Legal Commentary

My fellow "Mirror of Justice" blogger, and legal-ethics scholar, Rob Vischer, had an interesting post the other day about David Luban's new-ish book, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity.  In particular, Rob focused on this passage:

"I suspect that human dignity is not a metaphysical property of individual humans, but rather a property of relationships between humans -- between, so to speak, the dignifier and the dignified.  To put it another way, 'human dignity' designates a way of being human, not a property of being human."

Rob continued:

This reminded me of the following passage from Gaudium et spes:

"God did not create man as a solitary, for from the beginning 'male and female he created them.'  Their companionship produces the primary form of interpersonal communion.  For by his innermost nature man is a social being, and unless he relates himself to others he can neither live nor develop his potential."

For my own part, I was reminded by David's thoughts of two things:  Steven Pinker's recent essay, "The Stupidity of Dignity" and the concluding chapters of Nicholas Wolterstorff's latest book, "Justice:  Rights and Wrongs".

There's been plenty of commentary in the blogosphere about the Pinker essay, so I'll put that aside.  But Luban's focus on "relationships between humans" as the location (not the best word, I admit) for "human dignity" seems to connect interestingly with Wolterstorff's elaboration of his account of "human dignity adequate for grounding human rights".  (In his view, such an account is necessary and only a theistic account is possible.)  For Wolterstorff, the key is "bestowed worth" (think of "The Velveteen Rabbit"):  "What we need, for a theistic grounding of human rights", he writes," is some worth-imparting relation of human beings to God that does not in any way involve a reference to human capacities.  I will argue that being loved by God is such a relation; being loved by God gives a human being great worth."

Now, this is (obviously) not Luban's argument.  But is it like Luban's argument, in a way that might be instructive?  Any thoughts?