The Ethics of Human

Dignity
 What is Human Personhood?
• Immanence : Whereby we are embodied spirits, ends-in-themselves, with a
human and divine destiny.

• Individuality: Unique, non-repeatable, irreducible and irreplaceable

We do not live, move and have our being in isolation

• Sociality:
We have a soul that is immortal, thereby connecting us to
• Transcendence: an immortal “Other”
St. Augustine – “….. that principle within us by
which we are like God, made in the image of God.”
Plato – “……that when a person has died,
his soul exists.”
 What is Human Dignity?
• There is no single definition of human dignity as the term is “abstract and
highly ambiguous” (Kass 2008: 306; Fukuyama 2002:148). A working
definition, however, would be:

• “The dignity of a person is that whereby a person excels other beings,

especially other animals, and merits respect and consideration from other
persons,” (Lee & George 2008:410).

• HD is something special about human nature that confers on us a “moral

status” that makes us superior to other animals but “equal” among all humans
(Lee & George 2008: 415).
The Silent Scream
Child labour
The Atlantic slave trade
Forced to fish: Slavery on Thailand's trawlers
“ The postulate that personhood is a distinctly
human state within the natural order is basically
an assertion of human exceptionalism. ”
“ Humanity as characterized by morality and
personhood requires no divine principle, nor
Imago Dei, but only the relentless force of natural
selection”
- Charles Darwin