Aquinas on Human Dignity and Contemporary Bioethics
Jason Eberl, PhD, Director, Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis University; Derek Estes, Graduate Student, Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis University
In contemporary bioethics, Thomists typically defend a concept of human dignity as fundamental to one’s existence, as opposed to bioethicists such as Peter Singer who deny that human beings possess intrinsic dignity or others, such as Ruth Macklin or Steven Pinker, who declare dignity to be a “useless” or “stupid” concept due to its inherent ambiguity and appropriation by scholars on both sides of debates concerning, e.g., abortion and physician-assisted suicide. While many who defend a concept of intrinsic human dignity take their inspiration from Immanuel Kant, others, particularly Catholic and other Christian scholars, ground their view in the biblical declaration that God created human beings in His own “image and likeness” (imago Dei). An intriguing Christian thinker in this regard is Thomas Aquinas, who held a multivalent concept of dignity that is both fundamentally grounded in one’s nature qua “human” – or, more specifically, qua “rational animal” – and a quality of one’s moral nature that could be lost. In Summa theologiae Ia, q. 29, a. 3 ad 2, Aquinas defines “person” as a term referring to those possessing “high dignity,” which undergirds his argument for why “person” is appropriately applied to God. According to Aquinas, “‘person’ signifies what is most perfect in all of nature – that is, a subsistent individual of a rational nature” (Summa theologiae Ia, q. 29, a. 3). This claim has been utilized to argue that all living human beings, regardless of condition or level of development, possess “high dignity” and thereby, following Kant, cannot be treated merely as a means but must be respected as ends in themselves. Yet, Aquinas also contends that a human being may “fall away from the dignity of their humanity” by sinning; he thus justifies capital punishment for those who have fallen “into the slavish state of the beasts” (Summa theologiae IIa-IIae, q. 64, a. 2 ad 3). Contemporary Catholic social teaching, however, as expressed by both St. John Paul II and Pope Francis, has affirmed that even those guilty of capital crimes continue to possess intrinsic dignity qua “human” and thereby ought not to be treated as non-persons who may be killed to safeguard the interests of the state. This paper will offer an exegetical analysis
of the two key passages from Aquinas cited above, as well as other pertinent Thomistic texts, to develop a coherent account of Aquinas’s understanding of human dignity. It will then compare this reconstructed Thomistic account with post-Kantian views of human dignity. Conclusions will subsequently be drawn concerning various bioethical issues, from the moral status of unborn
human beings and those in a persistent vegetative or minimally conscious state, to what is owed to human beings experiencing various sorts of cognitive disabilities, to the concern that transhumanist aims may result in putative “post-persons” who possess a higher degree of dignity than currently existing human beings.
of the two key passages from Aquinas cited above, as well as other pertinent Thomistic texts, to develop a coherent account of Aquinas’s understanding of human dignity. It will then compare this reconstructed Thomistic account with post-Kantian views of human dignity. Conclusions will subsequently be drawn concerning various bioethical issues, from the moral status of unborn
human beings and those in a persistent vegetative or minimally conscious state, to what is owed to human beings experiencing various sorts of cognitive disabilities, to the concern that transhumanist aims may result in putative “post-persons” who possess a higher degree of dignity than currently existing human beings.