Humanism versus utilitarianism: philosophical and legal foundations of the human rights conflict in crisis situations
The article examines the philosophical and legal conflict between humanism and utilitarianism as two competing ethical and legal paradigms for regulating human rights in crisis situations - during pandemics and states of emergency. The relevance of the topic stems from the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic and the practice of martial law and states of emergency in various countries have revealed a limiting case in which the state is forced to make decisions that directly affect human life, health, and dignity under conditions of scarce resources and time – the allocation of mechanical ventilators, the imposition of lockdowns, and restrictions on freedom of movement and assembly. The author proceeds from the premise that these decisions rest not on a purely medical or technical basis but on a deeper philosophical and legal choice between two types of justification: a utilitarian one, oriented toward maximizing aggregate good for the greatest number of people, and a humanistic (deontological) one, which requires recognizing the dignity of every individual as an absolute value not subject to calculation. The article analyzes the theoretical limits of the utilitarian approach to allocating scarce medical resources during a pandemic, as well as the Kantian deontological critique of this approach from the standpoint of human dignity. It examines the international legal mechanism of derogation from human rights obligations in a state of emergency, enshrined in Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and the requirements of proportionality and strict necessity that limit state discretion. The article further explores Giorgio Agamben’s philosophical critique of the risk that a temporary “state of exception” may become a permanent paradigm of governance, blurring the boundary between the rule of law and autocracy. It is concluded that neither paradigm alone can serve as a self-sufficient basis for crisis legal regulation: pure utilitarianism creates a risk of devaluing the dignity of vulnerable population groups, while an absolute deontological approach does not always provide operational criteria for decision-making under conditions of resource scarcity. The article proposes understanding humanism as an external, value-based boundary that limits the permissible utilitarian calculations a state may make during a crisis.