This book results
from a recent international conference on Persons and, like many such
collections, suffers from a lack of thematic unity. Nevertheless, the mostly short
contributions are of a high quality and several will be of considerable
interest to philosophers working in the field of bioethics. Being a volume in a
series called ‘Personalist Studies’, one might have hoped for a definition of
‘personalism’ in order to provide a context for the various discussions.
Without such a definition, the reader is left to surmise from the content of
the essays that personalism is at home in a Christian theological tradition and
in a broadly constructivist and historicist theoretical framework. It would
appear that persons are understood in terms of a personal identity that is
formed within the narrative of a life and within the constructive context of
interpersonal and community relationships and within the benevolent regard of
God. However, this latter regard is not theorised by way of the postulation of
a soul in the manner the natural law tradition. Rather, God is understood as
the ‘Absolute Other’ in relation with which one’s personhood is realised.
Essentialism in relation to persons is rejected and, by implication in a
fascinating essay by Chris Belshaw, any essentialist definition of death.
Moreover, one essay challenges the strategy of many philosophers to define
personhood by way of a set of criteria that focus on the possibility of
self-consciousness and autonomy.

In his
introduction to the collection, Robert Fisher sees suffering as an inevitable
contributor to our personal identity and, in a later essay, he asks how we may
‘redeem’ suffering: that is, see it is part of a narrative that gives it a
place in our lives. The problem with any theodicy is that it objectifies
suffering and considers it from a detached viewpoint. Rather, we should become
involved in the suffering of those we love. Continuing this theme, Mike Awalt
argues that disaster, which disrupts the order of a life, requires us to write
about it so as to inscribe the self within a narrative. David Pailin, in a more
theological essay, argues for the worth of severely disabled humans, while
Charles Conti’s stylistically complex essay uses Lacan to argue that one’s
sense of self is formed during the ‘mirror stage’ of infant development.
Patricia Sayre and Linnea Vacca use the stories of Luigi Pirandello to argue
that the kind of distancing in relation to life and others that narrative
control can give has its dangers: that of impersonalising others and
manipulating them. Eric O. Springsted contributes an essay on how St
Augustine’s notion of the will defines our moral identity and is relevant to
the problem of evil.

In what is
probably the least satisfactory essay in the collection, Tony Dancer argues
that pastoral care has lost its way by adopting the anthropology of the
enlightenment and thus using psychoanalysis and a variety of humanistic forms
of therapy. What it should do is recover the distinctly Christian conception of
humanity and seek to inculcate that. Unfortunately, instead of sufficient
detail to give substance to this claim we are given mere theological rhetoric.
More sensitive to the role of religion in a secular society is Margaret
Morris’s argument that the Christian church has not come to grips adequately
with the AIDS epidemic because it has not overcome the psychodynamic forces
within it which lead to fear and rejection of such diseases and their victims.

At this point the
book turns to a set of bioethical issues. The category of personhood is central
to Matthew Bonzo’s essay in which he criticises philosophers such as Dan Brock
for having argued that there is less of an obligation to help people with
severe dementia because they are not fully persons. Like people in a permanent
vegetative state, they have no sense of their identity though, unlike the
former, they do have the power to act to a limited degree. Bonzo critiques this
making of decisions in medical ethics on the basis of a classification of
personhood that excludes some from the privileges of that classification. He
argues that we all have obligations to others in that we are enmeshed with
them. The difficulty is that we often have to make decisions in the context of
limited resources. Who should be helped when one of the needy ones has severe
dementia? Bonzo argues that there is no decision procedure or theory which
would overcome the need to make the tragic decisions that have to be made. The
obligations we have to others, whatever their abilities or sense of identity,
have to be negotiated in an ‘open discussion’ rather than in the closed terms
of essentialism and bioethical theory. However, it seems to me that this is
unsatisfactory if no rules are given for how this open discussion should take
place. Is it just a matter of the various families fighting over the available
resources, motivated by their obligations to their loved ones? Or must they be
able to stand back, adopt an impartial stance and discuss the issue in the
light of the requirements of justice? And if the latter, won’t there be a need
for objective criteria of the kind that Brock as enunciated?

A further attack
on mainstream bioethical positions comes from Gavin J. Fairbairn who argues
against those theories of persons that posit a range of criteria for personhood
(such as self-consciousness, autonomy, etc) by calling them arbitrary. Given
that he admits that such views are developed on the basis of seeing what features
are present in paradigm cases, what is his basis for calling this mode of
argument arbitrary? Seeing as I plan to counter his argument I had better quote
it in full. Fairbairn says ‘No reason exists at all to say that displaying one
or more of the set of characteristics that we value in human persons is what
makes a person, a person. This would be like saying that because we value green
apples for their greenness, crunchiness, and bitter sweetness, what makes them
green apples is their greenness, bitter sweetness, and crunchiness.’ And he
goes on to say that this is absurd because ‘anything else which shared one or
more of these characteristics would by such a line of reasoning be a green
apple.’ (131) But this mistakes the practical form of the bioethical position.
Mainstream bioethicists offer arguments in practical ethics rather than
arguments just about how things should be classified. It is not simply that
persons are classified as such on the basis of a set of criteria. Leaving aside
the adequacy of such criteria, it is important to see that the form of such
arguments is driven by the need to understand what we should give value to and
what we should do in relation to such things. That we classify persons as
persons because they fulfil the relevant set of criteria has immediate
practical applications. We already have the moral norm that persons are to be
valued. The question is that of deciding which entities that norm applies to.
This question is answered by saying that it applies to all and only those
entities that fulfil those criteria. And a consequence of this argument is not
only the familiar one that if a human organism could not fulfil those criteria
then it need not be given the respect due to persons, but also that if
non-human entities were found that did fulfil these criteria (for example if
great apes were found to display them) then we would have to accord them the
same kind of respect we give to human persons. It follows from this that,
unlike ‘green apples’, ‘person’ is not a purely classificatory concept. It is
an ethical concept. It is not applied just on the basis of classificatory
criteria. It is applied as part of an ethical decision to treat that to which
it is applied in accordance with a relevant moral norm. If the concept of ‘green
apples’ were a moral concept in this way then it would not be absurd to
say that because a given entity was green, crunchy, and bitter sweet it was a
green apple. Saying that would not simply mean that this entity belonged to a
certain category, but rather that we should treat this entity with the same
respect as that which we give to green apples.

The essay by Chris
Belshaw which I mentioned above reviews the circumstances under which a
definition of death is said to be important for making ethical decisions, like
removing organs for transplantation, but argues that once we have given a
description of the situation (‘the patient is still breathing, but has no
possibility of consciousness’ for example) we have all the facts we need to
make a moral decision. There is no further fact called ‘X is dead’ that will
settle the moral issue. Offering definitions and describing necessary and
sufficient conditions for death is useless. There will be clear and obvious
cases, of course, but borderline cases such a people in a permanent vegetative
state are not solved by having a definition of death. Moral decisions have to
be taken on the basis of what is evident before us rather than in terms of an
essentialist definition of death.

For his part, John
Lizza does not heed Belshaw’s advice and after a very thorough review and
critique of the relevant literature says: “Death can be defined as a change in
kind of living entity marked by the loss of some essential property. The
criteria for the death of a person or human being will therefore be determined
by the loss of whatever properties are deemed essential to the nature of
persons or human beings.” (164) He goes on to argue that what are deemed to be
the essential properties of persons is culture relative, but, in the west, the
consensus is that ‘some cognitive function is an essential condition for being
a person’ (165). Accordingly, the loss of such functions – which arises from
the death of the cortex – is the death of the person.

Anne Eyre provides
a change of pace in an essay which describes death rituals and beliefs amongst
ethnic Chinese in contemporary Malasia and Andrew Dawson draws the volume to a
close with an essay on what it is to be a person which draws on the literature
of Liberation Theology.

While not every
essay in this volume will be of interest to everyone, especially to those who
are not theologically inclined, there are many insights to be gained from
perusing the book. In particular, bioethicists should note the essays by
Belshaw and Lizza.

© 2003 Stan van Hooft

Link: Publisher’s
web page for book

Stan van Hooft
teaches philosophy at Deakin University in Australia. His 1995 book: Caring:
An Essay in the Philosophy of Ethics has just been remaindered by the
University Press of Colorado. He is currently working on a book to be entitled,
Life, Death and Subjectivity.

Categories: Ethics, Philosophical