Human Dignity and Personal Identity. Why Pragmatic Approaches Fail

Throughout the European Union the concept Human Dignity plays an important role in theoretical debates on human rights. One main reason for this is the UN-Declaration of Human Rights, in which Human Dignity is mentioned explicitly. Another reason is that the reference to Human Dignity is essential to those passages of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany in which Human Rights are introduced. The discussion of Human Dignity is interdisciplinary, but focuses especially in social and applied ethics: We have to treat humans in such a way, because they have a peculiar dignity. All humans have special rights, because they are objects of human dignity . But what does Human Dignity really mean and how can it be explained theoretically?