Ethics Finder

Person / Personhood

Historically the term ‘person’ derives from that of a persona or character as this was represented by a masked figure in a play. While these would generally be human characters they might also represent human-like creatures or gods. These characters or personas combined psychological and moral characteristics in ways that gave rise to comedy or tragedy. This type of dramatic construction served to express and explore familiar aspects of human nature and personality types, so ‘personas’ were actually artistic representations of what we would recognise as human person types. Significantly, however, such individuals were conceived to have developed capacities of thought, emotion, agency and language. This gave rise to the question is personhood to be identified with being human or is it a condition and status typically but not always coincident with human nature? On the one side the idea of God and angels as personal beings disconnected it from humanness as such, while on the other human babies and severely mentally incapacitated adults could seem to lack the features associated with persons. These considerations fuelled dualism according to which a person is a mind inhabiting a body or the union of a mind and a body, and the idea that in the case of human beings, personhood is a condition or status rather that an essential nature. The ethical implications of such reflections are complex but have sometimes been thought to bear on issues of abortion and involuntary euthanasia via the idea that while it may be wrong to kill an innocent human person it may not be wrong to kill a human being who has failed to attain or who has lost personhood. Against, this however, there is an ambiguity in the use of such terms as ‘human being’, ‘normal human’, ‘human person’, etc., involving equivocation between overall and stage concepts. Embryo, foetus, baby, infant, child, youth, and adult are all phases in the life of a human being. What powers and capacities are possessed and expressed depends upon phases, developmental trajectories, and conditions. Where a characteristic of the sort associated with persons such as emotions, agency or the power of language is not expressed where it would be expected, or where it has not even been developed when expected, or subsequently lost we look for an explanation in terms of some inhibiting cause or impediment in the individual or its environment. This could be something organic, brain damage, genetic glitch, deafness, etc, or the presence or absence of something external – violence, lack of stimulation, etc. Thus the characteristics identified with human persons are in fact those associated with human beings. Accordingly, the attempt to separate them fails and with it arguments that human beings can be treated differently to human persons.

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