6.2 Perspectives — What Follows from This?
The question of what the human being is is not a purely academic one. It has consequences — for how we live together, for our laws, for how we treat the most vulnerable among us. What follows from the insights of this book?
6.2.1 The Human Being Is Not an Object
The first and most fundamental consequence is: no human being may be treated as a thing. Not as a means to an end, not as material, not as the object of a cost-benefit calculation. That sounds self-evident, and yet it is undermined daily — wherever human beings are reduced to their function, their performance, or their usefulness.
The insight that the human being is a person — a someone, not a something — must be taken seriously in every sphere of our life together: in medicine, in law, in the economy, in caregiving, in education, in politics. Wherever decisions are made about human beings, this question must be at the center: Is this human being respected as a person? Is he affirmed for his own sake?
This also concerns how we treat ourselves. Oblivion of the person is directed not only against others, but also against one’s own person. Whoever defines himself only by his performance, his usefulness, or his success has forgotten who he is: a someone whose worth lies not in what he achieves, but in what he is.
6.2.2 The Beginning and End of Life
The results of this book have special significance for all questions concerning the beginning and the end of human life. If the human being is a person from conception on, then he also possesses, from conception on, inalienable dignity. Then there is no point at which one could say: here is human life, but not yet a person.
This holds for the embryo just as much as for the old, the sick, or the dying. It holds for the human being in a coma, for the human being with severe dementia, for the human being who through irreversible brain damage has lost every possibility of conscious experience. As long as there is human life, there is a human person.
This insight resists every practice that would deny certain human beings personhood in order to place them at our disposal — whether for research, for economic interests, or out of a misconceived mercy. To deny a human being personhood is, as we have shown, wrong under all circumstances and for all reasons. That is not the opinion of a particular worldview, but an insight that shows itself to whoever is ready to look honestly at the reality of the human being.
6.2.3 The Question of the Image of the Human Being
Behind every view of the human being stands a particular picture of reality as a whole. Whoever understands the human being only as one natural being among others — as a chance product of blind forces — will not be able to grasp his personhood adequately. A purely naturalistic understanding of reality cannot do justice to what the human being really is. It diminishes the human being by reducing him to what can be measured and observed.
Robert Spaemann saw this with full clarity:1 a purely naturalistic view of the human being leads to what he calls the “deadly loss of self” — to oblivion of the person. For if the human being is nothing but nature, then there is no reason to ascribe any special dignity to him. Then he is a thing among things — perhaps a complex one, perhaps an interesting one, but a thing all the same.
There is a connection between the image of the human being that someone holds and the concept of person he uses. Whoever interprets reality in purely materialist terms will tend to define the person by its functions. Whoever, by contrast, acknowledges the spiritual dimension of reality will be able to recognize the person for what it is: an independent spiritual being.
This does not mean that the natural sciences are unimportant. On the contrary: they contribute something essential to our understanding of the human being. But they cannot grasp the whole. The question of what the human being is as a person exceeds the methods of natural science — not because it is unscientific, but because the reality of the person encompasses more than the means of natural science can grasp.
The dispute over the right understanding of the human being is therefore always also a worldview controversy. It concerns not only individual factual questions, but fundamental convictions about the nature of reality itself. This is a controversy from which one must not withdraw. For what is at stake is nothing less than the self-understanding of the human being — and with it the foundation of how we live together.
6.2.4 The Human Being as Mystery
One thing we must honestly admit: the question of what the human being is cannot be answered exhaustively. The human being is a mystery — not in the sense of a riddle that can be solved with enough effort, but in the sense of a reality that exceeds human understanding. We can know true things about the human being — that is what we have attempted in this book. But we cannot comprehend the human being exhaustively. To see through him completely is beyond our power. To recognize and acknowledge this state of affairs is essential for a deep understanding of the human being.
This is not a weakness of thought, but an expression of the greatness of what we are thinking about. Whoever reflects honestly on the human being will reach a point at which wonder begins. This wonder is no sign that thinking has reached its end. It is the beginning of a deeper understanding.
If there is a personal God — and much in the analysis of human personhood points in this direction — then a further perspective opens up: the human being is by his essence ordered toward a divine Thou. His ability to transcend himself, his openness to truth, goodness, and beauty, his deep longing for a relationship that exceeds everything earthly — all this could be grounded in the fact that the human being is created “in the image of God.” This question goes beyond the scope of philosophy. But it deserves further thought. For if the human person can transcend itself toward an absolute Thou, then there must be a sufficient ground for this. This ground can be known philosophically; its full meaning, however, discloses itself only within a wider horizon.
6.2.5 Knowledge Alone Is Not Enough
In closing, we must say something important: all knowledge about the human being is truly valuable only if it finds expression in life. A philosophy that stops at knowledge is not philosophy — for philosophy is love of wisdom, and love is never mere theory. Where wisdom is loved, it shows in thoughts, words, and deeds — in the whole life of the one who loves wisdom.
Whoever has come to know what the human being is faces a task. Not only the task of passing this knowledge on, but the task of corresponding to it in one’s own life. In thoughts, in words, in deeds. In how we treat ourselves and every other human being.
Each of us answers the question “What is the human being?” not only with the intellect, but with his whole life. Every moment in which we encounter another human being is an opportunity to give this answer — by seeing and treating the other for what he is: a someone, not a something. A person with inalienable dignity.
Who could bear witness to this better than those whose whole life was an answer to the personhood of others? A dying man whom Mother Teresa had picked up off the street found simple words for it:2 “I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.” In this sentence lies everything that this book has tried to show over many pages: what it means to see a human being as a person — and what happens when someone does.
6.2.6 An Invitation
This book has tried to answer the question “What is the human being?” in a way that is accessible to everyone who is ready to look carefully. The answer we have found is not complicated. It is this: the human being is a person — a unique, unrepeatable spiritual being in the body, by his essence ordered toward others, with a dignity that no one can give him and no one can take from him.
This answer is not new. It is as old as serious reflection on the human being itself. But it must be said anew in every age, because in every age it threatens to fall into oblivion in new ways.
To those who have read this chapter first, let it be said: the preceding chapters unfold what is summarized here with the thoroughness it requires. They show why each of these insights holds — not as mere assertion, but as the result of careful reflection. It is a path worth walking.
And to those who have read the whole book, one thought remains as a companion on the way:
Every human being we encounter — whether born or unborn, whether healthy or sick, whether strong or weak, whether young or old — every human being is someone. A someone of infinite worth. And the only adequate response to this being-someone is to affirm and to love him for his own sake.
In this lies not only a philosophical insight. In this lies a life’s task.
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Fußnoten
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Spaemann, Schritte über uns hinaus (Steps Beyond Ourselves, 2011), vol. II, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2011. Cf. also idem, “Über den Begriff der Menschenwürde” (“On the Concept of Human Dignity”), in: Das Natürliche und das Vernünftige: Essays zur Anthropologie (The Natural and the Rational: Essays in Anthropology), Munich: Piper, 1987, pp. 77–106. Spaemann’s complete argument runs: “[T]hat the human being is wholly and entirely nature, a natural being, is not deadly for the human being’s self-understanding only if nature for its part is created by God and the bringing forth of the human being corresponds to a divine intention.” German original: „[D]ass der Mensch ganz und gar Natur, ein natürliches Wesen ist, ist für das Selbstverständnis des Menschen nur dann nicht tödlich, wenn die Natur ihrerseits von Gott geschaffen ist und die Hervorbringung des Menschen einer göttlichen Absicht entspricht.” ↩
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Mother Teresa (1985). As recounted on the occasion of her visit to the United Nations. ↩