Abstract
Recent advances in medicine and the biomedical sciences have raised a number of ethical issues that medical ethics or, more broadly, bioethics have treated. Ingredient in such considerations, however, are fundamentally conceptual and ontological issues. To talk of the sanctity of life, for example, presupposes that one knows (1) what life is, and (2) what makes for its sanctity. More importantly, to talk of the the rights of persons presupposes that one knows what counts as a person. In this paper I will provide an examination of the concept of person and will argue that the terms “human life” and even “human person” are complex and heterogeneous terms. I will hold that human life has more than one meaning and I will then indicate how the recognition of these multiple meanings has important implications for medicine.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Slack’s Law Dictionary, 4th ed., rev., s.v. “death.”
For the first such statutory definition of death see: “Definition of Death,” Kan. Stat. Ann., secs. 77–202 (1970).
Willard Gaylin, “Harvesting the Dead,” Harper’s Magazine, 249 (September, 1974), 23–30.
Willard Gaylin, “Harvesting the Dead,” Harper’s Magazine, 249 (September, 1974), p. 28.
Willard Gaylin, “Harvesting the Dead,” Harper’s Magazine, 249 (September, 1974), p. 28.
Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, trans. Thomas K. Abbott, 6th ed. (1873; rpt. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909), p. 46;
Kants gesammelte Schriften, 23 vols., Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, eds. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902–56), IV, p. 428.
Kants gesammelte Schriften, 23 vols., Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, eds. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902–56), IV, p. 428.
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue: Part II of The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James Ellington (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), p. 23;
Akademie Textausgabe, VI, 223.
Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th ed., rev., s.v. “person.”
Strictly, the current whole-brain-oriented definition of death distinguishes between a vegetative level of biological life (that which can exist after whole-brain death) and all higher levels. Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death, “A Definition of Irreversible Coma,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 205 (August 5, 1968), 85–88;
Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the American Electroencephalographic Society on EEG Criteria for Determination of Cerebral Death, “Cerebral Death and the Electroencephalogram,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 209 (September 8, 1969), 1505–1510.
See also, President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Defining Death (Wahington DC: US Government Prinring Office, 1981). The commentary on the proposed Uniform Determination of Death Act is unsympathetic to regarding the brain’s importance as lying in its sponsoring consciousness. For criticism of this position, see Richard M. Zaner (ed.), Death: Beyond Whole-Brain Dead Criteria (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988).
I have treated these issues more fully elsewhere. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., The Foundations of Bioethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 110–113.
If one held that zygotes were persons (i.e., that persons begin at conception), one would have to account for how persons can split into two (i.e., monozygous twins), and for the fact that perhaps half of all persons die in utero. That is, there is evidence to indicate that perhaps up to 50 percent of all zygotes never implant Arthur T. Hertig, “Human Trophoblast: Normal and Abnormal,” American Journal of Clinical Pathology, 47 (March, 1967), 249–268.
Even if such practices might involve some disvalue, it would surely not be that of taking the life of a person. Also, one must recognize that if intrauterine contraceptive devices act by preventing the implantation of the zygote, they would count as a form of abortion.
Both Aristotle and St Thomas held that human persons developed at some point after conception. See Aristotle, Historia Animalium, Book II, Chapter 3, 583 b, and St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1, Q 118, art, 2, reply to obj. 2. See also St Thomas Aquinas, Opera Omnia, XXVI (Paris: Vives, 1875), in Aristoteles Stagiritae: Politicorum seu de Rebus Civilibus, Book II, Lectio XII, p. 484, and Opera Omnia, XI, Commentum in Quartum Librum Senteniarium Magistri Petri Lombardi, Distinctio XXXI, Expositio Textus, p. 127.
Michael Tooley, “A Defense of Abortion and Infanticide,” The Problem of Abortion, ed. Joel Feinberg (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), pp. 51–91.
One might think that a counterexample exists in the case of sleeping persons. That is, a person while asleep is not self-conscious and rational, and would seem in the absence of a doctrine of potentiality not to be a person and to be therefore open to being used by others. A sleeping person is, though, a person in three senses in which a fetus or infant is not First, in speaking of the sleeping person, one can know of whom one speaks in the sense of having previously known him before sleep. One therefore can know whose rights would be violated should that “person” be killed while asleep. His right to life would in part be analogous to a dead man’s right to have a promise kept that had been made to him, when he was a self-conscious living person. In contrast, the fetus is not yet a person, an entity to whom, for example, promises can be anything but a metaphorical sense. Second, the sleeping man has a concrete presence in the world that is uniquely his, a fully intact functioning brain. Though asleep, the fully developed physical presence of the person continues. Third, the gap of sleep will be woven together by the life of the person involved: he goes to sleep expecting to awake and awakes to bring those past expectations into his present life. In short, one is not dealing with the potentiality of something to become a person, but with the potentiality of a person to resume his life after sleep.
See, for example, R. C. Macmillan, H. T. Engelhardt, and S. F. Spicker (eds.), Euthanasia and the Newborn (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987).
It is important to note that whole-brain-dead adults fail to be persons in a social sense because they lack the ability for social interaction, not because they lack the potentiality to become persons. Markedly senile individuals can thus be persons socially long after they are no longer persons strictly.
H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., The Foundations of Bioethics, pp. 115–119.
That is, once one is committed to refraining from killing infants because of a general interest in the value of the role child, one is committed to caring for infants so as not to injure the persons (strict) who will develop out of those infants. If one were to treat infants poorly, one would set into motion a chain of events that would injure the persons who would come to exist in the future (i.e., the persons such injured infants would become). But this presupposes that one has already decided on other grounds that infants should not be subject to infanticide. S. I. Benn fails to make this point: see “Abortion, Infanticide, and Respect for Persons,” in The Problem of Abortion, p. 102.
It is not merely that it is difficult to impose a positive duty upon parents when that positive duty would involve great hardship, but that the actual object of that duty is not a person strictly. This gives considerable ground for skepticism regarding the current Baby Doe regulations. See McMillan et al. (eds.), Euthanasia and the Newborn.
See, for example, John E. Schowalter et al., “The Adolescent Patients Decision to Die,” Pediatrics, 51 (January 1973), 97–103:
Robert M. Veatch, ed., “Case Studies in Bioethics, Case No. 315,” Hastings Center Report, 4 (September, 1974), 8–10.
The issue with adolescents is not that they are not persons, but that special claims to act paternalistically can be made on their behalf by parents.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 The Humana Press Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Engelhardt, H.T. (1988). Medicine and the Concept of Person. In: Goodman, M.F. (eds) What Is a Person?. Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3950-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3950-5_8
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-8412-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-3950-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive