Human dignity in the Israel’s legal order – an outline of the problem

The traumatic experiences of World War II have highlighted the serious deficit of national and international measures to protect human rights and their ideological support to place human dignity as the main and indisputable pillar of a democratic state and supranational communities. Human dignity is nowadays one of the factors determining the court’s jurisdictional proceedings. This also applies to states that formally did not include it in the catalog of constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms. Qualitative, quantitative and comparative analysis of the functioning of the concept of human dignity reveals its various meanings and functions. They are determinants in assessing the activities of state authorities from the point of view of implementing the principles of a democratic state of law and the need to respect the rights of individuals. In connection with the richness of interpreting the concept of human dignity within the framework of constitutional values, one can not ignore the rich history of the doctrine of human dignity. It allows us to understand and define the nature of general concepts and give different meanings. Human dignity in many legal systems, including Israel, is a constitutional value, as well as the law that the constitutional norms guarantee. The issue of its regulation and definition in the Israeli legal order due to the specificity of the problem is an interesting issue, both theoretical and legal as well as practical.

The Term “Dignity” – the Concept of Dignity – Dignity: On Some Theoretical Aspects of Recognizing Dignity in the Constitution of the Republic of Poland

The study aims at making explicit the three spheres or planes, essential from the point of view of semiotics, on which the discourse regarding dignity takes place, and at clarifying the relations between these planes. The analysis uses the conception of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. There are three principal areas in which the discourse on dignity is conducted – the plane of linguistic expressions on which the name “dignity” is used; the plane of meanings on which the notion of dignity is placed; and the plane of objects on which there is dignity itself. There is a relationship of meaning between the different concepts of dignity and the expression “dignity”, a relationship of signification between expression “dignity” and dignity as its referent, and a relationship of apprehension between the concepts of dignity and their referents.

An important argument in favour of recognising the cultural relativism and against universality of dignity and human rights, is the claim that the concept of dignity is a genuinely modern one. An analysis of a passage from the Demiurge’s speech in Timaeus reveals that Plato devoted time to reflecting on the question of what determines the qualitative difference between certain beings (gods and human being) and the world of things, and what forms the basis for the special treatment of these beings – issues that using the language of today can be described reasonably as dignity. The attributes of this form of dignity seem to overlap with the nature of dignity as we know it today. Moreover, Plato proposes a response both to the question of what dignity is like, as well as the question of what dignity is. It is existential perfection, rooted in a perfect manner of existence, based on a specific internal unity of being. Dignity is therefore primordial in regard to particular features and independent of their acquisition or loss. Plato’s approach allows him to postulate that people be treated as ends in themselves; an approach therefore that prohibits the treatment of people as objects. Both the state and law are ultimately subordinated to the good of the individual, rather than the individual to the good of the state.

Migration Panic and Migrants Dignity

The aim of so-called moral panics is to effectively influence the assessment of phenomena and the attitudes of individual people. The tools for its induction are media-manipulated information and its uncritical recipients. In recent decades, these efforts have concerned the increasingly intense phenomenon of global human migration. Although it refers to only 3–4% of the total population, it provokes exceptionally strong controversies, creating specific forms of so-called migration panic. Instead of a reliable discussion about migrants and refugees, their rights and obligations, and their inherent and inalienable human dignity, manipulated public opinion perpetuates hardly humane thinking and action. It insults strangers in a dangerously aggressive way against existing natural and positive law, ethical and religious requirements.