5.3 What Exactly Falls into Oblivion?
Having seen how the forgetting of personhood shows itself — in actions and in theories — let us now ask more precisely: What exactly is it that falls into oblivion here?
The answer can be laid out in several layers — just as personhood itself has several layers. In the preceding chapters we have seen that human personhood has various dimensions. The most fundamental dimension — the foundation, as it were, of all the others — is the spiritual being of the person in a body. The human being is not a body that happens to think, nor a mind that happens to have a body. He is an inseparable unity of spirit and body, a spiritual being that stands bodily in the world. The human being is — as the philosopher Josef Seifert put it1 — a “person in a body.”
When this fundamental reality falls into oblivion — that is, when it is forgotten that the human being is a spiritual being, an independent substance with a dignity of its own — then everything else falls into oblivion along with it. For everything that distinguishes the human being is grounded in this fundamental being. The other dimensions of human personhood necessarily presuppose this spiritual being in the body.
What does it mean, in concrete terms, when this being is forgotten? It means that the following things slip from view:
First: the ontological dignity of the human being. Every human person possesses a dignity that no one can give and no one can take away. It is not a merit, not a reward, not something society confers. It belongs to the being of the person itself. This dignity is an inalienable, objective value: because the person is the highest entity in the whole of nature, she is owed affirmation and love for her own sake. This dignity is the deepest reason why the human being deserves respect and love. It is at the same time the ground of the personalist norm — the principle that the person is to be affirmed for her own sake. When dignity falls into oblivion, this demand loses its ground. It becomes a mere convention, a social agreement that could just as well be made differently — and that could therefore be revoked at any time.
Second: the independent being of the person. The person is not a bundle of properties, not the result of processes, not the function of a system. She is an independent being — a someone who is through herself, not through something else. This independent being is the ground of freedom, of responsibility, of the capacity to begin something new. When it is forgotten, the human being appears as a product — as the result of his genes, his upbringing, his circumstances. And a product has no dignity. A product is at the disposal of others. A product can be used, consumed, thrown away.
Third: the non-disposability of the human being. Because the human being is a someone and not a something, he cannot be disposed over like a thing. He is not a means, not a tool, not a resource. He is not there to be used. When this non-disposability falls into oblivion, the human being appears as something about which others can decide — about his worth, about his usefulness, about his right to life.
These three things — dignity, independence, and non-disposability — belong together. They are different sides of the same ground: personhood. When one of them falls into oblivion, the others fall into oblivion as well. And conversely: whoever really recognizes one of them will also recognize the others.
It is important to understand that the forgetting of these things does not annul their reality. The dignity of the human being does not depend on whether it is recognized. The independence of the person does not vanish because a theory denies it. The non-disposability of the human being does not cease to hold because someone disposes over him.
Reality is stronger than any misjudgment of it. But the misjudgment has consequences. Whoever forgets the dignity of the human being will violate it. Whoever disputes the independence of the person will treat her like a thing. Whoever denies the non-disposability of the human being will dispose over him.
That is why the forgetting of who the human being is poses not only a theoretical problem. It is a deeply practical problem — a problem that affects the individual human being in his everyday life, that affects families and communities, that affects entire societies.
5.3.1 The Second Level: The Forgetting of Consciousness
But there is also a second level on which the forgetting operates. It concerns not only the fundamental reality of personhood, but also the consciousness of the person, her conscious, free, rational action.
What is meant by this? We have seen that personhood does not depend on capacities — even someone who cannot think, cannot feel, cannot act remains a person. But there are views that dispute precisely this: views that claim personhood is tied to consciousness, rationality, or self-consciousness. These views forget not only the fundamental being of the person, but also the fact that even a human being who is not yet or no longer conscious is a person — and always already was one. To forget this state of affairs — namely, that personhood does not consist in certain person-behavior being actually performed or possessed as a capacity — that is the second level of the forgetting.
This form of forgetting has immediate consequences: it means that human beings who are not conscious — whether unborn children, the severely demented, the comatose, or people kept alive by machines after irreversible loss of brain function — are denied their personhood. And where personhood is denied, the protection that is due to every person is withdrawn as well.
5.3.2 The Third Level: The Forgetting of Unfolding
And there is a third level: the forgetting can also concern the capacity of the person to unfold toward truth, toward the good, and toward love. The human person is not only a being that is — she is also a being that can become, that can grow, that can unfold. She can know truth, realize moral values, love other persons. When it is forgotten that the person is capable of all this — when she is seen only as a bearer of functions, as a consumer, as labor power — then she is cut off from the possibility of a good and fulfilled life. This third level of the forgetting is not necessarily brought about by the other forms, but it can be. And it can lead to the person being prevented from unfolding toward her own truth — toward what she could be and ought to be.
The being of the human person is, moreover, expressed in the personal body. The human being is not a mind that happens to be stuck in a body, but a person in a body. His body is the expression of his personhood. That is why false views of the body — such as treating it as mere matter, as a repairable machine, as a commodity — also constitute forms of the forgetting. Whoever turns the human being’s body into a thing turns the human being himself into a thing.
None of these forms of forgetting is adequate to the person. They violate the personalist norm — the principle that the person is to be affirmed and loved for her own sake. And none of them does justice to the human being and his dignity — neither in thinking nor in acting.
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