Dachshund:
That is the sense in which the term human dignity entails a capacity for an individual person to be morally responsible.
Why would that be the case? You have not been forthright, but based on your comment about the fungibility of dignity, it seems like some version of the Hobbesian notion of dignity as worth, and worth determined by the judgment of others of your value to them. Further,a person cannot be said to have any worth until they become moral agents, responsible for what they do, because until someone is capable of acting responsibly he is of no worth to me or others.
… a rational standard by which some actions are deemed to right while other actions are held to be wrong.
What is that rational standard? How does it relate to normative and natural properties?
What it is precisely that I object most strenuously to is the implicit moral egalitarianism entailed in the claim of equal, universal human dignity as that term is utilized in the orthodox Human Rights discourse that is played out in the West today.
It is not moral egalitarianism based on your notion of moral agents. It is, rather, the claim that egalitarianism is moral, that is, good. It is a standard that can be defended both on rational and natural grounds, that it has worth in so far as it confers benefit to both individuals and society, and that it is natural because we are by nature social beings.
… a [normative] property that cannot be reduced to, identified with or analysed in terms of natural properties.
To claim that for Kant what is normative cannot be reduced to, identified with or analysed in terms of natural properties betrays a lack of understanding of what he sees as the relationship between the understanding and the laws of nature. Man, according to Kant, is the lawgiver of nature:
... we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and regularity that we call nature, and moreover we would not be able to find it there if we, or the nature of our mind, had not originally put it there ...The understanding is thus not merely a faculty for making rules through the comparison of the appearances: it is itself the legislation for nature, i.e., without understanding there would not be any nature at all” (CPR, A125–126).
You may not agree, but if you are going to disagree with him you must first understand what it is you think you are disagreeing with.
As I say, the egalitarian notion of human dignity that underpins all of our Human Rights declarations, conventions, covenants and international court statutes is philosophically speaking an intellectual descendant of Kant's notion of the term.
Even if that were true, most today do not accept Kantian morals. Every idea and every practice has its antecedents.
Kantian human dignity is a profoundly flawed ethical concept, and if you would like I will explain for you blow- by- blow why this is the case. All you need do is ask.
Not necessary. As I said, most today are not Kantians. Neither egalitarianism nor human dignity begins or ends with Kant.
If you request I do this, then you must be prepared to accept the consequences; namely, you will be confronted with a truth you will find rather distressing, the "bottom line" being is that Kantian (human) dignity is impossible to justify and in consequence the key foundation that undergirds the entire edifice of the whole vacuous (equal, universal) Human Rights discourse in the West is exposed as worthless and rotten.
How about you drop the vacuous hyperbole? It you have an argument against human dignity then you should be confident enough in it to allow it to carry its own weight.
… the "bottom line" being is that Kantian (human) dignity is impossible to justify ...
What assumptions underlie the idea that human dignity is something that requires justification? Perhaps you’ve got it backwards. Instead of starting with abstract rational concepts begin with considerations of man in his natural state as we find him rather than the fictional “state of nature”. Man is by nature a social animal that from a very early age displays care and empathy. From this perspective what is justified must be justified in terms of what is beneficial and unjustified what is harmful to us considered both individually and as a society. Care and consideration do not need justification, justification is based on it.