Okay, I'm really not going to be able to deliver on the title of the post. But I do want to indicate in broad outline how it is that the recent posts on soteriology (human nature, person, will and freedom) with all their "high-falutin'" jargon actually matter in the here and now.
Take the thesis that I defended yesterday, namely that personhood precedes nature, existence precedes essence. This, to my mind, has profound implications for such social-moral matters as euthanasia, abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, etc. For if a human is a being by virtue of being a person, then Christians (who derive that belief from the Trinity) are obligated by virtue of their faith to reject euthanasia (the active human intervention to make death--and not just a death--happen), abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and so forth.
If one argues that it is being a human being that gives rise to being a person, then one can argue that a embryo is human, but not yet a person. It is merely a potential person. Therefore, since it is not yet a person, we are justified in our utilitarian manipulation of this human thing. We may create as many of these human things as we want, and so long as we are only dealing with potential and not actual persons, we may feel free to do with them as we want. They're mere property: we can will them to others, sell them, and patent the various genetic manipulations we are able to do on them.
But if embryos, by virtue of their conception are persons who are human, the whole ethical paradigm shifts. Now we are dealing with beings who are, from the start, persons, and entitled to all the protections, morally and legally, we as fellow persons are obligated to provide for them. We are morally prohibited from doing anything to them that is not intended to be for them. That is to say, they are not objects of research but subjects for care.
The implications for abortion are a no-brainer.
But what about severe incapacitation or so-called "end-of-life" issues? What about persons who everyone acknowledges are persons, but are incapacitated? What about persons whose bodies are dying? Indeed, what about the dead? Here the matter is even more clear. For if we are persons prior to any objectively measurable property by which we normally judge humans to be persons (for example, autonomy, which entails cognition, self-awareness) then we are persons posterior to any such measures as well. Thus, personhood is not a measure of cognitive abilities, self-awareness or other such canons. Personhood is the canon by which those properties themselves derive. Thus, those whose severe incapacitation renders them observably detached from their environment deserve as much attention and care as those who respond. The "detached" have no more ceased to be persons than have we who care for them.
Obviously, however, euthanasia advocates want to base personhood on nature, and thus, when persons lose the capacities inherent to human nature, they cease to be persons. From there the rest follows.
In other words, it is not human nature that guards personhood, as our current U. S. society makes all-too horrifyingly clear. Rather, it is personhood that guards what it means to be human. We are irreducably human because we are fundamentally persons.
And now I need to go help the little person trying to get my attention use the potty.
Posted by Clifton at April 13, 2005 07:16 AM | TrackBackI think you lump euthenasiaists (sp?!) together into a group inappropriately. Sometimes the patients themselves desire to die...and not becau