Abstract
Background: This article discusses the primacy of care, empathy, and dignity in human life and social relations. There is a connection among care, connection, and human dignity that forms the value-based foundation of human rights. Conversely, there is a nexus between the rise of neoliberalism and the relativisation of fundamental human rights values, including respect for equal moral human dignity, which can be recognised through empathy. Non-positivist approaches such as critical realism and decolonial perspectives critique neoliberal capitalism, as well as positivist and postmodern epistemologies, for dismissing the importance of values and separating reason and emotions. The violation of human dignity due to the denial of social rights is a global problem inherent in contemporary neoliberal capitalism, which tends to reject a universalistic understanding of human dignity. Legal minimalism in legal systems illustrates how the adverse effects of neoliberalism can undermine the development of health rights. The neoliberal mindset has led not only to the instrumentalisation of human rights but also to the relativisation of gross violations of international law, for example, by “normalising” full-scale aggression against Ukraine, reducing everything to a “capitalistic deal” and disregarding war crimes. Methods: This research is interdisciplinary and conceptual-normative. Epistemologically, it is based on the assumptions of meta-theoretical critical realism, the ethics of care, and the decolonial approach, as conceptualised in recent years by authors from post-socialist countries. The prioritisation of empathy, which is key to perceiving equal moral human dignity, is central to this understanding of the decolonial turn. Therefore, this article adopts conceptual, normative, and hermeneutical methods, including critical analysis of neoliberal capitalism, positivist, and postmodern epistemologies. As an example from judicial practice, the influence of the neoliberal mindset on the implementation of health rights is addressed conceptually. Results and conclusions: This paper proposes a solution to the multiple problems generated by neoliberalism and positivist and postmodern epistemologies: a cultural change and mental revival that can be achieved through a decolonial approach, which precedes the transformation of hierarchical neoliberal economic, judicial, and political systems. Overall, it is important to frame discussions about the nature of the state, law, democracy, and security by focusing on the concepts of human dignity, care, and empathy, which go beyond conventional positivist and postmodern approaches in the social sciences and legal studies, as well as the “conventional normal” in academia.