This chapter outlines the main debates on the meaning of human dignity from Western humanist thought and perspective. These debates have edges and complexities that, although they began in antiquity, are still ongoing and open. The various tensions that accompany the debate make it impossible to reach a consensus on the character of human dignity. Rather than resolving these tensions in order to shape a single concept, this chapter shows the historical evolution of the concept on the basis of successive relevant authors of the time, namely, Aristotle, Cicerón, Augustine of Hippo, Pico Della Mirandola, Locke, Voltaire, Hume, Rosseau, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Bloch, Arendt, Agamben, Schmitt, Habermas, Rawls, and Nussbaum, who have shed light on the dimensions of dignity and its scope. The concept of dignity is still open; the question of its inherence, its collective dimension, its relationship with freedom, autonomy, and equality, as well as its possible institutional configuration in law are tensions that accompany the debate around the concept.