Let us do a bit of thinking: What is a Man?
What is his dignity? To what danger is he exposed by neglecting his dignity? For many of our fellow-citizens such a question may seem as a useless one or even as a nonsense. Why to think about that? In their view the man is remaining in the world just for a while and he should enjoy as much as possible in that time and first of all he has to seek his own profit without any respect to others. The society is only asked to permit this approach. From this point of view the people at the very utmost are ready to discuss the dignity of the man which is considered by them as their own rights. Slogans of media – proclaiming an egoistic profit as the principal engine of the society that finally brings a benefit to all – seem to be a convenient justification for such an approach. Nowadays the man has no more to feel shame of it.
Bad experiences – brought by the „philosophy“ justifying the proper egoism (should it be connected with the growing misery, violence, criminality, drugs,AIDS or any other menace to the society) – remember that such a „philosophy“ for a long term is dangerous and unbearable for the society. In many cases it exposes to a danger even its own adherents.
Therefore the respect for the rights of other people is again becoming a topical problem. Those who take it into consideration mostly look on the dignity of the man as on his freedom to realise basic human desires – such as a desire for enjoyment, possessions or for asserting oneself with a full respect for the same freedom of others. Such a concept can serve as a basis for co-operating also with other approaches keeping in mindthat the man cannot live without any respect to the others.
Such a concept of the man dignity might be a maximum which cannot be overpassed by those who consider the man just as a result of the natural development in the animal kingdom, eventually – as it is taken as fashionable nowadays – an ingenious mechanical construction of genesarisen without any constructor.
When carefully examining such a concept perhaps many of us feel that the man is something more. A nice idea was expressed by the writer Antoine Saint-Exupéry: „The man is who implies in himself a larger being than he is himself.“
Such a concept of the man is being presented by the Christianity. It can be roughly expressed in the following basic ideas:
1. In accordance with the Bible message the man has been created in the image of God. This similarity with the God makes him a being not similar to any other living creature. The conviction of an equivalent dignity of every man is just based on it. Therefore the most powerful as well as the most feeble, an enabled as well as a healthy man – everybody has the same dignity and therefore he should be respected from his conception until his death. This is the basic approach of Christianity.
2. The dignity of the man consists in the fact that unlike other living creature the basic measure of his existence consists in his capacity to overpass his own limits and to go above them; in other words: something incomplete is in him, what leads him to the infinity. John Paul II – whose ideas expressed in his talks with André Frossard and published under the title „Do not fear“ are we using here in a free way – explains that the man is in the same time a terminal creature in both time and space, subordinated to the laws of the mass and of the nature, but also a being open to what is infinite, i.e. to the world of the verity, beauty and good themselves. Thanks to that the man is still awaiting to be completely satisfied.
3. What really creates the image of the human interior and what objectively exists – as consciousness, verity, responsibility, freedom – that does not contain anything from what the material world is composed. It is a structure that does not remember any of structures known in the world of the nature. The roots of the openness of the man to the infinity are just here. Various concepts and ideologies – wanting to confine the man exclusively into the structures of the visible world – in fact are trying to deprive the man from his human face.
4. The God by creating the man to his own image created him as a free man. He admitted two possibilities for the man: either to recognise or to negate him. Without the freedom the man – accordingly to John Paul II – would be confined into the world of the nature, extradited without any chance to the death necessity.Just the freedom represents a slot of existence that enables the man to be open toward the infinity.
For many people the freedom is equal to the possibility to make whatever they want. But the freedom also gives the possibility to do what is not wanted – maybe because of a love to another man, because of a self-denial or because of another concept of the values hierarchy. The real freedom makes it possible to realise a conscious choice and it also demands a conscious responsibility.
The God has created the free man to his own image and similarity. Here is the sense of the existence of the man. Otherwise – without the God – this existence loses its sense.
The following well known statement of the writer F. M. Dostoyevskii is based on understanding this connection: „If there is no God, there is not any man.“
If there is no God, the man should be considered just as an animal equal to other animals. Then it should be difficult to find a reason why he should be treated in a different way than animals. The words like freedom, democracy or justice are then becoming a needless ballastlosing their content.
5. Another very important experience is also remembered in the Bible message: The man has misused his freedom. He did not want and he does not want to be „only“ in the image of the God. He wants to be equal to the God, he wants to get ahead of him.
All the history of humanity is a witness of this proud desire of the man that always brought and still continues to bring tragic consequences. Nowadays – especially with the discoveries of the genetic engineering – the man often is putting into his head the conviction that his proud desire will be finally satisfied. In fact it will bring new and even more tragic consequences than anytime before.
Therefore it is not at all vain, purely theoretical or senseless to seek answers to questions concerning the value and dignity of the man – as it could appear to many people. On the contrary this seeking is becoming highly topical namely nowadays and also for those people who do not recognise any religion.
Let us try today to do without prejudices at least a bit of thinking about this information.
JUDr. Bedřich Vymětalík
(Translation RNDr. Ing. Václav Němec)