Person and Human Being in Bioethics and Biolaw

Abstract

The concept of person is the most frequently used philosophical concept in the bioethical and biojuridical debate. The appeal to the dignity of the person and to the rights of the person, which anyone would feel to subscribe to immediately, hides many philosophical ambiguities. The concept of “person” is going through a speculative crisis. What is a person? Who is a person? How should we treat a person? These are recurring questions in bioethics and biolaw, that often lead to different and even contradictory answers.

Two major opposing trends can be discerned in bioethics. The first trend is represented by the so-called “personism”, which argues for a separation of the concept of person from that of human being (thus reducing the range of applications of the concept of person with respect to human beings, and at times extending it to non-humans). Then there is a second trend known as “personalism”, which upholds an intrinsic identity between person and human being.

In the context of “personism”, human beings are not persons from the moment of fertilization, but “become” persons at a later stage of development. As a consequence, there are human beings who are not “yet” persons. In addition, the same theories claim that personhood may end “before” the natural biological death of a human being, setting different boundaries.

Personalism, grounded in substantialist thinking, argues that human beings “are” persons by virtue of their rational nature, not that they “become” persons as a result of the effective exercise of certain functions. The personal being belongs to the ontological order: the possession of a substantial personal status cannot be acquired or diminished gradually, but it is a radical condition. The absence of properties or functions does not deny the existence of the ontological referent, which remains such by nature, since ontologically speaking it pre-exists his/her own qualities.