When it came to the Christian scale of value, however, human reason was relegated to a minor place.For Augustine, human beings are knowing animals, yet reason is not the end in itself, but only the means to a higher end.
　　　　 Fundamentally faith is the precondition to right reasoning, and the faith in God, the perfect and highest good, is to be chosen freely by human will.
　　　　 Free will, then, seems to be the ultimate locus of human dignity.
　　　　 In the same vein, Descartes elaborates further that mankind can be said to partake a part of its Creator, not in its limited capacity for reason, but in the unlimited free will.
　　　　 In a sense man has dignity because he is created in the image of God, and carries within him a portion of divine substance.
　　　　 Under the influence of the humanist movement since the Renaissance, the Christian view of human nature took further positive development.Indeed, one of the earliest clear expression for the “dignity of man” came from a young Medieval priest.
　　　　 Yet the Christian notion of human dignity seems to be necessarily limited in certain aspects.After all, it is precisely the free will that makes men consciously abandon their belief in God and deviate from his commands, thus falling into sin and evil.
　　　　 Consistent with the Christian theological belief, it seems, human dignity could not possibly originate within human being, but must come from some external source.
　　　　
　With the Enlightenment, “the dignity of man” became a general ideal independent of particular religious doctrines and acquired its modern meaning.Most prominently, Kant combines freedom and reason in one to derive a unique notion of human dignity.For Kant, one’s dignity (wurde) comes exclusively from the inner, unconditional worth of moral law and the capacity for autonomous law-making.
　　　　 Everyone is in essence a free and rational being, capable of making for him/herself the moral laws that applies universally.
　　　　 In virtue of the self-legislating capacity, men is able to live in the kingdom of ends, where he treats others as the beings of intrinsic, irreplaceable worth (as opposed to goods replaceable at certain prices), and can expect in turn that he is treated by others in the same manner.
　　　　 The universal, categorical imperative would commands everyone to treat others as well as him/herself as ends in themselves and never merely as means to some other ends.
　　　　 Yet, as several authors have contended, the Kantian notion of dignity is difficult to conceive because it is associated with moral freedom, which exists not in the observable phenomenal world (which Kant, under the influence of the Newtonian and Laplacian view of the cosmos prevailing at his time, believed to be mechanically determined), but only in the non-observable and incomprehensible noumenal world (“the thing in itself”).
　　　　
　Despite its problem, the Kantian conception of man as a morally autonomous and self-legislating creature, who must be treated as the end in itself and not merely as means, remains unsurpassed as the basis for the western concept of human dignity.Indeed it became all the more appealing in light of the traumatic human experience in the twentieth century, especially during and after the two World Wars, in which the dignity and basic rights of millions of men and women were systematically trampled by totalitarian dictatorships.To permanently prevent the resurrection of monstrosities committed by the Nazi regime, the Federal Republic of Germany absorbed the elements of Kantian moral philosophy in its postwar constitutional practice.Most notably, the German Basic Law declares in its unalterable opening article that “The dignity of man shall be inviolable.To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority”.

第 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] 页 共[7]页