HUMAN DIGNITY: INTRINSIC OR RELATIVE VALUE?

Résumé

Is human dignity an intrinsic value? Or is it a relative value, depending on the
perception or assessment of quality of life? History had delineated some of its
key features, but the advent of human rights and the Holocaust put special
emphasis on this notion, particularly in the field of bioethics. But if modernmedicine regards human dignity as crucial, it tends to support this notion while
assessing and measuring it. The quality of life becomes the gauge for measuring
human dignity, starting from a distinction between a viable and a non-viable
existence, which may eventually lead to assisted death, or to letting die. This
article argues that the concept of quality of life is of great relevant for medical
practice, but on the condition of not being used as a standard to measure the
dignity of the individual. Rather, the quality of life should be regarded as an
imperative posed by human dignity, which is necessarily intrinsic. If the quality
of life measures dignity, humankind is divided into two categories: lives worthy
of living, and lives unworthy of living, and society becomes a jungle. Raising the
quality of life as a requirement of the inherent human dignity does not solve
automatically all problems and does not eliminate a feeling of unworthiness. But
it ensures its ‘human’ value: the equal respect for every human being.