Human Dignity In Bioethics

A few weeks ago I linked to a piece of my own here in which I argued that the reality of human dignity is a condition necessary for a meaningful concept of human rights, and that a Christian account of human dignity is solidly grounded in the image of God in human beings. Nothing new in either point but I hope that my analysis of exactly what about the image of God entails human dignity will prove helpful.

Enter Zack Calo. In his recent piece, Human Dignity and Health Law: Personhood in Recent Bioethical Debate (abstract here), Calo does not enter into an exegetical or even theological argument but instead focuses on how different views of the nature of human dignity play out in the specific context of genetic engineering. He does so by engaging in a close reading of relevant works by Ronald Green (Babies by Design), George Kateb (Human Dignity), Gilbert Meilaender (Neither Beast Nor God), Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen (Embryo). Michale Sandel (The Case Against Perfection), and Jürgen Habermas (The Future of Human Nature).

Calo begins with the claim that "human dignity proved largely uncontroversial in the human rights context because it served as an unexamined background assumption that undergirded the established values of the human rights movement." Perhaps this is so by comparison to the focus of his piece, bioethics, but I believe even in the field of human rights conflicting understandings of dignity have equally "accentuated deep and fundamental ethical cleavages concerning the nature of personhood." But this is little more than a quibble.

Calo's readings of such a broad array of contemporary thinkers from diverse and in fact opposing perspectives is impressive. I made use of Meilaender's Neither Beast Nor God and found in Calo a like-minded interpreter. Calo also creates a useful typology of bioethical approaches: those grounded in human rights (Green and Kateb), those who start with a distinctively religious notion of human dignity (Meilaender), and those who begin instead with a non-religious perspective on human dignity (George/Tollefsen, Sandel, and Habermas). I have long found a great deal of value in the works of Habermas and I personally found Calo's development of his and Sandel's works the most interesting of the lot.

While I argued that explication of what accounts for human dignity can be an important wedge in discussions of human rights, Calo suggests otherwise, at least with respect to bioethics: "If one thing has become clear from current bioethical debate, it is that there should be modest expectations for the role of human dignity." But perhaps our differences are only a matter of style rather than substance because Calo goes on to remark that "human dignity is better employed as a vehicle for advancing a critical dialogical encounter, rather than as a locus for the reconciliation of competing anthropologies."

Whatever may ultimately be my disagreement with Calo, I can and do heartily commend his piece to everyone interested in the best approaches to the issue of human dignity in bioethics.

Final "Read This Book"

Gilbert Meilaender's concluding remarks about suicide and dignity are more helpful.  The misery of the progressive disorder that accompanies aging and many diseases "undermines our hope to flourish."  A straightforward utilitarian calculus could thus lead to the conclusion that one's life has no value to me. (75)  In other words, my human dignity is running a deficit.

Yet personal dignity is not an exercise in comparative valuation, it still demands respect because we are not gods, we are embodied and our bodies are not husks to be shucked when our minds desire.  The "personal dignity" of the embodied life reminds us that there is dignity in me, not simply certain benefits for me.  (Assistance in) suicide valorizes our freedom at the expense of denying our nature.

More or Less "Read This Book"

In view of the kerfuffle raised by the recent BBC Panorama poll showing that 73% of folks in the UK believe that family members/close friends should be able to assist with the suicide of someone with a painful illness or condition from which they will die, I thought I'd see what Gilbert Meilaender had to say.  Thoughtful but not as penetrating as I expected.

Meilaender begins with a critique of the "immortalist" ideas abroad today (those for whom death is an unqualified evil).  In response to a widespread hope that biotechnology will someday permit us to live forever as we are, Meilaender asserts that death is a qualified good because, on the Christian account, "if the deepest desire of our hearts is for God then more of this life could not possibly satisfy that desire." (p. 72)  But this, this argument seems to prove too much--that death is an unqualified good.  (Perhaps I'm overstating his claim a bit because Meilaender could respond that death would be qualified by the character of one's relationship to God.)  Indeed, St. Paul seems to make this very point in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Philippians where he writes that "for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

In any event, Meilaender does not believe that death is an unqualified good because"we should never think of death as a good to be embraced since the person who dies is equally but uniquely one of us" and thus "death puts an end to a unique and irreplaceable person."  Therefore, he writes, we should reject the idea "that it could be right deliberately to aim at our own death or that of another person." (74)

This conclusion hardly seems to follow his premises.  But more next time on a better argument.

More "Read This Book"

In Chapter 3 of Neither Beast Nor God, Gilbert Meilaender elaborates a point that has been made before: the widespread availability of abortion of the "defective" makes every child, even those born alive, a matter of choice, not love.  Even the youngest among us must prove the worth of being.  Prospectively unproductive?  No soup for you!

No wonder Americans (over)work themselves to death: we're afraid that if we don't continue to crank it out, lack of productivity will lead someone to pull the plug.

Human "needful freedom," our peculiar state of embodied freedom, causes us to reach out to others: "the very prospect of preserving one's life requires a turn outward . . . to exist as individuals we must not try to be only individuals." (16)  The goal of reproductive technology for some is relief from the need to cooperate in a loving sexual act to--of course--satisfy desire but also to live a life of loving intimacy in which children--whole or hurt--typically result.  We use genetic screening and, ultimately, will use cloning in an attempt to reduce the risks of neediness and enhance our freedom from potentially burdensome relationships.  The only problem is: someday we will be the burdensome one and then . . . .

Read This Book!

Gilbert Meilaender’s Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person (2009) is worth the read. I don’t recommend that everyone buy it but those who ponder the puzzle of how we can maintain the idea of the equality of persons while recognizing that the lives of some far excel those of others should read it. Meilaender teases apart the concepts of personal dignity—what we share by virtue of personhood—and human dignity—the ways in which human capacities are unequally distributed or exercised.

I won’t analyze Neither Beast Nor God like I did Nick Wolterstorff’s Justice but the former’s neo-Aristotelian approach and the latter’s analytic perspective combine and contrast in interesting ways.

A couple of paragraphs summarizing what it means to be living organism. "Rocks is rocks;" they don’t change over time. (Sure, rocks eventually become stones and then pebbles and finally dust but the original “rock matter” remains the same.) Living organisms continually change. Even immobile plants draw nutrients from the soil and air and a substantial portion (all?) of the atoms of my mother’s African violet have “turned over,” so to speak, from the day she cut a leaf from another plant many, many years ago until today. As soon as a living organism stops changing, it’s dead. Physical life entails constant growth and repair: “The very being of the organism consists in sustaining itself by carrying on this work of exchange with its environment.” (10) By the end of a goodly life nothing will be left from an organism’s beginning. Thus, an organism is free in the sense that it’s not the same as its material substance; if it were, the organism would either have no continuity over time or it would be dead.

So what? An organism is free from the world and simultaneously dependent upon it, “needful freedom,” as Meilaender puts it. An organism—unlike a rock—has purpose; “to live is to engage purposefully in the exchanges of matter that metabolism involves.” (13) That’s what it means to be alive. Teleology, not matter (DNA), is fundamental. The life of an organism is not identical with matter; life, especially reflective human life, is free to determine its own way—we aren’t rocks. But the life of an organism depends on matter; if the constant exchange of matter ceases, so does life—we aren’t God.

As Meilaender acutely observes, modern and postmodern folk jump from one pole to the other. Some want to be post-humans, in no way dependent on matter (minds separated from brains by an everlasting upload). Others (often the same folks after a really bad day or with particularly obstreperous children), deny freedom and seek surcease in the products of pharmacology (as if they’re nothing but clumps of malleable matter).

Until we acknowledge who we are—material, bodily creatures created in the image of God—we can’t be happy. Until we acknowledge who we are, we’ll continue to run away the wonder of the life we have.