Concepts of Person and Christian Ethics

We are now in a position to draw together some of the issues that have been considered in chapters 1-4. We have seen the contested nature of ‘personhood’ and some of the different contexts in which the concept has been used. It appears that one of its attractions to some moral philosophers is the possibility that it seems to allow persons to be distinguished from human beings. In a medical context of scarce resources and new technology which is multiplying the occasions when more human needs can be met only by establishing criteria to determine which individuals and needs should benefit from these resources, a distinction between human being and person which automatically gave preference to ‘persons’ would seem a great boon to hard-pressed medical teams and their ethical panels. In situations where life can be prolonged almost indefinitely, but only at great cost, on a life-support system, it would seem to be an advantage to know in advance that ‘persons’ had preference and that human life without the protection of personhood need not be preserved in the same way.

This apparent advantage, however, is also being purchased at great cost, both in terms of the human lives which may be unjustly neglected or terminated and in terms of a mistaken conceptual clarity. We have already referred to some of the problems in the so-called solutions of Tooley and Singer in respect of abortion and infanticide and the treatment of non-human animals (similar problems arise also in the case of euthanasia): the lack of consistency between the utilitarian stance which these writers adopt and neglect of the future potential of the foetus, and between concern for the welfare of non-human animals and a willingness to contemplate the killing of certain human beings.