人的尊严的观念和现实主义的人权乌托邦

The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights

人的尊严的概念虽然在哲学文献中早就出现,却是从第二次世界大战结束以来才频繁出现于国际法文本和此后奠立的一些民族国家宪法之中。这并不意味着人的尊严概念仅是从事后给人的权利概念赋予道德内涵;相反,人的尊严和人的权利这两个观念从一开始就存在着紧密的概念联系。从系统的角度和概念史的角度进行考察可以看到,在人权从理性道德加上主体权利的形式出发建构起来的过程中,人的尊严概念发挥了重要的催化作用,它既是所有基本权利的内蕴都从中汲取养料的道德"源泉",也是不同范畴的权利得以兼顾和平衡的基础。人权与人的尊严之间既有概念联系,又有现实张力,其间蕴藏着的一种具体乌托邦的激进力量,它是我们在为实现人类尊严的现实斗争中不可放弃的。

The concept of human dignity, though appeared in the philosophical literature quite early, was not frequently seen until after the end of the World War II in texts of international laws as well as constitutions of those nation-states that were established since then. This, however, does not mean that the concept of human dignity functions only as a retroactive moral filling of the concept of human rights; it is rather conceptually linked with the latter from the outset. As a result of the investigation from the systematic as well as concept-historical perspectives, we can see that the concept of human dignity plays the role as a catalyst in the composition of human rights from the rational morality in conjunction of the forms of subjective rights. It is the moral spring from which all rights sip, and it is also the basis on which rights of different categories are balanced. In the fact that human rights and human dignity are both conceptually linked and actually strained lies a radical power of a concrete Utopia, which should never be given up in our realistic struggles for human dignity.