Human dignity is the main value of each person, from which arises the basic principle and especially all the others: respect, an attitude that shows that man deserves to belong to the human race. Human rights are closely related to the notion of human dignity. Both notions are connected in such a way that one cannot be understood without the other.
The importance of human rights and the requirement to respect the rights of all is based on the notion of human dignity. In that sense, it is considered the basis of human rights. Defenders of human rights and different social movements turn to human dignity to justify their claims and actions.
The notion of human dignity is also central to Catholic theology and the philosophy of Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. It appears especially in the reflections and debates on social injustice, in the debates on slavery, and in the articulation of the rights of indigenous peoples by the Dominican school of Salamanca after the Spanish colonization in Latin America. In these contexts, the recognition of the human dignity of the “other” is not only the first step, but it is also fundamental in the process of moral and spiritual change that recognizes the injustice of oppression.
Finally, in the last century, through his reflection on the dignity of work and the rights of the poor, it should be mentioned that Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 arises human dignity as a fundamental principle of the development of the modern social doctrine of the Church. Later, this approach will be developed by successive popes in their teaching corpus.
Outside of the ecclesial context, the notion of human rights has also played a role in moral discourse, particularly through the Kantian philosophical tradition. According to Kant, dignity resides in humanity only insofar as it is capable of being moral. In the legal field, this concept appears, in particular, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in article 1 of the German Basic Law, also drafted that “human dignity will always be untouchable”. All public authorities have an obligation to respect and protect it.
