Dignity and Freedom

Human dignity is not decreed, it is conquered. Through the authentic exercise of our freedom and our capacity to emancipate ourselves from the norms that confine us, we establish our own dignity and that of the collective.

Philosophical foundations: autonomy as the essence of dignity

Dignity constitutes the bedrock of our common humanity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 affirms this from its preamble: “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”. This dignity is not granted by an external authority; it is considered by our laws as intrinsic to our condition as human beings endowed with reason and conscience.

Emmanuel Kant, in his Metaphysics of Morals (1797), establishes the fundamental principle: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.” This formulation of the categorical imperative places autonomy at the heart of human dignity. For Kant, it is precisely our capacity to give ourselves our own moral law, to transcend our natural determinations, that establishes our absolute value as human beings. In his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), he specifies: “Autonomy is therefore the foundation of the dignity of human nature and of all rational nature.”

But what is this freedom that establishes our dignity? It is not simply the absence of external constraints. It is above all, as I understand it, the courage to exercise our autonomy in the face of social, cultural, and psychological norms that attempt to define us, to reduce us. It is the capacity to say “I am” before others say who we are. Jean-Jacques Rousseau affirms this in The Social Contract (1762): “To renounce one’s freedom is to renounce one’s quality as a human being, the rights of humanity, even one’s duties. There is no possible compensation for anyone who renounces everything. Such renunciation is incompatible with human nature; and to remove all freedom from one’s will is to remove all morality from one’s actions.” Subsequently, Article 35 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793 states, for example: «When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.»

Relational authenticity: rethinking love and freedom

If one is free, if one lives one’s freedom in sincerity toward others, then one truly anchors oneself in one’s dignity. The exercise of this authentic freedom is particularly revealed in our intimate relationships, where social norms exert their most subtle grip. Let us take a concrete example, deliberately provocative: romantic relationships. If, for example, one feels the desire to love several people and openly assumes this, then in my view one affirms one’s dignity through the exercise of one’s freedom, through respect for oneself and respect for others, by presenting oneself as one is.

This authenticity is not selfishness; it is on the contrary the condition for a truly ethical relationship with others. I know this is rather counter-intuitive, especially coming from women, who are traditionally viewed as submissive to male power, and discredited if they are not, which is however contradictory to respect for their dignity. The sociologist Serge Chaumier, in Fissional Love: The New Art of Loving (2004), theorizes this conception: “While fusional love advocates its exclusion and sings of self-sufficiency as an ideal, the characteristic of fissional love is, on the contrary, to make room for it. The place of the third party, whether friend, child, work, or lover, is recognized.” He specifies that “the manifest instability of the contemporary couple is better than the great deception that the fusional couple consisted of: inequality of man and woman, inter-alienation of partners, sexual dissatisfaction, generalized repression and frustration.”

The exercise of freedom in love can therefore perfectly be done with respect for the other. Serge Chaumier develops: “Living together and existing fully as two, this supposes reforming our mental schemas, inventing new codes of love, benefiting from new representations to socialize differently in love. We must learn to live together, as two, without cutting ourselves off from others.” It is not about hurting or betraying, but about building relationships based on sincerity and mutual consent. Conversely, if we forbid ourselves the freedom we need, we deny ourselves our own dignity, through a form of self-censorship. This self-alienation is particularly pernicious because it makes us internalize the chains that hinder us. Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex (1949), lucidly affirmed that “woman determines and differentiates herself in relation to man and not he in relation to her; she is the inessential facing the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute: she is the Other.” Authentic freedom implies defining oneself by one’s own choices, not by imposed norms, whether gendered or relational.

Mechanisms of alienation: deconstructing naturalized norms

Ethnology teaches us that what we consider “natural” actually stems from specific cultural constructions. These cultural inventions are designed to organize social exchanges; they are not universal biological truths. This naturalization of social norms represents a danger to human dignity. When we accept without questioning that certain ways of living, loving, thinking are “natural” and others “against nature,” we renounce our fundamental freedom to define ourselves.

Psychoanalysis offers a complementary perspective on these internalization mechanisms. In his second topography, Freud models the psyche into three instances: the Id (seat of drives), the Ego (mediating instance), and the Superego (internalization of prohibitions). Serge Tisseron, in his article “Freud in the Machine: AI Decrypted by Psychoanalysis” (2025), proposes an illuminating analogy between this Freudian model and the architecture of generative artificial intelligences:

• Connectionist AI, which draws from the immense corpus of Internet data without filter, resembles a “technological Id,” a reservoir of raw desires, drives, and collective traumas.
• Symbolic AI, which acts as an “algorithmic Superego,” filters, censors, and normalizes the productions of the connectionist Id according to rules and values defined by its designers.

This metaphor reveals how our own Superego, often perceived as “natural,” is only a cultural construct, or even now technological, that can hinder our essential freedom under the pretext of enabling collective functioning. Similarly, internalized social norms can function as a “cultural Superego” that restrains our essential freedom.

The issue is not to live without rules in total anarchy, but to distinguish norms that enable living together from those that imprison souls. “Freedom is not negotiable: one learns to be free through the use of one’s will”, the Kantian tradition reminds us. It is in this daily use, in these assumed choices, that our dignity is forged.

And to continue with the example of romantic relationships, Serge Chaumier illustrates this necessary deconstruction by reminding us that “Jealousy is not natural, but cultural. One ’must’ be jealous. It is a social norm from which it might be good to free oneself.” He adds in The Amorous Unlinking (1999): “Contrary to what we have been taught, jealousy is not a sign of love, but a mark of insecurity and emotional dependence.” The Church has always preferred “marriages of reason where love is simulated to non-institutionalized wandering loves”, less out of respect for love than for questions of social and theological control. This revolutionary perspective shows how emotions we believe to be natural are actually social constructions that limit our capacity to love freely and with dignity.

The balance is therefore not between individual freedom and social constraint, but between individual freedoms that mutually recognize each other. It is in this reciprocal recognition of our respective dignities that a truly ethical society can emerge.

Democracy as horizon of emancipation

The question of dignity may seem to oppose social necessities. After all, to function, a society needs common rules. However, this vision is based on a conception of humans as intrinsically unbalanced beings who need to be normalized and regulated. But if social norms, let’s take the example of mandatory monogamous marriage, come to attack the fundamental freedom of individuals, what do they really serve? Do they become anything other than an imprisonment of souls?

I deeply believe that society does not hold together despite the freedom of its citizens, but thanks to it. A truly strong society is one that relies on the courage of its members to emancipate themselves, to question, to evolve. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 already affirmed this: “Freedom consists in being able to do everything that does not harm others.” This definition is still current: my freedom to be authentically myself only stops where the equivalent freedom of others begins. The balance is therefore not between individual freedom and social constraint, but between individual freedoms that mutually recognize each other.

All democratic discourse is founded on emancipation. This must not be a lie, hypocrisy, or distant ideal; it must be a lived reality. Social forms evolve as humans conquer their dignity through the exercise of their freedom and sincerity. Each generation pushes back the limits of what is considered acceptable, normal, dignified.

Let us think of the struggles for civil rights, for gender equality, for the recognition of sexual and affective diversities. Each of these struggles represents a moment when individuals refused to let themselves be defined by supposedly “natural” norms and affirmed their intrinsic dignity. They showed that “autonomy is not only a principle, but, paradoxical as it may seem, the only path that leads to itself.” As Immanuel Kant affirmed in What is Enlightenment?: “Have the courage to use your own understanding!”

Chaumier observes that “the traditional model was transforming at this moment, but in a very individual way, with each couple redefining intimacy/exclusivity to its own measure.” This individual transformation is the ferment of broader social change, where the diversity of forms of love and relationship becomes progressively accepted and recognized.

Our responsibility, today, is to continue this movement of emancipation. Not in selfish individualism that would deny our social bonds, but in a courageous affirmation of our authenticity, which enriches the social fabric with its diversity. For a society that truly respects human dignity is a society that allows everyone to be fully themselves, in mutual respect and reciprocal recognition, not in fear. For what enriches, what emancipates, is always what surprises, what breaks out of the frame.

The courage to be free

Dignity is not a state that one reaches once and for all, or that would be given to us; it is a permanent conquest. It requires of us the daily courage to be free, to assume our choices, to present ourselves to others in our truth. It also demands the lucidity to recognize the norms that confine us, particularly those that present themselves under the mask of the “natural” or “obvious.”
We must remain attentive to the mechanisms, whether psychological, social, or algorithmic, that attempt to limit our freedom to be.

As Serge Chaumier beautifully summarizes: “We must learn to live together, as two, without cutting ourselves off from others. We must discover the charms of polyvalence.” This polyvalence is not a rejection of commitment or relational depth, but on the contrary an invitation to live richer, more authentic relationships, more respectful of human complexity.

I believe this is our essential task: to dare to be free, not against others, but with them, in mutual recognition of our dignities. It is immense work on oneself, because we must deconstruct within us what seems to be obvious, and risk our freedom to normative social space, internalized by ourselves and by others. But it is at this price that we make ourselves capable of building, day by day, a truly human society, a society where dignity is not a granted privilege, but a lived reality, chosen, risked, and assumed by each and for all. A society where the exercise of our freedom, far from being a threat to social order, becomes the very foundation of an authentic and respectful living together, well beyond a moral order based on domination, fear, and submission.