Human Dignity and Human Rights

Abstract

The author narrows down his subject to consider whether the idea of human dignity as found in the documents of the United Nations Organization is inspired by the Christian doctrine. The article also sets out to clarify the relation between natural law and human rights.

Human rights are all those rights that follow directly from human dignity; they are for that reason universal, inviolable and inalienable; they are adequate to human dignity and they protect it. Dignity is indicated to be the source of human rights by the entire philosophical tradition regarding natural law as developed within the doctrine of the Church, and also by the documents of the United Nations Organization, in particular the Pacts of Human Rights. Human rights can appear in the form of non-positivized natural law or in the form of positive law, laid down in state or international documents.

The author shows the terms „human nature” and „human dignity” to be synonymous. Pacem in terris employs them interchangeably, and the United Nations documents use the term „human dignity”. Much attention is devoted to human dignity in the Scripture, ancient philosophy, patristics, the philosophy of the Middle Ages (Thomas Aquinas), the Renaissance (Picco della Mirandola), the Enlightenment (I. Kant), and in modern thought (J. Messner). Human dignity is considered from theological and philosophical viewpoints. From the point of view of theology it is defined in terms of man’s creation in the image of God and of his adoption as a son of God by grace. From the philosophical, viewpoint, it is defined in terms of reason, conscience and freedom. Dignity is a value that is innate, permanent, inalienable, universal and dynamic, proper only to man.

Since human rights follow directly from human dignity, they share its attributes.

The contemporary ideas of human dignity and human rights are inspired by the Christian doctrine, as has also been pointed \it by non-Christian thinkers, e.g. E. Bloch and L. Kolakowski. In the author’s opinion, the connection between the idea of human dignity as found in the United Nations documents and the Christian doctrine is manifested by the fact that both make use of the same elements to define human dignity within the natural order. Man, man’s dignity, is the central value for Christianity. Pope John Paul II writes in Redemptor hominis: „In reality, the name for that deep amazement at man’s worth and dignity is the Gospel, that is to say: the Good News’\ That deep amazement, he says, „is also called Christianity”.