Personhood and Bioethics: A Chinese Perspective

Abstract

In the West, there is a long tradition of thinking of “being”, and hence of thinking of the “person” in terms of “substance”. The conception of substance as the primary instance of real being, and hence of the person, can be traced back to the thought of Aristotle, if not Plato or even further back to the ancient pre-Socratic Greeks. One of the most crucial characteristics of the concept of substance is its aptitude of existing in itself as a concrete individual thing and not as a part of any other being. This criterion of substance Aristotle has called “the most distinctive mark of substance”. As a primary instance of real being, this power to exist in itself as an ultimate subject of action and attribution, and not as a part of any other being, is perhaps the most important thing one can say about substance. This emphasis of the “in itselfness” of the substance is necessary, because wherever there is real being, there must be substance to ground whatever else is there as the being’s ultimate subject of inherence. Without the “in itselfness” of the substance, every instance of real being could be a part of, or inhere in, some other being, and then the necessary fulfilling conditions for any being to exist would be infinitely deferred and theoretically never fulfilled. Substance, with its “in itself” characteristic, is necessary in making a being to be what Bernard Lonergan has called a “unity, identity, whole”.