Dignity and the Form of Human Existence (original) (raw)

This paper aims at showing that Human Dignity is neither something that exists separately from human being, nor a property, or an abstract idea, but as a relation between a human being and their own knowledge of the form of human existence, which can be expressed as the form 'I.' In other words, human dignity means that a person acknowledges that they owe the formed aspect of her existence to the form 'I.' Because human beings cannot actualise the form 'I' in a self-sufficient manner, the violation of the dignity of one person derogates also the dignity of the person or the persons who are causing it. This means that if I debase someone, I debase also myself because I impair my own knowledge of the form 'I.' In other words, my dignity relation to the form 'I' obliges me to acknowledge and to respect the dignity relation of any other human being. The problems arising from the cognitivist concept of dignity disappear if one takes into account that this concept only says that in order for dignity to exist there must exist at least one full-fledged cognizing person. As long as one human being in the world is able to have direct knowledge of the form 'I' every other human is entitled to dignity, even if the rest of humanity were not in position to realise this fact. Human dignity cannot thus be determined as an individual human right, but as a duty of every person against herself and any other human being.