Two main streams, religious and philosophical, suggest different perceptions of human dignity. My ultimate goal is finding common elements between them and letting them converge towards a minimal common conception of human dignity. I will introduce three principal conceptions of dignity: reason, autonomy, and Godlikeness. These might be called ‘grounds’ of dignity. Afterwards, I will contemplate human attitudes toward the picture of dignity as expressed by the idea of respect. I will discuss specifically human dignity in relation to other species. I need this in order to obtain a deeper
agreement about dignity of human individuals that live in different cultural horizons. I will rely on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach which can mediate between religious perspectives and modern perspective. Finally I put my ultimate analysis forward: a “minimalist approach” to human dignity as a common approach among these perspectives. “Universality of someoneness” will turn out to be the central idea.