Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Günther Pöltner

6 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Günther Pöltner

Günther Pöltner is a philosopher at the University of Vienna and one of Raphael Bexten’s two doctoral supervisors (alongside Robert Spaemann, he has shaped the thinking of the dissertation in a special way — cf. Bexten 2017, Preface). His work joins phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger) with Thomistic substance ontology and makes this synthesis fruitful for contemporary medical ethics.

Key Contribution

Pöltner’s central insight reads: Prior to every ethical question concerning the protection of embryos stands an ontological question. Whoever wishes to judge ethically about the embryo must first have clarified what a human being and what a person is — and this clarification is not the task of the empirical sciences, but of a metaphysical reflection that goes back to the things themselves. Pöltner thus stands in the tradition of Thomism and realistic phenomenology.

Central Ideas in the Book

Ontological Presuppositions of Embryo Protection

Pöltner’s essay Ontologische Voraussetzungen der Debatte über den Embryonenschutz (Ontological Presuppositions of the Debate on Embryo Protection, 2005) shows: the seemingly purely ethical debate on the protection of the human embryo carries a tacit ontology within itself. Whoever claims that the embryo is not yet a person presupposes a concept of personhood that turns on actual capacities, self-consciousness, or social relations — and thereby implicitly the empirical-functionalist concept of person (cf. Locke, Singer, Parfit). Whoever, by contrast, holds the substance-ontological concept of person arrives at a different result. The debate must therefore be conducted not only ethically, but first of all ontologically.

Active Potentiality Instead of a “Becoming Person”

Pöltner takes up Aristotle’s distinction between potency and act in order to understand the potentiality argument correctly: the potentiality of the embryo is not a mere possibility of later becoming a person, but the active potency of an already present rational nature. The embryo is — in accord with Spaemann’s formula “There are no potential persons” (Es gibt keine potentiellen Personen) — a person in the process of becoming, not a becoming person. The rational nature (prote energeia, first actuality) is there from the very beginning; what is still outstanding is its unfolding (deutera energeia), not its acquisition.

Critique of the Consequentialist Justification of the Protection of Life

In Die konsequenzialistische Begründung des Lebensschutzes (The Consequentialist Justification of the Protection of Life, 1993), Pöltner analyzes one of the most popular argumentative strategies of applied ethics: justifying the protection of life by its consequences (slippery-slope argument, legal certainty, social trust). Pöltner shows: such arguments are not false, but insufficient. They do not ground the dignity of the person as such, but only a protection for the sake of certain consequences. But if the weighing of consequences should one day turn out differently, the protection loses its ground. Only an ontological concept of dignity sustains the protection of life unconditionally.

Human Nature and Speciesism

In Menschennatur und Speziesismus (Human Nature and Speciesism, 2015), Pöltner dismantles Peter Singer’s speciesism objection: Singer takes the objection to be decisive because he assumes that proponents of the substance-ontological concept of person ascribe greater moral weight solely on account of biological membership in the species Homo sapiens — which would be a naturalistic fallacy. Pöltner shows: the substance-ontological concept of person ties personhood not to biological membership, but to the rational nature, which is bodily constituted. The charge of speciesism thus misses its target. Whoever rejects the thesis that every human being is a person from the very beginning strikes not at a biologistic, but at an ontological position.

Phenomenology and Thomism

Pöltner belongs to the few philosophers of the German-speaking world who have systematically carried forward the conversation between phenomenology and Thomas Aquinas. His study Heideggers Umgang mit Thomas von Aquin (Heidegger’s Engagement with Thomas Aquinas, published 2011 in Heidegger Studies) shows that Heidegger’s engagement with Thomas reaches deeper for the question of being than Heidegger himself conceded. For the question of the person, this yields: personhood as the being of a determinate manner (Boethius: rationalis naturae individua substantia) cannot be understood without taking the question of being seriously. Pöltner thereby builds a bridge that also sustains Bexten’s dissertation: the connection of the phenomenological method with a substance-ontological metaphysics of the person.

Place in the Book

Pöltner is named in the preface of the dissertation: as second doctoral supervisor (alongside Walter Schweidler, a scholar of Thomas and student of Spaemann), he “drew attention to important works on the topic” (Bexten 2017, Preface). Substantively, Pöltner stands in the line Boethius — Thomas — Husserl — Heidegger — Spaemann — Seifert and holds a substance-ontological-relational concept of person. His bioethical work Grundkurs Medizin-Ethik (Basic Course in Medical Ethics, 2002) is a standard work of German-language medical ethics.

Sources: Bexten 2017, Preface (Pöltner as doctoral supervisor); bibliography (Pöltner 1993a, 1993b, 2005, 2015).

Further sources:

  • Grundkurs Medizin-Ethik (Basic Course in Medical Ethics) (2002, 2nd ed. 2006). Facultas/WUV, Vienna (standard work on the anthropological and ethical foundation of medical practice)
  • Ontologische Voraussetzungen der Debatte über den Embryonenschutz (Ontological Presuppositions of the Debate on Embryo Protection) (2005), in: Nowotny / Staudigl (eds.), Perspektiven des Lebensbegriffs. Randgänge der Phänomenologie (Europaea memoria I/34), Georg Olms, Hildesheim
  • Menschennatur und Speziesismus (Human Nature and Speciesism) (2015), in: Rothhaar / Hähnel (eds.), Normativität des Lebens — Normativität der Vernunft?, De Gruyter, pp. 251–270
  • Die konsequenzialistische Begründung des Lebensschutzes (The Consequentialist Justification of the Protection of Life) (1993), in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 47.2, pp. 184–203
  • Evolutionäre Vernunft. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie (Evolutionary Reason. An Engagement with Evolutionary Epistemology) (1993), Kohlhammer
  • Philosophische Ästhetik (Philosophical Aesthetics) (2008), Kohlhammer
  • Heideggers Umgang mit Thomas von Aquin (Heidegger’s Engagement with Thomas Aquinas) (2011), in: Heidegger Studies 27, pp. 177–195
  • Wer ist Mensch? (Who Is Human?) (2018), in: Rothhaar / Hähnel / Kipke (eds.), Der manipulierbare Embryo. Potentialitäts- und Speziesargumente auf dem Prüfstand, mentis, pp. 203–215

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