HOW UNTOUCHABLE IS HUMAN DIGNITY? THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HUMAN DIGNITY, THE PERSON AND NATURE IN BIOETHICS

Human dignity and human rights do not rest on cultural attributes that depend on the concurrence of democratic society. Human dignity and human rights like the "being of the person" (Personsein) of each man emanates from the self. If it were to depend on changeable conditions which would need to be agreed upon each time, the act of recognising something that is unconditional would become relative at its very conception. On the contrary, the only criterion to recognise human dignity that is not discriminatory is a person's biological belonging (Artzugehorigkeit). Seeing that from the very start of his existence each man possesses the inviolable right to dignity, there must not be any presumption of any criteria (morally significant personality, mental ability, feeling of biographic completeness, etc.), that surpass the attribute of the "being of man" (Menschsein) as such. In order to be able to use criteria of human dignity in bioethical discussions it is vital to make a distinction. The standardised contextual core of human dignity protects the minimum conditions of the attribute of "man's being", which consist of ability of moral self-determination, the physicality of human existence and periodic duration of an individual life history. Hence protection of human dignity encompasses the bodily dimension of human existence in its complete expansion from the start to the natural end, from conception to death. The presentation concludes with a discussion of the reasons and objections that exist in discussions of the ontological and moral status of the embryo.