Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Personalistic Norm

4 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Personalistische Norm

The Personalistic Norm states: the human person is to be affirmed and loved for her own sake. This principle goes back to Karol Wojtyła and is not a mere duty or a law imposed from without, but the only adequate response to what the human being is of itself. It follows from the essence of the person herself: whoever recognizes the person also recognizes that affirmation and love are due to her.

From the book

“The forgetting of personhood is always also a morally wrong stance. It is not merely an error — it is an injustice. It always means the dehumanization of the human being.”

— Why This Concerns Us All (German), Chapter 5

The norm joins cognition and ethics: it presupposes the insight into the personhood and the dignity of the human being. Every variety of oblivion of the person — whether in theory or in practice — constitutes a violation of this adequate response to the being of the person (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 261—270). Robert Spaemann stresses that there can be no ethics without metaphysics: “We have already seen this with regard to the necessity of having to regard the other as real, as a thing in itself, in order to experience anything like an obligation towards him at all.”

The Personalistic Norm stands in opposition to every instrumentalization of the human being. It is directed against treating persons as mere means, as functionaries, or as interchangeable specimens of a species. It holds for every human person — from the embryo to the dying, regardless of capacities, condition, or person-behavior. In the third dimension of personhood, the human being realizes this norm through the free affirmation of the other as Someone and through self-transcendence.

Chapter assignment: Chapter 1: Introduction (German), Chapter 4 (German) (esp. 4.7.5), Chapter 5 (German)

Person-conforming Norm

A legal norm that is in agreement with the Personalistic Norm. A person-conforming norm respects the dignity of the person and promotes the actualization of the dimensions of personhood. It stands in opposition to the person-violating norm, which contradicts the Personalistic Norm.

The distinction between person-conforming and person-violating norms is the criterion for the moral legitimacy of positive law. A law that corresponds to the Personalistic Norm is morally legitimate. A law that contradicts it is morally illegitimate — even if it is legally valid. Natural law provides the measure of this distinction (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 225—232).

Ontological classification:

  • Broader concept: Legal Norm

Ontological relations:

  • mutually exclusive with: Person-violating Norm

Chapter assignment: Chapter 5: Oblivion of the Person (German)

See also: Personalistic Norm, Natural Law, Dignity, Person, Moral Ought

Person-violating Norm

A person-violating norm is a legal norm that contradicts the Personalistic Norm. It is morally illegitimate, even if it is legally valid. The distinction between legal validity and moral legitimacy is among the basic insights of personalist ethics: not everything that is law is also just.

The person-violating norm does not treat the person as Someone to whom dignity belongs. It instrumentalizes the person or disregards her personhood. Such norms stand in contradiction to the person-conforming norm, which aligns the law with the ontological dignity of the person. Where a legal order contains person-violating norms, it itself becomes a form of oblivion of the person. It becomes the institutionalized disregard of who the human being is.

Ontological classification

Broader concept: Legal Norm

Ontological relations:

Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.

Further sources:

  • Wojtyła, Karol (1981): Love and Responsibility, transl. H. T. Willetts. London: Collins (formulation of the Personalistic Norm).
  • Kant, Immanuel (1785): Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, transl. Mary Gregor. Cambridge University Press 1997, Akademie-Ausgabe vol. IV, p. 429 (formula of the end in itself).
  • Spaemann, Robert (1996): Persons. The Difference between “Someone” and “Something”, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford University Press 2006.

See also

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