The clause of human dignity has led to an admirably body of jurisprudence developed by the German Constitutional Court and is treated as the controlling norm by which all individual rights are interpreted.
　　　　 The philosophical cornerstone of the German constitutional jurisprudence remains the Kantian tradition, infused with the Christian natural law and social democratic thoughts.
　　　　
　On the other hand, moral idealism in Kant’s philosophy took a radical subjective turn in the existentialist development during the war period.
　　　　 In searching for a secure place for human freedom and dignity in a hostile human environment, the existentialists turned to the inner world of human consciousness, and identified the dignity of man with the freedom of choosing and making oneself.Radical and unfettered freedom now becomes the sole foundation of all values.In a representative work,
　　　　 for example, Sartre underscores the famous existentialist theme: “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself”; “Man makes himself; he is not found ready-made; he makes himself by the choice of his morality, and he cannot but choose a morality”.
　　　　 Through free choice a man becomes responsible for his actions.Indeed, Sartre goes beyond Kant’s universality of moral laws when he declares that man not only legislates for himself, but is also “a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind”, and thus become “responsible for myself and for all men”.
　　　　 But, although Sartre seems to agree with Kant that certain form of morality is universal, he rejects any notion of a priori moral laws, and insists that “One can choose anything”,
　　　　 as long as the choice is made freely.He further rejects the Kantian version of humanism, which takes man as the end in itself and as the ultimate value.To the contrary, the existentialists would “never take man as the end, since man is still to be determined”.
　　　　 Of course, at the same time, the existentialists reject the Christian theology as the proper account of human morality.There is neither a God who created mankind with fixed human nature nor the Ten Amendments which inexorably order human beings to refrain from doing certain things; every man is completely free and responsible for every action he takes, even though it is taken without any rational justification.As existentialism treats individual choices as fundamentally groundless, irrational, and absurd, it has often been attacked for advancing moral nihilism.For our purpose, the radically subjective orientation of existentialism seems to have undermined its chance of success in searching for human dignity.
　　　　 After all, it is difficult to make sense of human responsibility without any guiding principle, or to see the dignity in human beings as moral agents whose value choices are entirely without rational ground.A solid basis for human dignity and freedom is yet to be established.
　In seeking to provide the philosophical foundation for the respect and protection of individual rights, several attempts have been made recently to reinvestigate the meaning of human dignity.While authors in the Judeo-Christian tradition continue to maintain that human dignity is to be ultimately based upon the theological premise that God created man in his own image,

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