Arguing on Lockean lines, the Princeton philosopher Peter Singer adopts as sole criterion of personhood the actual possession of certain mental abilities, among them self-consciousness and a degree of rationality. For this reason he does not count all members of the human family as persons. So who does he count as a person?
In the Netherlands, a few years ago, an observer reported on the lives of some people confined in a new kind of institution. These people had a special condition that did not handicap them at all physically, but intellectually they were well below the normal human level; they could not speak, although they made noises and gestures.… They rarely spent time alone, and they appeared to have no difficulty in understanding each other’s gestures and vocalisations…
Although monogamy was not practised, the leader tried to prevent others having sex with his favourites. To get around this, flirtations leading up to sexual intercourse were conducted with a good deal of discretion, so as not to attract the leader’s attention.[1]
The quotation is from Singer’s book, Rethinking Life and Death. Having provided this account of the life of the inmates in an institution in the Dutch town, Arnhem, he writes:
I have described this community in some detail because I want to raise an ethical question about the way in which people with this condition were regarded by those who looked after them. In the eyes of the supervisors the inmates did not have the same kind of right to life as normal human beings (Singer, 1995a, pp. 161–162.)
According to Singer, the inmates were not treated with the respect due to them. Surely, he is right! Should not all people be treated with the same respect? Well, perhaps the reader has already guessed that the people Singer is talking about are not human beings. They are chimpanzees.
While the kind of creature to which the term ‘person’ normally refers is human, Singer argues that the term is applicable also to the apes, that is, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. This is because of their advanced intellectual abilities. To his mind, an animal should be regarded as a person if it possesses rationality and self-consciousness and has the ability to plan for the future and look back at the past.
Because Singer regards the apes as persons, he also argues that they have certain rights, such as the right to be treated better than the inmates in the Arnhem institution. In other words, he feels that we should show more respect for chimpanzees. In his view, the attitude of the zoo-keepers in Arnhem was an expression of ‘speciesism’. Those who are ‘speciest’ give preferential treatment to members of their own species. They see members of their own species as superior to members of other species.
Of course, Singer is right when he says that most of we humans are ‘speciest’. In particular, those of us who identify ourselves with the Judeo-Christian tradition of thought are unabashedly ‘speciest’. For on the Christian understanding, human beings are thought to have a unique relationship with God inasmuch as we are created in His image and are appointed His stewards of creation. No other kind of creature is thought to have moral responsibilities, since humans alone are capable of self-consciously responding to God, by seeking to do His work—or turning their back on Him. This is why, according to Christian teaching, humans have a special dignity and why human life has a special value.
That said, Christians are not alone in thinking that humans are special. Indeed, most humans are speciest. And this is with good reason. Are we not as a species more intelligent than other species? Surely only humans have moral responsibilities? So surely we are superior to other animals.
Disagreeing with this kind reasoning, Singer has little time for this view of humankind. He does not think that membership of the species Homo sapiens gives the individual a special status and dignity that makes certain claims on us. He argues that the worth of human life varies and that ‘life without consciousness is of no worth at all’.[2] To him the ethically relevant characteristics of a creature, and those in virtue of which it is a person, are the actual possession of mental characteristics and abilities such as consciousness, self-consciousness and rationality.i Those humans who do not yet have, never will have, or have lost these kinds of intellectual powers or characteristics, have no right to special respect, and have less right to life than a mature and mentally healthy gorilla. To quote Singer:
Membership of the species Homo sapiens is not ethically relevant, any characteristic or combination of characteristics that we regard as giving human beings a right to life or as making it generally wrong to end a human life, may be possessed by some nonhuman animals. If they are, then we must grant those nonhuman animals the same right to life as we grant to human beings…[3]
According to Singer, then, human foetuses and babies are not persons because they are not self-conscious and rational. Thus he and his colleague, Helga Kuhse, have suggested that ‘a period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others’.4 It follows on the same line of reasoning that the senile and disoriented old lady who can no longer recognize her relatives is not a person either. In Singer’s view, we should not speak of a person unless we have before us someone who is actually capable of manifesting personal intellectual abilities.
If most of us are speciest, Singer is elitist. Holding that life is of little or no value without the possession of certain intellectual abilities, he does not give preferential treatment to humans as such, but he does give preferential treatment to those humans and other creatures who are in possession of certain mental characteristics...
The Christian answer to the question above is: each one of us humans is created in the Imago Dei. As already noted, on the Genesis account in the Bible, the human being as such is afforded a special status and dignity on account of being created in the image of God:
So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Gn 1:27)
Only human beings are spoken of in this manner. On the Biblical understanding, not only were the very first humans, Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, but all their descendants are created in the image of God. In Genesis 5, Adam is said to have ‘fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image’ (Gn 5:3). His son, then, must also be in the image of God, as must the son of his son.
Whatever the Genesis stories may be, they contain a lot of wisdom when singling out humans beings as special. Most of us do, and for good reason. For a start, not only are we, as a species, more intelligent than animals, but, as argued above, we are the only creatures to which we ascribe moral responsibility. Humans are the only kind of creature we hold morally accountable for their actions. Secondly, the Genesis stories speak of the human family as one and of the child as being in this image of its parents. This is with the implication that the child shares their nature; and so, since its parents are persons, the child too is a person.
When the emphasis is put on the familial dimension of personhood, no human being can be excluded from the human family, the family of human persons. Being born of woman immediately places one within the human family and in a personal relationship with other persons. On this understanding every child born to human parents counts as a person. Being of human origin means being a member of the wider human community of persons. The ability or disability of the child is irrelevant. Being of human origin, it is human; and being human it is a person.
On this familial, relational and inclusive understanding, it makes no difference whether, because of accident and injury or illness, the human being does not manifest those intellectual abilities or mental characteristics we associate with personhood. The human person is identified as such because of his or her human, and thus personal, nature and his or her familial relationship with other persons.
[1] Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death, OUP, 1995, pp. 159–161.
[2] Ibid., p.190.
[3] Ibid., p. 205.
i Others who argue on these lines are, for example, Joseph Fletcher (Fletcher, 1954), Jonathan Glover (Glover, 1977), Michael Tooley (Tooley, 1983) and John Harris (Harris, 1985).
