Human dignity is supposed to be ‘inalienable’, in German: ‘unantastbar’, that is, not touchable. Playing with this word, Ferdinand von Schirach (2017) named his book Die Würde ist antastbar (Human dignity can be touched), by which he means ‘destroyed’. He states that human dignity is permanently questioned, as human beings are often not treated in accordance with their dignity. Respect for a human being's value and dignity is not self-evident. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights just states that dignity should be ‘intangibilis’ – but in daily life this stays a desideratum.

Besides, we have to state that a discussion is ongoing as to whether the notion ‘dignity’ may still be used. Some theories compare human dignity to the dignity of animals and try to gain a clearer concept of human dignity by doing so. Another tendency is to give human life into the hands of men at the beginning and at the very end of life (abortion and euthanasia). At the same time people claim that animals should not be at the disposal of human beings.

We are living in a pluralistic and relativistic context in which important values are questioned while other values seem to gain ground. One of the latter is tolerance. Political correctness pleads for accepting others and their opinions and attitudes without criticizing them.

Now we arrive at a difficult point: am I able or do I want to tolerate something which may destroy my dignity? This may be a kind of thinking that provokes an attitude towards others, a kind of speaking that expresses a conviction, or a kind of acting. In short: what makes tolerance impossible cannot be tolerated. Destroying dignity must not be tolerated as something dies down in human beings when their dignity is broken. In such moments human beings lose access to their inner value – what mostly affects their ability to estimate other people's value. Tolerance must be founded in respect for each other. Lacking respect and relativizing human dignity infects the social atmosphere. This becomes visible in political radical thinking, brutality in society, relationships breaking easily and increasing psychic diseases, for example, depression. Most of the time an important origin of these difficulties is forgotten: the lack of crucial values and among them, the norma normans (‘the rule that rules’), dignity.