7 - Bridging Narratives

Summary

In the concluding Chapter Seven, the study brings together the analysis conducted in previous chapters in order to extract their combined meaning. This book shows that the concept of human dignity made its first appearance in legal history in a religious form and was later transformed into a secularized concept, as a reaction to and limit upon the classical conception of sovereign dignity, enshrined in State sovereignty. This origin is at the root of and is still manifested in the various legal formulations of human dignity in different areas of law. To explain human dignity, to seek its religious roots, to see its evolution and its many legal manifestations, ultimately demonstrates that international law was historically shaped, despite the multi-cultural context in which it unfolded, by a secularization process akin to that of many domestic legal systems. Chapter Seven adopts this macro view and discusses the secularization argument in the light of the transformative function of human dignity in international law.