Dignity

Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically. In this context, it is of significance in morality, ethics, law and politics as an extension of the Enlightenment-era concepts of inherent, inalienable rights. The term may also be used to describe personal conduct, as in "behaving with dignity".
The content of contemporary dignity is derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, summarized in the principle that every human being has the right to human dignity. In Article 1, it is stipulated that 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Etymology

The English word "dignity", attested from the early 13th century, comes from Latin concept of Dignitas , variously translated as "worthiness" or "prestige",
by way of French dignité.

Modern use

English-speakers often use the word "dignity" in proscriptive and cautionary ways: for example, in politics it can be used to critique the treatment of oppressed and vulnerable groups and peoples, but it has also been applied to cultures and sub-cultures, to religious beliefs and ideals, and even to animals used for food or research.
"Dignity" also has descriptive meanings pertaining to the worth of human beings. In general, the term has various functions and meanings depending on how the term is used and on the context.
In ordinary modern usage, the word denotes "respect" and "status", and it is often used to suggest that someone is not receiving a proper degree of respect, or even that they are failing to treat themselves with proper self-respect. There is also a long history of special philosophical use of this term. However, it is rarely defined outright in political, legal, and scientific discussions. International proclamations have thus far left dignity undefined, and scientific commentators, such as those arguing against genetic research and algeny, cite dignity as a reason but are ambiguous about its application.
Aurel Kolnai states:

Dignity also tends to connote the features of self-contained serenity, of a certain inward and toned-down but yet translucent and perceptible power of self-assertion: the dignified type of character is chary of emphatic activity rather than sullenly passive, perhaps impassive rather than impassible, patient rather than anxiously defensive, and devoid but not incapable of aggressiveness.

Violations

Examples

Some of the practices that violate human dignity include torture, rape, social exclusion, labor exploitation, bonded labor, and slavery.
Both absolute and relative poverty are violations of human dignity, although they also have other significant dimensions, such as social injustice. Absolute poverty is associated with overt exploitation and connected to humiliation, but being dependent upon others to stay alive is a violation of dignity even in the absence of more direct violations. Relative poverty, on the other hand, is a violation because the cumulative experience of not being able to afford the same clothes, entertainment, social events, education, or other features of typical life in that society results in subtle humiliation; social rejection; marginalization; and consequently, a diminished self-respect.
Another example of violation of human dignity, especially for women in developing countries, is lack of sanitation. Having no access to toilets leaves currently about 1 billion people of the world with no choice other than to defecate in the open, which has been declared by the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations as an affront to personal dignity. Human dignity is also violated by the practice of employing people in India for "manual scavenging" of human excreta from unsanitary toiletsusually by people of a lower caste, and more often by women than men. Female genital mutilation has been considered by Pope Francis I to be an example of a practice that violates human dignity.
The movie The Magic Christian depicts a wealthy man and his son who test the limits of dignity by forcing people to perform self-degrading acts for money. The Simpsons episode "Homer vs. Dignity" has a similar plot.

Philosophical history

Pico della Mirandola

A philosopher of the Renaissance, Pico della Mirandola, granted dignity to ideas and to beings. In his "Oration on the Dignity of Man", he told hostile clerics about the dignity of the liberal arts and about the dignity and the glory of angels. His comments implied the dignity of philosophers. This oration is commonly seen as one of the central texts of the Renaissance, intimately tied with the growth of humanist philosophies.

Immanuel Kant

A philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant held that there were things that should not be discussed in terms of value, and that these things could be said to have dignity. 'Value' is necessarily relative, because the value of something depends on a particular observer's judgment of that thing. Things that are not relativethat are "ends in themselves", in Kant's terminologyare by extension beyond all value, and a thing is an end in itself only if it has a moral dimension; if it represents a choice between right and wrong. In Kant's words: "Morality, and humanity as capable of it, is that which alone has dignity." Specifically with respect to human dignity, which his writings brought from relative obscurity in Western philosophy into a focal point for philosophers, Kant held that "free will" is essential; human dignity is related to human agency, the ability of humans to choose their own actions.

Mortimer Adler and Alan Gewirth

Philosophers of the late 20th century who have written significant works on the subject of dignity include Mortimer Adler and Alan Gewirth. Gewirth's views on human dignity are typically compared and contrasted with Kant's, for like Kant he theorizes that human dignity arises from agency. But while sharing Kant's view that rights arise from dignity, Gewirth focused far more than Kant on the positive obligations that dignity imposed on humans, the moral requirement not only to avoid harming but to actively assist one another in achieving and maintaining a state of "well-being".
Among other topics, including the dignity of labor, Adler extensively explored the question of human equality and equal right to dignity. According to Adler, the question of whether humans have equal right to dignity is intrinsically bound in the question of whether human beings are truly equal, which itself is bound in the question of whether human beings are a distinct class from all things, including animals, or vary from other things only by degree. Adler wrote that the only sense in which it is true that all human beings are equal is that they are equally distinct from animals. "The dignity of man," he said, "is the dignity of the human being as a person—a dignity that is not possessed by things." To Adler, failure to recognize the distinction challenged the right of humans to equal dignity and equal treatment.

Others

Dan Egonsson, followed by Roger Wertheimer, argued that while it is conventional for people to equate dignity with 'being human', people generally also import something other than mere humanness to their idea of dignity. Egonsson suggested that an entity must be both human and alive to merit an ascription of dignity, while Wertheimer states "it is not a definitional truth that human beings have human status."
According to Arthur Schopenhauer, dignity is opinion of others about our worth and subjective definition of dignity is our fear from this opinion of others.
Karl Marx's views on dignity were complex, and debates over the role of dignity in his thought relate to the question of whether Marx's critique of capitalism had a moral dimension. Marx wrote positively about dignity in his early work, and suggested it could underpin his theory of alienation; however he elsewhere rejected the view that humans have a right to dignity, and argued that moral norms could not form the basis of a critique of capitalism because they form part of society's ideological superstructure. The philosopher Somogy Varga argues that Marx's account of dignity forms part of a critique of Kantian ethics as unjustifiably imagining moral values to be transhistorical rather than emerging from historical processes and social practices.
More recently, Philippe-André Rodriguez has argued that human dignity is best understood as an essentially contested concept. As he argues, "it seems that it is this very nature of the concept that has allowed, on the one hand, human rights to receive such international acceptance as a theoretical enterprise and, on the other hand, has led the concept to be constantly challenged by different cultures worldwide."