Re-membering Plurality and Relationality in Human Rights’ Dignity. A Peace Studies Approach to Pico della Mirandola’s De Hominis Dignitate

The concept of ‘dignity’ at the base of Human Rights has been criticized, paradoxically, for a humiliating treatment of the ‘Other’ that disregards, for example, the embeddedness of individuals within communities. In response, I argue for considering dignity as a plural and relational concept, introducing contemporary peace and conflict research into legal philosophy. Besides the established approaches linked usually to values like ‘justice’, ‘security’ and ‘freedom’, this article addresses a ‘concordial’ perspective that needs to be recovered and put in relation to prevailing discourses on ‘dignity’. This ‘concordial’ dignity, as I show, is oriented by different guiding principles like community, non-duality, processuality, systemic embeddedness, dynamic balance, harmony and fertility. While these principles have been often connected to so-called indigenous or ‘Eastern’ philosophies, these are central (and neglected) elements also at the core of ‘Western’ philosophy. Exemplarily, I inquire a key historical source for the concept of dignity in contemporary human rights philosophy: Pico della Mirandola’s Oratio on the Dignity of Man.