Is there flexibility in the current use and interpretations of the notion of dignity in human rights documents and literature? Or is it so rooted in a Kantian understanding of the individual that it promulgates a conception of rationality and human relations incapable of advancing critical socio-economic human rights? This paper argues that dignity needs to be reconfigured. Some contemporary interpretations of dignity are already starting to make reference people's material needs, yet the notion of dignity will be most
effective when it is paired with a conception of freedom from domination that recognizes the relational dimensions of human autonomy. Indeed, it is already possible to find some suggestions of a richer and more diversified conception of dignity within the human rights documents, which can be built on in future interpretations of these rights and their practical import.
