Dignity and human duties

Abstract

The concept of dignity has a long history in western culture. Contemporaneously it has had a grand expansion since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, other international treaties, and many national constitutions, through which it was tried to consolidate the inviolability of the human person. However, because of the undefined term used and the dissimilar and contradictory ideologies and philosophical movements, the declarations mentioned above and the attribute of dignitas granted to every human being are passible of interpretations that sow deep disagreements. Starting from the notion that classical philosophy and its current continuity offer to the “human dignity”, these reflections point to the specific object of our concern as jurists, the law, whose notion influenced by individualism has also undergone a metamorphosis, which includes the asymmetry with the legal duties, which have been relegated to oblivion.