Direito em Movimento - Volume 19 - Número 1 - 1º semestre - 2021

88 Direito em Movimento, Rio de Janeiro, v. 19 - n. 1, p. 81-107, 1º sem. 2021 ARTIGOS 3 HUMAN DIGNITY AND LAW Dignity refers to the inherent humanness of each person; it is an ele- mental value that presupposes that every human being has equal worth. It emphasizes the fundamental value and equality of all members of society – humans not only are endowed with dignity, but each is endowed with an equal quantum of dignity. (DALY, 2020, 2018, 2019, 2015, 2008) 16 But it was not always thus. As a philosophical matter, in ancient Wes- tern traditions, for instance, dignity was ordinarily reserved to denote high social or political status . The Stoics then developed the humanness of dig- nity, that is, the idea that every person considered to be a person possesses dignity; this may have expanded the scope of application of the concep- tion but still left out the half of the population that was female, as well as most immigrants, the conquered, the enslaved and the rest whose status as citizens could be questioned. Cicero’s writings may have reflected both the status conception and the inherence conception applied slightly more broadly. (CÍCERO, 1965). In the Islamic world, by contrast, a distinc- tive dignity was given to all ‘children of Adam’. (KAMALI, 2002). Mi- ddle-ages Christian theology then aligned dignity with human suffering (BAYERTZ, 1996). and again limited its applications to those within the defined community. Some early Renaissance humanist scholars wrote about man’s distinc- tiveness from other planetary inhabitants and his – always his – capacity for the exercise of free will, in sometimes uneasy conversation with Chur- ch teachings. (MIRANDOLA, 1956). As notions of citizenship expanded and with it notions of humanity, Enlightenment and other philosophers began to consider that dignity inhered in the human person and did not have to be granted by the will of another. With Immanuel Kant in the 16 See, generally, Erin Daly, Dignity Rights: Courts, Constitutions, and the Worth of the Human Person (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2d ed., 2020); Erin Daly and James R. May, ‘A Dignity Rights Primer’, 3 Juriste Interna- tionale (2018) 21; James R. May and Erin Daly, ‘Why Dignity Rights Matter’, 19 European Human Rights Law Review (2019) 129-134; Aharon Barak, Human Dignity: The Constitutional Value and the Constitutional Right (Cambridge University Press, 2015); Catherine Dupré, Age of Dignity: Human Right and Constitutionalism in Europe (Hart Publishing, 2018); Christopher McCrudden, ‘Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights’, 19 European Journal of International Law (2008) 655-724 at 667 and 718.