Human dignity in the light of the Constitution, human rights and bioethics

Abstract

Introduction: Human dignity, as coined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR / 1948), is an expression social solidarity, which should cement the relations between people. Human dignity is the foundation of all rights, such as freedom, equality, justice and peace in the world, and in Brazil, human dignity was deemed a fundamental pillar of the country’s post-1988 constitutional order. Objective: This article seeks to a deeper investigation about the social nature of human dignity and its definition over time.     Methods: This is an exploratory research meant to unpack the concepts of "human dignity", "bioethics", "human rights" and "constitution". After describing the conceptual evolution of human dignity and the facts relevant to its conceptual formation in world history - as a normative standard and a legal rule -, we address the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR/1948), the Declaration of Helsinki (DH/1964), the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR/2005), and the definition adopted in the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil (CFRB/1988). The study was carried out without temporal limitation, and included a review of referenced books, legal doctrines, as well as articles and books in the SciELO database. Results and discussion: The findings ratify that human dignity is the foundation of all rights, including those of freedom, equality, justice and peace in the world, and must also guide the rights and duties of social regulation. Human dignity has changed from a criterion of power attributed to the social position of individuals to a value of the right to freedom, which now goes beyond the right of freedom and is the basis of modern constitutional democracy, which makes possible the realization of solidarity, as well as the duty and purpose of the state and the community. The will of the subject, of society, of the science and of the state, as well as the rules of domination and regulation, must have a limit on human dignity, and human dignity is not just fundamental right, in the sense of the Constitution, and must prevail over the exclusive will of science, the State and society. Therefore, in the making of power decisions and in realization of possible innovations of science involving human beings, human dignity demands the explicit consideration of respect and promotion of it. Conclusion: Human dignity is enshrined in Brazilian constitutional law, as well as in bioethics and in human rights, and it constitutes all the fundamental rights of the human person. It is not merely a rule of autonomy and liberty, and it is an obligatory and non-derogable precept in the making of power decisions, a true main foundation of constitutional democracies.