What is Human Dignity?
By Mette Lebech, Faculty of Philosophy, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

The English expression ‘human dignity’ consists of the predicate ‘human’ and the noun ‘dignity’. The adjective qualifies the noun, thus determining the kind of dignity in question as the human kind. The adjective has a similar function in the expression ‘human being’: Here it qualifies the noun ‘being’, to determine the kind of being in question as a being of the human kind. ‘Human’ is etymologically related to the Latin for earth, humus, so that ‘human’ means what is ‘earthly’ (as an adjective), or an ‘earthling’ (as a substantive). Generally speaking it means what is proper to the kind that ‘we’ are, or to the species of rational animals, referring in particular to their kindness (humanity) and their fallibility (‘all too human’). ‘Dignity’ comes from the Latin noun decus, meaning ornament, distinction, honour, glory. Decet is the verbal form (which is impersonal), and is related to the Greek δοκειν − to seem or to show. The Latin participle form decens, -tis, has survived in the English language in the adjective ‘decent’. But dignity means, generally speaking, the standing of one entitled to respect, i.e. his or her status, and it refers to that which in a being (in particular a personal being) induces or ought to induce such respect: its excellence or incomparability of value. Paradoxically, dignitas translated the Greek αχιομα, when Latin was adapted so as to deal with logic, thus indicating that dignity, despite its ‘showiness’, is really something to be taken for granted, like a first principle. Dignitas is understood to be self-imposing, important by virtue of itself; and even if it relies on something else that has given it, or that guarantees its status, it is understood to impose itself, in and through the authority given. As it cannot be reduced to