A dignidade da pessoa humana

- KANT ON PRICE AND DIGNITY

In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity.  What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent;  what on the other hand is above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity.

What is related to general human inclinations and needs has a market price;  that which, even without presupposing a need, conforms with a certain taste, that is, with a delight in the mere purposeless play of our mental powers, has a fancy price;  but that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself has not merely a relative worth, that is, a price, but an inner worth, that is, dignity.

Now, morality is the condition under which a rational being can be an end in itself, since only through this is it possible to be a lawgiving member in the kingdom of ends.  Hence morality, and humanity insofar as it is capable of morality, is that which alone has dignity.  Skill and diligence in work have a market price;  wit, lively imagination and humor have a fancy price;  on the other hand, fidelity in promises and benevolence from basic principles (not from instinct) have an inner worth.  Nature, as well as art, contains nothing that, lacking these, it could put in their place;  for their worth does not consist in the effects arising from them, in the advantage and use they provide, but in dispositions, that is, in maxims of the will that in this way are ready to manifest themselves through actions, even if success does not favor them.  Such actions also need no recommendation from any subjective disposition or taste, so as to be looked upon with immediate favor and delight;  nor do they need any immediate propensity or feeling for them;  they present the will that practices them as the object of an immediate respect, and nothing but reason is required to impose them upon the will, not to coax them from it, which latter would in any case be a contradiction in the case of duties.  This estimation therefore lets the worth of such a cast of mind be cognized as dignity and puts it infinitely above all price, with which it cannot be brought into comparison or competition at all without, as it were, assaulting its holiness.

(From Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated and edited by Mary Gregor [NY:  Cambridge, 1998], pp. 42-43.)

-          Os demais direitos fundamentais se originam da dignidade da pessoa humana, de forma que este é a raiz de todos e não é possível haver embate ou conflito aparente entre ele com os demais. A dignidade de cada indivíduo é o objetivo que se deseja alcançar com a existência dos demais direitos e garantias fundamentais.