The dignity of the person and some of its reflections in the family environment
Gonzalo Herranz, Bioethics work group . School of Medicine. University of Navarra
high school Mayor Arosa
Santiago de Compostela, May 15, 1988
First of all, I would like to thank the high school Mayor Arosa for giving me this new opportunity to come to Compostela and for having proposed me to develop here today a fascinating topic .
What I am about to say is nothing new. It is rather a conversation about something old, known since time immemorial. It is about truths that, until recently, were held as universally valid, but that many have forgotten or repudiated.
The dignity of man is a matter to which we should pay much more attention. It is not that we do not talk about the dignity of man. But it happens that more lip service is paid to it than conviction, more saliva than blood. Human dignity is an expression that is everywhere: in constitutional texts, in ethical guidelines, in the slogans of activists of a thousand different things. The promoters of the recognition of human and civil rights speak of "respect for human dignity", of "attacks on the dignity of persons", of "the right to dignity". Euthanasia fanatics write on their banners "death with dignity for all" and form movements demanding the "right to die with dignity".
But even if the notion of human dignity is subjected to an inflationary depreciation at the hands of politicians and sociologists, the dignity of man contains first-rate moral values, full of meaning and operability. And so the Second Vatican Council did not hesitate to place its doctrine on religious freedom in a Declaration beginning with these words "Dignitatis humanae". And more recently, the Holy See has referred to one of the most important aspects of human life in an Instruction on the dignity of procreation.
A bit of history
The word dignity reference letter to the inherent nobility and value that has always been accorded to man, to the human person. I believe it is worthwhile to pause for a few moments to review the history of the concept of "human dignity", because it can help us to delve a little deeper into the question.
The idea of man's dignity entered the world not because man discovered it, but because God revealed it to him. The opening chapter of Genesis contains those words which we all know and which are our true birth certificate . "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all things of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: and he created them male and female." (Gen. 1:26-27).
The considerations that this account of the creation of man can inspire are inexhaustible, but we are now interested in emphasizing not man's dominating power over the created world outside of him, but his intrinsic value and dignity. Man is God's vice-regent in the world; he is crowned with glory and honor. Being made in the image and likeness of God, he possesses exclusively, among all the creatures of the earth and in spite of the original fall, rationality, self-consciousness and free will, which are participations of the divinity, which give him the capacity to transform the world and to educate himself, to be a manager and free moral agent.
Every man, every human being, every human body-soul (because man does not have a body and a soul: he is both body and soul) has a supreme and identical dignity. To destroy a human body is to destroy a human personality and, therefore, is an affront to the dignity of God reflected in the imago Dei that is every man.
In contrast to this biblical-Christian doctrine that every human life, every human being, has its own intrinsic value by virtue of being a gift from God, classical Greco-Roman thought defined personality in juridical terms of citizenship, that is, of belonging to a family, state, city or tribe. According to this mentality, man is not worth for what he is in himself, but his dignity is lent to him from the outside, by virtue of the juridical decision of an institution which, at its discretion, accepts or rejects him, dignifies or destroys him.
The value of a man is above all calculation, because he is the image of God. According to rabbinical exegesis, God created only one man in order to teach us that whoever destroys a single human life, God imputes a sin to him as if he destroyed all mankind, and whoever saves the life of a single man, God holds him as if he had saved the whole world. Somewhere it is explained that he who kills a man or a child kills also the children, and the children of the children of that man or of that child: in a man one kills his offspring, one kills mankind.
God mysteriously creates us in his image and likeness even when our appearance and biological value are diminished by illness or malformation. Thus Moses says in Exodus 4:11: Who made man's mouth, and who made him dumb, or deaf, or sighted, or blind? was it not I, the Lord? It is this understanding of man as the image of God, even when man is deficient, that grants the immense moral superiority and incomparable humanity to the Mosaic law, when compared to other legislation of antiquity. The weak, the poor, the blind, widows and orphans, slaves and foreigners are not unworthy.
We know, although we fall short of a profound understanding, the way in which the coming of Christ, his incarnation (the Word became flesh and dwelt among us), dignifies humanity, saves it and reinforces in us, with divine filiation, the likeness of God. We are not only an image: we are and are called children of God. The dignity of every man reaches its summit in Christ, impossible to surpass: there is no more nobility, no more value.
We should pause for a moment to consider what was the revolutionary novelty that this doctrine meant for the pagan world. We are interested, among other things, because the world in which we live has become paganized and our message should break the neo-pagan Structures in which we are immersed.
The Christian doctrine of man is of enormous importance for internship ethics. Faith teaches us that every man is called to be a bearer of God by the grace that, for all men, for each man, Christ died. Therefore, the life of every man has an absolute intrinsic value. This gives a universality and a height to human dignity that could not even be imagined in the pagan world.
It has been much discussed whether the classical pagan world had philosophical or religious foundations to support any universally applicable concept of human dignity. Such an idea is totally foreign to the Greco-Roman mentality. There was certainly among the classics a sense of dignity, but it was the dignity of the excellent, virtuous man, who lived in conditions to develop his virtues, his human excellences. The Roman concept of humanitas was used to describe the dignity of a balanced and educated personality, who was found exclusively among the most outstanding individuals of the upper class of Roman society. Dignity was not intrinsic, nor were human rights. Extensive social groups lacked them. Inequality was a natural feature of society, and no one expressed surprise or complaint at the incredible differences that existed among men. It was accepted as an inevitable reality that there were people (slaves, foreigners, outcasts) without rights who were destined to menial or degrading jobs, who could be tortured or consumed in productive labor or entertainment. Physical wholeness was considered essential to human dignity, so that life with limitations for the chronically ill, the crippled or the deformed was considered unworthy and dispensable. The exhibition and death of the deficient was not an exclusive matter of Sparta or Republican Rome: it was a general rule . Not even in the Stoic Philosophy did classical antiquity come to the intuition that human dignity could have a universal character: opposed to this were, on the one hand, the aristocratic character of the philosopher's virtues, which prevented this doctrine from ever becoming popular and influential, and, on the other hand, the Stoic indifference to human suffering that prevented him from taking an interest in the weak of body and spirit.
In the face of this aristocratism, Christian thinkers justified, with ever clearer lucidity, that the notion of man as the image of God led to an uncompromising condemnation of all elimination of human life and of all degrading cruelty: the condemnation of abortion, infanticide, gladiatorial games, suicide, the annihilation of the wounded or hopelessly ill was formulated with the strongest energy.
Today there are many more than it seems who no longer believe in human dignity, in the dignity and superiority of our species. That dignity is being attacked and dismantled not little by little, but with speed and viciousness, thanks to the skillful mixture of truths and lies with which today's manipulators of opinion are getting the submission of those who watch TV or read the newspapers. They begin by telling us, and we agreement, that we are polluting the surface of the planet and the atmosphere we breathe; that our domination over other animal species, over plants or over the inorganic world is already an indecent tyranny; that we must put an end to the ecological imbalances that result from this immoderate and feverish exploitation of resources. But then they add that humanity must decide to live a millennium of penance: that we must reduce our issue and refund islands and large extensions of the continents to the spontaneous ecology of nature, so that other species can live without interference. The Lorenzes, the Singers, the Skinners, those of the Science for the People movement and many of the modern utopians, who, without our realizing it, influence us in a way we cannot even imagine, are driven by the pessimistic notion that, while humbling ourselves before nature, we must concentrate all our capacity for domination on the manipulation, Genetics, psychological, sociological, of the human species.
This mentality is gaining new followers every day. Let's look at some indicators of change.
The docility with which society has capitulated without resistance to the promise of "I will give you welfare in exchange for your children" and has given in to contraception and abortion, is shown by the fact that in some societies, such as the FRG, some demographers have already set a date for the time when the citizen of the FR may be declared "an endangered species". In large social strata of advanced countries, the issue of pets is higher than that of children under 15 years of age, not because now, as has always been the case, the dog, the cat or the bird are the comfort and company of the elderly or those who live alone, but because the animal is simply and crudely preferred to man, because it is more loyal and because it never betrays. That is to say, because domestic animals are morally superior to man.
This current panorama has curious coincidences with that of pagan antiquity.
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