A Person’s Dignity

Dignity is the state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect. Human dignity is
having a sense of pride in oneself or self-respect.

Human beings are born into this world with the same basic anatomical and physiological
features.

Almost everyone bears the same physical parts of the body. All humans are gifted with basic
human nature.
However, humans are not born as finished products. They have to grow not only
physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally but also in character and eventually mature in
values and virtues

God created man and placed him in the highest rank in the hierarchy of living things. This added
to his self-respect as human being. It is a natural moral law to respect one another as it creates
solidity among a certain unit of society and in society as a whole. Respect is a virtue that must
be given to anybody. It is an indication that one values another person’s dignity, or his/her state
of being honored or worthy.

The dignity of a person is an irreplaceable quality. It is an invisible medal that shows one’s
worth in the society.
Dignity is a person’s symbol of goodness and honor.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was adopted by the United Nations General
Assembly states that,

1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed
with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of
brotherhood.
2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without
distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other
opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.— Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, Articles 1 and 2

The Universal Declaration was followed by two international covenants:

one on economic, social, and cultural rights, and another one on civil and political rights.

Human dignity can be violated in multiple ways. The main

categories of violations are

1. Humiliation

Violations of human dignity in terms of humiliation refer to acts that humiliate or diminish the
self-worth of a person or a group.

example: Body shamming, calling others like “taba,kulot-salot, payatot, ect.”

 2. Instrumentalization or objectification

This aspect refers to treating a person as an instrument or as means to achieve some other
goal.

You are going to marry a rich man because of his wealth not because of love.

3. Degradation

Violations of human dignity as degradation refer to acts that degrade the value of
human beings.
“belittling’’ Example-calling others like “hampas-lupa, pobre, dukha, mal-
edukado” just because you are rich and educated.

4. Dehumanization

These are acts that strip a person or a group of their human characteristics. It may
involve describing or treating them as animals or as a lower type of human beings.

Our OFWs working abroad suffer maltreatment from their employer. Some of them
work from morning until dawn sometimes their employer doesn't give them food,
or if they give them food it is already spoiled that a real animal cannot eat but they
do eat it because they are so hungry.
Voluntariness in Human Acts

Man was created after the likeness of God.

A human act is an action done with full knowledge and deliberation.
an act of man, which does not depend on one’s consciousness, intellect and will.

human act is the product of the will and is free.

three essential qualities:

• knowledge of the act proceeds from the deliberate will.

• Freedom means that the act is determined by the will and nothing else.
• voluntariness. is the formal essential quality of human act wherein knowledge and
freedom are both present.

human acts, it can be distinguished as

• perfect; is present in the human act when the doer and the action fully knows and
fully intends the act.
• imperfect on the other hand, exists with some defect in the doer’s knowledge,
intention, or in both
 •simple; is present in a human act that is performed whether the agent likes or
dislikes doing it
• conditional; is present in the agent’s wish to do something other than which he is
actually doing
• direct; is present in a human act willed in itself
• Indirect; is present in the human act which is the foreseen result of another act
directly willed.
• positive is present in a human act of doing and performing
• negative; is present in a human act of omitting and refraining from doing.
• actual, virtual, habitual, and interpretative
TWO CLASSIFICATIONS OF HUMAN ACTS
1) the adequate cause of human acts or where do the acts stem up from.

Under the first classification, human acts can be either elicited or commanded.

ELICITED acts are human acts which find their adequate cause in the will alone while

COMMANDED ACTS are human acts that do not find their adequate cause in the
simple-will act, but are perfected by the action of mental or bodily powers under the
control of will.
Elicited acts consist of the following:

1. Wish – the simple love of anything

2. Intention – the purposive tendency of the will towards a thing
3. Consent – the acceptance by the will of the means necessary to carry out intention
4. Election – the selection by the will of the precise means to be employed in carrying out
an intention
5. Use – the employment by the will of powers to carry out its intention by the means
elected
6. Fruition – the employment of a thing willed and done

Commanded acts are the following:

1. Internal – acts done by internal mental powers under the command of the will. Some
examples are effort to remember, conscious reason, and deliberate use of imagination in
visualizing a scene.
2. External – acts affected by bodily powers under the command of the will. Some
examples are deliberate walking, eating, and speaking.
3. Mixed – acts that involve the employment of bodily and mental powers. An
example is reviewing for the exams. This involves the use of the intellect to
understand and use of the eyes in reading the lessons.

2) their relation to the dictates of reason or moral worth or value of the act.

Under the second classification, the elicited and commanded acts are viewed in
their moral aspects

3 ASPECT OF HUMAN ACT

 good when they are in harmony with the dictates of right reason;
evil , when they are in opposition to these dictates;
indifferent, when they stand in no positive relation to the dictate of reason.

DESIDERATA

8. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
We should not lose hope. We need to continue our life even if it is suffocating
because of tons of problems and unwanted events-happening to us. We
should always remember that after the rain, the beautiful rainbows come, after
the darkness of the night the sun will soon arise, and the only constant on
earth is CHANGE- so everything will be change!