Human dignity as a component of a long-lasting and widespread conceptual construct.

"He is not alone in this way of thinking. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also links human dignity to reason, but there is an ambiguous understanding of “person” and “human being,” as we read in Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience.” Strictly speaking, this is false: Every human being is not endowed with reason and conscience, even if we understand reason as a potentiality (think of anencephalic babies). Contrariwise, it is by definition true that every person is endowed with reason and conscience. This ambiguity is rather widespread; even Kant speaks sometimes of “personhood,” sometimes of “humanity.” It is the source of many problems, particularly the question of the moral status of so-called marginal human beings, i.e. human beings who are not persons in the sense defined above (embryos, anencephalic babies, PVS patients, etc.). These two bans are conspicuous in internationally important texts. For example, in the preamble of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine (Oviedo Convention), we read that the European Council is “conscious that the misuse of biology and medicine may lead to acts endangering human dignity,” in the sense that biotechnologies could treat human beings in a manner not appropriate for the being they are. In the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights proclaimed by UNESCO, we find the same lesson, for example, in Article 2: “Dignity makes it imperative not to reduce individuals to their genetic characteristics and to respect their uniqueness and diversity.” Medicine and biology could reduce human beings to the status of objects for experiment or could consider them as completely determined by their genome, thus treating them as non-persons (Beyleveld and Brownsword 2002 ). First, as already mentioned, there is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1949. The previous declaration of 1789 did not mention dignity, but only the equality of rights. Several international texts refer explicitly to that Universal Declaration , especially in the domain of biotechnology. National legal texts mention dignity, some in their constitution (especially Germany and Switzerland) and others in various legal documents (for example, France and Sweden). This use, inspired by the Universal Declaration , is neutral in the sense that it does not correspond to any partisan doctrine: It is not conservative or progressive, rightist or leftist, religious or secular, even if it suffers from the ambiguity between person and human being. As a legal concept, it has no specific content: As several constitutionalists have emphasized, its content is provided by different fundamental rights, especially autonomy and personal liberty. In Switzerland, for example, lawyers believe that human dignity is directly tied to personal liberty, that it is an objective principle that must be protected and respected in the whole of the legal order but which cannot be called upon unless liberty or another fundamental right is in jeopardy (Auer, Malinverni, and Hottelier, 2000 ). 11 Even so, for most lawyers it is not a “useless concept” because it signifies a commitment to the particular value of human beings. As Roberto Andorno notes: It is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to provide a justification of human rights without making some reference, at least implicitly, to the idea of human dignity. This notion is usually associated with supreme importance, fundamental value and inviolability of the human person (Andorno 2002, 960). "