‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’ In the famous first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), human dignity is mentioned in the same breath as human rights. But what exactly is the relationship between dignity and rights? Are we to endow human beings with dignity because human beings possess certain inalienable rights, or is it the other way round: are we to guarantee people their rights because of their inherent human dignity; an indefinable quality that is proper to human beings alone and by which they are elevated above other natural beings? The relation between the two remains close but obscure. Furthermore, and more importantly: what exactly are we asked to do? It seems that the reader is only presented with a certain state of affairs. Human dignity is presupposed to ‘exist’, and all we have to do is to ‘understand’, to ‘acknowledge’ and to ‘recognize’ it. But, if so, we may ask, with Dylan: where do we find it? Isn't it true that we can only hope to find dignity as a result of the way we treat people? Why are we admonished to begin with dignity as a starting-point? Why aren't we simply told that human dignity is a desirable result; an aim to strive for? Aren't we running in circles by pretending that something is there which should still be realized?

In order to shed some light on these perplexities, it is instructive to take a look at the developments that took place in seventeenth-century natural law theories, which contributed to the vocabulary and style of the UDHR. First, I will briefly sketch the stage on which seventeenth-century natural law thinkers had to play. Then, I will analyze the role of the notion of human nature in the theories of Hugo Grotius and John Locke and its relation to the formulation of natural rights. It will be shown that the formulation of those rights is in no way dependent on the assumption of human dignity. Matters are, however, different for Samuel Pufendorf. In his theory, the notion of human dignity is central. As will be shown, this dignity is God-given and consists in the capacity to understand God's will.