Dignidad humana: concepto y fundamentación en clave teológica latinoamericana

Abstract

It is commonplace, quite widespread, to resort to the concept of human dignity as the ultimate foundation of human rights and in general, as a pillar of the ethical and legal horizon of modern pluralistic societies. The dignity of the person as the basis of ethics and human coexistence has become so important even despite the criticism of its dissimilar detractors to the ambiguity of a concept that has served to legitimize and authorize completely divergent practical behaviors. Thus, for example, from this criterion the flags of a “death with dignity” are raised in modern western societies in parallel - alluding to the ability to decide for oneself and to do one's own death — 1 and to the “dignity of nasciturus ”2, just to mention two in the field of bioethics. This privileged consideration enjoyed by human dignity is affirmed thanks to its long tradition in the philosophical and legal field as the fundamental presupposition of all moral order and the system of law and, ultimately, as the regulating principle of human coexistence. Human dignity is the founding category of all those areas committed to human rights, including the theological; a category that cannot be dispensed with if one seeks to consistently investigate the subject of human rights.