Human Dignity and Proportionality: Some Questions to Robert Alexy

PAULA GAIDO

Buenos Aires

Simposio; Dignidad y proporcionalidad; 2016

Facultad de Derecho Universidad de Buenos Aires

Robert Alexy has proposed us to reflect on the relationship between human dignity and proportionality, through a myriad of complex arguments. I would like to focus on how is it that Alexy understands the concept of human dignity. My intention is to raised some clarificatoriy questions regarding this issue. Alexy argues that the concept of human dignity is a bridge concept that connects a descriptive or empirical concept with an evaluative or normative concept. He states that that descriptive or empirical concept is the concept of person. For Alexy a person is someone who fulfills the conditions of intelligence, sentiment and reflexivity, in the form of cognitive, volitive and normative reflexivity. My first question to Alexy is in what sense the concept of person that he offers can be considered a descriptive or empirical concept? It seems, rather, that the properties that anyone should have to be considered person are based on a particular normative conception. In any case, I wonder whether along this characterization of the concept of person as a descriptive or empirical concept he is not abandoning his own conception of concepts, which he characterized as having a dual nature (an empirical and normative nature). Alexy argues that the concept of human dignity bridges this empirical or descriptive concept (the concept of person) with a normative or evaluative concept (which says that all people have human rights). When he talks about human dignity as a bridge concept, he seems to assume that this concept has its own content. However, he does not tell us what this content is. Then, I would like to ask to Alexy what the particular content of the concept of human dignity would be, as distinct from the content of human rights?