Christoph Horn

The paper considers the question of human dignity in Kant by distinguishing an 'absoluteness reading’ from a ‘contingency reading’. It formulates two major challenges for an absoluteness reading of Kant: First, Kant does not derive the idea of human rights from the idea of dignity. The reason for this, it is argued, is that he does not defend the idea of human rights at all. And secondly, as is emphasized, Kant considers human dignity not to be immediately, inherently and persistently owned by human beings, but only under certain conditions. But as then turns out, these two challenges do not completely exclude an interpretation of Kant according to the absolute reading. The paper makes this plausible by pointing out that one has to reconsider the fundaments of the two models in Kant’s theory of value. Finally, it is analyzed what sort of absoluteness Kant attributes to human dignity-and in which respect he should be seen as contingency theorist.

Werner Jaeger (1888–1961) was at his time the most brilliant and the most influential German classicist. His most important project was a tripartite study that he finally published under the title of Paideia. Die Formung des griechischen Menschen (1933–1947). Paideia was much more than a detailed scholarly book on pedagogy in the ancient world. It was an attempt to interpret the history of ancient thought—from Homeric epics to Attic tragedy and Platonic philosophy—as rooted in the intention to educate (or rather to ‘form’) human beings. And it was the attempt to contribute to a contemporary German movement called ‘Third Humanism’. In this article, I give a critical overview of this work, its strengths and its shortcomings.