1.6 An Invitation to Think Along
This book does not want to talk you into anything; it wants to convince you. It wants to show, not merely assert. That is why it builds its arguments step by step and lays its train of thought open to view. You can check every step, question every argument, weigh every conclusion.
In the following chapters you will come across some unfamiliar ideas. Some things will seem strange to you at first glance — not because they are so complicated, but because we have lost the habit of thinking about the human being in a certain way. We live in an age that knows a great deal about the human being as a biological organism — that has decoded his genes, can measure his brain waves and explain his emotions neurochemically — but that reflects astonishingly little on what the human being is at his core. We know more and more about the human being — and understand less and less who he is.
Perhaps a form of the oblivion of the person lies precisely here: not in open denial, not in aggressive dispute, but in quiet forgetting, in silent passing over. We know everything about the human being — and have forgotten who he is.
This book is a reminder of that. It takes you along a path of thought that begins with the concept of the person, leads through the question of human personhood, and arrives, in the end, at the inalienable dignity of every single human being.
The basic conviction that sustains this entire path can be summed up in a few words: the human being is not valuable because he can do something, because he achieves something, or because others ascribe value to him. He is valuable because he is what he is — a person. And personhood can be neither acquired nor lost. It is what one is: from the very beginning.
Let us think together.