Abstract
Many believe that moral value is—at least to some extent—dependent on the developmental states necessary for supporting rational activity. My paper rejects this view, but does not aim simply to register objections to it. Rather, my essay aims to answer the following question: if a human being’s developmental state and occurrent capacities do not bequeath moral standing, what does? The question is intended to prompt careful consideration of what makes human beings objects of moral value, dignity, or (to employ my preferred term) goodness. Not only do I think we can answer this question, I think we can show that nascent human life possesses goodness of precisely this sort. I appeal to Aquinas’s metaethics to establish the conclusion that the goodness of a human being—even if that being is an embryo or fetus—resides at the substratum of her existence. If she possesses goodness, it is because human existence is good.
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Notes
Pasnau (2001), whose views we’ll consider below, prefers to avoid “subtle metaphysical distinctions between persons and human beings” in the context of the present debate. Relying on a particular interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, Pasnau argues that zygotes, embryos, and early fetuses are not human at all. The term “human” refers to a natural kind specified by the possession of rational powers. He writes that “actual human life does not begin until well after conception. The developing fetus does not count as a human being until it possesses a human soul, and this does not occur until the fetus has developed its brain and sensory systems to the point where it can support the distinctive intellectual capacities of the human being” (Pasnau 2001, p. 108). There is much to be said for this view. But since the audience for this paper is not limited to those interested in whether this view faithfully represents Aquinas’s account, I’ll not quibble too much about which term is the appropriate one to use. In fact, I’ll often use the terms “person” and “human” interchangeably. If my thesis is right, it would not be inappropriate to do so.
On this particular point, I am indebted to the work of Oderberg (2000a, b), who provides a helpful corrective to a widespread failure to distinguish between (1) the developmental differences between human beings and (2) the essential or species-defining capacities those human beings possess in virtue of what they are. Those who wish to deny the full humanity and worth of nascent human beings often point the developmental differences between more mature beings and those who are less so. Yet for Odereberg, “it is hard to see how these distinctions make a metaphysical difference of the kind which supports a moral distinction” (2000b, pp. 35–36). For more recent defenses of this view, see Beckwith (2013) and Kaczor (2011).
For a critique of Giubilini and Minerva’s argument concerning harm, see Beckwith (2013).
This position is also endorsed by Jean Porter (1995), Shannon and Wolter (1990) and a host of others. The number of responses to it is considerable, too. For some recent responses see Eberl (2000, 2007); George and Tollesfen (2008); Haldane and Lee (2003a), pp. 273–274, n. 6; Kaczor (2011); Ramsay (2011).
Again, being “human” for Pasnau means possessing a rational soul, and a condition for rational ensoulment is having the developmental architecture necessary for supporting rational thought. See fn. 1.
I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer calling my attention to this potential objection.
Perhaps the best account of Aquinas’s metaethics is Kretzmann and Stump's “Being and Goodness” (1988). My own understanding of Aquinas’s metaethics owes much to this paper.
I am not suggesting that Aquinas understands natural kinds strictly in terms of the powers they have. For Aquinas, the powers a thing has are determined by the kind of thing it is and not the other way around. Speaking in terms of a thing’s properties rather than powers, Michael Loux explains the point in the following way:
Kinds… cannot be reduced to properties. It is, of course, true that in virtue of belonging to a kind, a concrete particular will possess many properties….Aristotelians will concede all these facts; what they will deny is that a plant’s belonging to the kind geranium can be reduced to or analyzed in terms of its possessing these properties. As they see things, it is because it belongs to the kind that it possesses these properties and not vice versa. The kinds to which concrete particulars belong represent unified ways of being that cannot be reduced to anything more basic.
See Metaphysics: A contemporary introduction (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 126. I am grateful to an anonymous reader for urging me to clarify these issues and calling my attention to this passage.
This illustration was suggested by an anonymous reader.
I am grateful to an anonymous reader for urging me to give this objection more careful attention.
While I completed the majority of my paper prior to reading Kaczor’s book, I benefited from it while revising this section. It also introduced me to several articles I otherwise would not have found.
I’m not aware that the writers discussed earlier use this term to describe their own view, but it does seem to be an appropriate descriptor.
I am fond of Oderberg’s way of parsing this point: we often point to the developmental differences between human beings in order to identify which beings are possessors of moral worth. But those distinctions fail to illuminate to any “metaphysical difference of the kind which supports a moral distinction” (2000b, pp. 35–36).
I am grateful to Beckwith and two anonymous readers for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Floyd, S. Substantial Goodness and Nascent Human Life. HEC Forum 27, 229–248 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-015-9265-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10730-015-9265-9