Understanding Human Dignity

Abstract

Throughout his Adventures of Ideas, Whitehead defines the history of civilization as the progressive formation of the idea of human dignity, just like a “tiny glow announcing the dawn of a new life order”1. According to Patočka, the role of what he calls the “moderate supercivilization” consists in the creation of goods that can be universalized to all human beings. He insists particularly on two core values: scientific truth and human liberty. Both configure the “recognition of man by man as equal”2. Even if he does not talk explicitly about human dignity, Patočka refers to this notion as the central value of western civilization. Also, and from an historical perspective, Béjar thinks that the “greatest revolution of modernity is the affirmation of the individual as the deciding and unquestionable center of the collective organization”3. With these three preliminary references, it might be possible to think about the idea of human dignity. On one hand, this notion would be the mirror of a moral progress: social and political organizations would find their “raison d’être” in the respect of the value of human being. On the other hand, human dignity would match with a specific historical period (Modernity) and a particular civilization (the Western world).