Abstract

Respect for people’s dignity requires that we look on human beings as ends in themselves and not regard them as things. The prohibition against regarding them as things goes back to Kant, to whom autonomy constitutes the foundation of dignity. Kant’s concept of dignity divides human beings into two parts: a physical and a moral being. This does not serve as a good foundation for dignity. Instead of the term ‹autonomy› this paper uses the term ‹authenticity›, which is located in the human body . Bodybility gives us an original term for the self. From this point of view it is possible to deduce dignity from the self’s body. This makes the route of transcendence followed by Kant superfluous. It is suggested that we can regard the emotion of shame as strong evidence of dignity.