Stefano Rodotà: Homo dignus today

One of Italy's greatest jurists, Stefano Rodotà, addresses the issue of human dignity several times in his text "The Right to Have Rights." According to the author, this is always a starting point for farsighted thinking, both in government programs and more specifically in social discourse. Hence the idea of ​​homo dignus, which unfolds in various historical and social stages. Let's look at the most significant ones for an initial discussion.

A slow process for homo dignus

Whenever there have been major changes in the legal system, the law has defined a particular model of person that welcomes and legitimizes it. The rights deemed natural by the legal system itself have changed greatly over the course of history. The homo juridicus that we must all approach , in the words of Alain Supiot (2006), turns out to be "the purely Western way of linking the biological dimension with the symbolic dimension, both constitutive of the human being." This solution, advocated by Supiot, leads us to reflect on the dyadic terminological division that arises between man (biological dimension) and the citizen (symbolic dimension). This division has undergone a slow process of formation in the history of law, which can be summarised by referring to important documents:

• The Magna Carta Libertatum of 1215, in which habeas corpus does not establish a natural right of the person, but the attribution of rights to the contracting parties of the pact made between king, nobles and clergy.
• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, a text developed during the French Revolution, containing the list of formally recognized fundamental rights.
• The French Civil Code (Napoleonic) of 1804, which definitively put an end to the legal tradition of the Ancien Régime by proposing a new anthropology that would mark the 800th and part of the 900th century: property-owning individualism.

This latter legal model was corrected and expanded by labor law , and with the elimination of social class differentiation, over time it was possible to mature and resume the discussion of equality.

Homo dignus and the post-war charters of rights

On December 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 of which states: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." The German Basic Law of May 8, 1949, also opens with the words: " Human dignity is inviolable. It is the duty of every state power to respect and protect it."

The constitutional journey of dignity continued until the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in 2000, which opens precisely under the banner of dignity, reproducing almost verbatim the first article of the German Constitution.

Dignity and work

Dignity and work are now the two new starting points , which do not mark a departure from the fundamentals of freedom and equality, but rather renew and strengthen their meaning. However, if the person cannot be separated from his or her dignity, neither can the law ignore or abandon it. This very awareness underpins another choice found in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, where, in the preamble, it is stated that the European Union "places the person at the centre of its action."

According to Rodotà, this very anthropology of legal modernity is today being questioned, indeed, "challenged and radically denied" by a market logic that, in the name of productivity and the imperatives of globalization, saps human rights . According to Rodotà, these imperatives can be combated by formalizing and implementing in legal processes a fundamental differentiation of the various aspects of the contemporary concept of dignity:

• DIGNITY AS A HERITAGE OF RIGHTS
• DIGNITY AS A PRINCIPLE
• DIGNITY AS WORK: DECENT WORK

Homo dignus and digital scenarios

The construction of homo dignus cannot be achieved outside the person; it truly has its foundation in interiore homine . It must be embodied, of course, but in the deepest sense of the term: it must be exclusive, non-transferable. However, with the advent of the networked worlds of the digital, a question arises spontaneously: by entering the global world, the person becomes digital and, in fact, the homo numericus appears… can this new man still be considered dignus?

In this regard, the anthropology of homo dignus requires us to keep the human dimension , its richness, unpredictability, and freedom, at the center. Ultimately, in new digital contexts, we can affirm that dignity has come to integrate already consolidated fundamental principles: freedom, equality, and solidarity, becoming one with them and requiring a reinterpretation within a logic of indivisibility. These principles are the basis for the construction not so much of the "new man," but rather of a man who can define himself as dignified in an eco-logical sense: a man who becomes the bearer of the rights of freedom.

Bibliography

• Rodotà S., The right to have rights, Laterza, Bari, 2015;