is essential to secure equal opportunities
for training and education. And we can plausibly think of further rights that matter for a
person’s self-respect. In any case, it is self-respect that enables us to legitimise a very farreaching
understanding of Human Rights.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in article 12 in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights.
17
For Kymlicka cultural membership is in itself a good since it is conceptually necessary for self-respect. See
Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community, and Cultur , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989.