In this chapter I discuss three new ways, of understanding human dignity. First, Christopher McCrudden’s concern is with the fact that there is no common understanding of the concept. He argues that dignity is a placeholder. It is open to interpretations from a diversity of normative understandings, – religious and secular. Still, he argues for a core of overlapping content within the diversity of understandings. Second, Catherine Dupré understands human dignity as a heuristic concept, open for new interpretations. The concept is in itself inexhaustible. New meanings develop in confrontation with new issues. Observing that the concept has become one of the pillars in European law and democracies, and has been crucial in several junctions when dictatorships has fallen and democracies has been established after the Second World War, she finds that the concept comes to its right in particular in transitional and transformative situations. Finally, Costas Douzinas does not work with the concept human dignity but with the concept of the human, to whom human dignity is designated in the human rights. I reinterpret his theory to also cover the normative concept human dignity. It is brought into force by proclamations, and as such becomes a transformative and life changing concept in particular for people living in need of dignity.
Church and state in South Africa and human rights