This volume is devoted to exploring a subject which, on the surface, might appear to be just a trending topic. In fact, it is much more than a trend. It relates to an ancient, permanent issue which directly connects with people’s life and basic needs: the recognition and protection of individuals’ dignity, in particular the inherent worthiness of the most vulnerable human beings. The content of this book is described well enough by its title: ‘Human Dignity of the Vulnerable in the Age of Rights’. Certainly, we do not claim that only the human dignity of vulnerable people should be recognized and protected. We rather argue that, since vulnerability is part of the human condition, human vulnerability is not at odds with human dignity. To put it simply, human dignity is compatible with vulnerability. A concept of human dignity which discards or denies the dignity of the vulnerable and weak is at odds with the real human condition. Even those individuals who might seem more skilled and talented are fragile, vulnerable and limited. We need to realize that human condition is not limitless. It is crucial to re-discover a sense of moderation regarding ourselves, a sense of reality concerning our own nature. Some lines of thought take the opposite view. It is sometimes argued that humankind is – or is called to be – powerful, and that the time will come when there will be no vulnerability, no fragility, no limits at all. Human beings will become like God (or what believers might think God to be). This perspective rejects human vulnerability as in intrinsic evil. Those who are frail or weak, who are not autonomous or not able to care for themselves, do not possess dignity. In this volume it is claimed that vulnerability is an inherent part of human condition, and because human dignity belongs to all individuals, laws are called to recognize and protect the rights of all of them, particularly of those who might appear to be more vulnerable and fragile.

Human dignity is now a central feature of many modern constitutions and international documents. As a constitutional value, human dignity involves a person's free will, autonomy, and ability to write a life story within the framework of society. As a constitutional right, it gives full expression to the value of human dignity, subject to the specific demands of constitutional architecture. This analytical study of human dignity as both a constitutional value and a constitutional right adopts a legal-interpretive perspective. It explores the sources of human dignity as a legal concept, its role in constitutional documents, its content, and its scope. The analysis is augmented by examples from comparative legal experience, including chapters devoted to the role of human dignity in American, Canadian, German, South African, and Israeli constitutional law.

The mass violence of the twentieth century’s two world wars—followed more recently by decentralized and privatized warfare, manifested in terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and other localized forms of killing—has led to a heightened awareness of human beings’ vulnerability and the precarious nature of the institutions they create to protect themselves from violence and exploitation. This vulnerability, something humans share amid the diversity of cultural beliefs and values that mark their differences, provides solid ground on which to construct a framework of human rights. Bryan Turner undertakes this task here, developing a sociology of rights from a sociology of the human body. His blending of empirical research with normative analysis constitutes an important step forward for the discipline of sociology. Like anthropology, sociology has traditionally eschewed the study of justice as beyond the limits of a discipline that pays homage to cultural relativism and the “value neutrality” of positivistic science. Turner’s expanded approach accordingly involves a truly interdisciplinary dialogue with the literature of economics, law, medicine, philosophy, political science, and religion.

Professor John Douglas Macready offers a post-foundational account of human dignity by way of a reconstructive reading of Hannah Arendt. He argues that Arendt’s experience of political violence and genocide in the twentieth century, as well as her experience as a stateless person, led her to rethink human dignity as an intersubjective event of political experience. By tracing the contours of Arendt’s thoughts on human dignity, Professor Macready offers convincing evidence that Arendt was engaged in retrieving the political experience that gave rise to the concept of human dignity in order to move beyond the traditional accounts of human dignity that relied principally on the status and stature of human beings. This allowed Arendt to retrofit the concept for a new political landscape and reconceive human dignity in terms of stance—how human beings stand in relationship to one another. Professor Macready elucidates Arendt’s latent political ontology as a resource for developing strictly political account of human dignity hat he calls conditional dignity—the view that human dignity is dependent on political action, namely, the preservation and expression of dignity by the person, and/or the recognition by the political community. He argues that it is precisely this “right” to have a place in the world—the right to belong to a political community and never to be reduced to the status of stateless animality—that indicates the political meaning of human dignity in Arendt’s political philosophy.

This study explores whether and how enshrining children's rights in national constitutions improves implementation and enforcement of those rights by comparing Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish law.

For over 70 years, the United Nations has worked to advance human conditions globally through its historic agenda for a more peaceful, prosperous, and just world. Through the work of the General Assembly and other programs like the UNESCO World Conferences on Adult Education, the organization has taken a leading role in bringing world leaders together to dialogue on world issues and to set agendas for advancing social and economic justice among and within the regions of the world. The underlying themes of the United Nations' agenda over the years have been world peace, economic justice, addressing the needs of the world's most vulnerable populations, and protecting the environment. We draw from the two last two declarations from which the Millennium Development Goals (September 2000) and the Sustainable Development Goals (September 2015) were adopted by world leaders with a focus on addressing the needs of the most vulnerable populations. In this declaration, world leaders committed to uphold the long-standing principles of the organization and to combat extreme poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination and violence against women. The overall objective of the book is to highlight the conditions of vulnerable populations from various contexts globally, and the role adult and higher education can play (and is playing) in advancing the United Nations agenda of social and economic justice and environmental sustainability. Adult education, through research, teaching, and service engagements is contributing to this ongoing effort but as many scholars have noted, our work remains invisible and undocumented. Therefore, this book highlights adult education's critical partnership in addressing these global issues. It will also begin to fill the void that exists in adult education literature on internationalization of the field.