The prohibition of wearing a burka in France from the perspective of fundamental human rights: protecting human dignity or the imposition of a cultural monism?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to propose a new philosophical and legal approach to fundamental human rights that allows an interpreter to objectively evaluate individual cases so that cultural practices can be differentiated from violations of human dignity. The study begins with an analysis of the morphology of fundamental human rights and their relation to the basic dimension of human dignity, using this analysis to develop a new ethical concept of this category of rights. The French government’s controversial ban on wearing the burka in public places is finally used to demonstrate the capacity of this definition to resolve concrete cases.