Kategoria godno ci cz owieka w wietle hermeneutyki (The concept of human dignity and the hermeneutics)

The object of my elementary semiotical and methodological considerations is the place and the function of the concept of human dignity in the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The notion of human dignity is used today frequently – alas, often uncritically – in many political and ideological discussions as a tool to promote certain kinds of social policy. I am above all interested in the many meanings of the notion of human dignity and the philosophical (ontological and epistemological)presuppositions that lie at the bottom of its use. What precisely do we mean when we say that human beings are characterized by a dignity? However, I will not determine precisely the different meanings,past and present, of “human dignity”, much less give a projecting definition of this notion. I devote attention – though only indirectly – to objective questions raised by the notion of human dignity and to their answers as well as to arguments in their favour. When we accept the hermeneutics as a philosophical anthropology then we see also that the notion of human dignity plays a peculiar function in it. In conclusionI state that the thesis that the human being has an ontologically distinctive way of existence finds adequate rational explanation and justification only in philosophy and a non-rational explication and a full justification in Christian theology.