When we say that people deserve respect or that we should value others for who they are and not for what they have, we are talking about human dignity. The concept of dignity implies giving the human condition a value. By considering human existence in itself valuable, everything that degrades one's life will be considered an unworthy action.
Dignifying implies an ethical commitment
If a woman lives in a situation of sexual slavery, a child is forced to work and does not go to school or someone is a victim of workplace harassment, we are faced with unworthy situations. To give a solution to this type of situation, it is necessary to start from a moral reflection, since it is the criterion of what is morally good or bad that tells us that something is worthy or unworthy. From this initial assessment we can try to dignify a situation. Thus, if a child works in the fields and his family receives financial aid so that the child can go to school, we are facing an action that aims to dignify a person's life. To dignify is, in short, to give someone back the status of dignity.
Dignify the lives of animals
Although dignity is a value associated with the human condition, in recent years there has been a growing concern to dignify the lives of animals. Some animal movements consider that farm animals live in unworthy and unacceptable conditions. This concern for the existence of animals forces us to ask ourselves whether dignity as a moral value is applicable to animals.
Dignity is a concept in permanent evolution
The meaning of human dignity has changed over time
For the men of antiquity, slavery and the social role of women were issues accepted with normality by the whole of society. Slowly and gradually these realities were acquiring another moral consideration and went from being normal to unworthy. The change in moral evaluation is associated with reflection and debate of ideas, that is, a philosophical approach.
Nowadays we use the concept of dignity and there are texts that make explicit what this dignity consists of (for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Centuries ago another concept was used, honor. In any case, honor and dignity express the same idea: the recognition that the existence of an individual deserves.
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