Human Dignity and the Minimum Existence Level: Philosophical Concepts of Decent Existence and their Implications for Law and Policy of the Welfare State

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The research project aims to make fruitful use of and compare different philosophical concepts of human dignity and their normative implications for the interpretation of the fundamental rights framework and the design of social policies. This is intended to contribute to an understanding of the idea of human dignity in the field of tension between (basic) law and social policy.The inquiry takes as its starting point two current social developments which are of great significance for a philosophy of human dignity in general and for the conception of a humane minimum standard of living in particular. The first is the socio-political tendency of all Western states, which has been prevalent for more than two or three decades, away from the principles of the 'traditional' welfare state and towards the so-called 'enabling' and 'workfare state', a form of welfare state which we also call the 'activating welfare state'. Behind this development lies Antony Giddens' programmatic postulate for politics and law of the welfare state: "no rights without reponsibilities". A tendency that was initially perceived as contrary to this postulate, but has recently become more moderate, is emerging in the case law of the German Federal Constitutional Court on the basic right to a decent minimum subsistence level and on sanctions in the social security code. According to this jurisdiction, there is a subjectively enforceable basic right to social benefits in case of need on the basis of human dignity, but on the other hand these benefits may still be massively reduced or even temporarily suspended completely under certain circumstances. The core concerns of the project are firstly to analyze the basic features of social and labor market policies operating within this legal framework and secondly to evaluate them on the basis of various types of theory of human dignity - theories of status, humiliation, ability and self-obligation. Thirdly, the results of these two steps will be confronted with two alternative models: that of the "unconditional basic income" (Van Parijs) and that of "property owning democracy" (John Rawls).