Personal life means the existence of the human being as a person — his existing as a spiritual, self-subsisting being. The central thesis of the book is: in the human being, personal life and biological life are the same. There is no span of time in which a human being lives biologically but does not yet live personally. The biological life of the human being is borne by his spiritual life-principle — the spiritual soul. Where there is human life, there is a human person.
Some thinkers (Locke, Singer, Parfit) distinguish between “merely biological” human life and “properly personal” life and tie the beginning of personal life to the appearance of certain capacities — such as consciousness or self-consciousness. Spaemann criticized this “ontological splitting” as a consequence of the empirical-functionalist concept of person: “If life is not the being of the living thing, then the being of the person cannot be identical with the life of a human being” (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 176—182).
The book shows that this division is artificial: the human embryo does not first have biological life to which “being-a-person is later added” like an additional building block. From the first second, its biological life is the life of a person — a person who still lives in the first dimension of her existence, yet who is a real, complete person. The body-soul unity exists from the beginning. From this it follows: every human being is a person with inalienable dignity from the fusion of the germ cells until death. There is no human life that is not at the same time the life of a someone.
Ontological classification: Genus: Life
Ontological relations:
- equivalent to: Biological Life
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What is Human Personhood? (esp. 4.6.5), Chapter 1
Spiritual Life
The spiritual life (vita intellectiva) of the human person is to be fundamentally distinguished from biological life. Biological life comprises metabolism, growth, and reproduction. Spiritual life means the capacity for cognition, freedom, self-consciousness, and love.
The soul as the life-principle of the human person is at the same time its spiritual form-principle. It is the soul that animates the body and makes spiritual life possible. Spiritual life cannot be reduced to biological processes. It is irreducibly personal and is grounded in substantial personhood. Even where spiritual life is not actually exercised — as in sleep or in severe impairment — it remains grounded as a potency in personhood (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 137—160).
Ontological classification: Genus: Life
Personal Life
Human life is always personal life. The central thesis of the dissertation is: a distinction between biological-human and personal-human life is not possible realiter and formaliter (cf. Bexten 2017, Ch. 4.6.5). This equivalence holds specifically for human life: every human biological life is always already personal life, and vice versa. Personal life therefore does not begin only with the awakening of consciousness or the onset of rational activity, but with conception. The embryo in the first dimension too lives personally, even though the conditions for exercising person-behavior are not yet given.
Ontological classification: Genus: Life; Equivalent: Biological Life; Chapter reference: Ch. 4.6.5
Rational Life
Rational life designates human life as always already rational life, even when the conditions for exercising rational behavior are not (yet) given (cf. Bexten 2017, Ch. 4.6.5.2). Rationality is not present only where a human being actually thinks or speaks; rather, it belongs to the essence of human life as such. Rational life constitutes human personhood: it is the life-principle through which the human person exists as a person. This holds also for the embryo, the sleeper, or the human being in a coma — all of them live rationally, even though the actualization of this life in the form of person-behavior does not (yet) take place or is temporarily hindered.
Ontological classification: Genus: Life; constitutes: Personhood; Chapter reference: Ch. 4.6.5.2
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (on the critique of the splitting into biological and personal life)
- Locke, John: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Book II, Ch. 27. (on the empiricist concept of person as a counter-position)
- Singer, Peter: Practical Ethics (1979/1993). Cambridge University Press. (on the functionalist separation of human being and person)
- Parfit, Derek: Reasons and Persons (1984). Oxford: Clarendon Press. (on the reduction of personal identity to psychological continuity)