conference proceedings of congress International Bioethics 1999. Bioethics and dignity in a plural society
Table of contents
The human embryo: biological, anthropological and legal status
Livio Melina
Full Professor of Moral Theology
Pontifical Lateran University (Rome)
I. A decisive question for human identity and social life
II. Respect for every person, the foundation and criterion of a just society
III. Recognising the Ethical Good of the Person of the Human Embryo
IV. Biological Perspectives on the Human Embryo
V. Uniqueness staff of the human embryo
VI. The Fundamental Ethical-Legal Principle and its Normative Implications
VII. Conclusion
There are issues that are systematically censured in the public discussion , and this is because they have been considered through legislative decisions as having been resolved once and for all. To continue talking about them is considered an attack on peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic society. However, these issues, eliminated and put aside from open confrontation, continue to secretly agitate consciences: when inadequately solved at the legislative level, they reveal themselves as a dangerous principle of dissolution of the whole legal order of society. Among these issues, the question of the respect due to prenatal human life is certainly decisive both for the very identity of man and for the quality of social coexistence.
I. A decisive question for human identity and social life 
A superficial view might suggest that the introduction of abortion into the legislation of many Western countries has not been as traumatic as some of its opponents feared. Basically, for adult men and women in these countries, everything continues as before. Everyone is free to decide according to their own conscience and those who do not want to have an abortion are not forced to do so. Those who do so now that the law has been passed will perhaps do so anyway, and everything is consummated in the faint silence of a conference room of operations, but at least now with the appropriate medical attendance for the woman who undergoes the "operation".
The foetus that will never see the light of day is basically as if it had never existed: who notices it? Today, discussion also discusses the possibility of experimenting on foetuses that are to be aborted: Why not, if they are condemned to death anyway, and if this research can be useful for science and for so many sick people? At the very least, it is claimed that it is lawful to produce human embryos artificially "in vitro" or to use the so-called "supernumeraries" in favour of scientific research or to make tissue available for possible therapies for adult patients (for example, in the case of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's disease). The problem, which pushes the logic of total control over life to the point of absurdity, as in the case of abortion, is so disturbing that the temptation is to "not think". Conscience is thus numbed, censoring and rendering invisible the drama at stake.
And yet this is no small problem for man's identity. Nor are there "small homicides" that can be committed without profaning the whole man. What is discussion is precisely this: man's self-understanding, the question of "who is man?". The Gospel admonishes us: "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world if he loses himself?" (Lk 9:25), or, as the evangelist Matthew says: "if he then loses his own soul?" (Mt 16:26). What is at stake is human identity, losing or gaining one's "soul".
It is clear that the act of recognising the identity staff of the human embryo is full of consequences for the subject who carries it out, not only because it brings him or her immediately into the perspective of the precise moral obligations he or she must respect in relation to that incipient human life, but also because the human identity of the one who expresses a judgement on topic is at stake: "with the measure with which you measure, you will be measured" (Mt 7:2).
He said that respect for the dignity staff of the human embryo was decisive not only for the identity of man, but also crucial for the just quality of a society. No one refuses to give his own approval to the affirmation contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person" (art. 3). The right to life is the first, the most fundamental and the most obvious of all human rights. All Constitutions mention it at the beginning, as the basis of the legal order. A "right" is a requirement that is imposed by virtue of nature itself: it is a call, for each person, to the ethical reality of obligation, which is born of the recognition of the dignity of the other, creating, therefore, a correlative "duty".
Do not laws which permit abortion, removing certain categories of human beings from legal protection, undermine the very foundations of justice? Should they not be considered unjust or "corruptions of the law", according to the expression of St Thomas, recalled in the Encyclical Evangelium vitae, and therefore be considered to be deprived of authentic legal value? To avoid such consequences, proposal makes a distinction in the very concept of life: a distinction is made between human biological life and human life as a person.
The life of embryos would of course be human biological life, but not human individual life, or at least not human life staff . To be able to attribute to a human vital organism the status of "person" (and thus to recognise its rights), it should be possible to recognise in it certain properties of life staff: self-consciousness, autonomy, capacity to remember and project, to establish unions, to enter into communicative relations. Despite belonging to the species Homo sapiens, embryos and foetuses would not be recognised as persons and would not enjoy the same rights as other human beings. As their human life would only be potentially human staff (they would be "potential human beings"), they would not be entitled to unconditional legal protection. The right to life, sanctioned by the UN Declaration, would not apply to them. In such a case, they could be regarded and treated not as persons, without diminishing their own human dignity. Looking at them would not measure the self-understanding of man as a human being.
II. Respect for every person, the foundation and criterion of a just society
The fundamental problem we are faced with is that of the recognition of the anthropological, ethical and legal truth of the human embryo: what respect is due to it, subject ? In order to answer this question, we will first consider the centrality of the value of the person for morality and for society. We will then consider why and under what conditions it is reasonable to recognise the dignity of the human embryo as a person. The epistemological dimension will have to frame and relate the contributions of biology and anthropology. Finally, we will examine the normative consequences of such a recognition, in the area of basic legal principles.
It has been rightly asserted that the pre-eminence of truth as a criterion guide for human action is one of the foundations on which our Western civilisation rests.1 Only the primacy of truth, rooted in honest openness to reality, saves us from indiscriminate arbitrary force. Only the primacy of truth, rooted in honest openness to reality, saves us from the indiscriminate arbitrariness of force. Dependence on truth is a necessary condition for the very fact of freedom: only by accepting that the good depends on truth is man really free from blind instincts, passions and external conditioning. What is at stake here is that fundamental truth about the good of the person on which the very meaning of life and action depends. And here we are confronted with a first and fundamental finding: the dignity of my being staff depends on the recognition and respect for the dignity of the being staff of others.
The affirmation of being staff is at the same time the affirmation of a particular dignity to be recognised and of the ethical demands of respect to be shown. Indeed, it is only in the relationship with the freedom of other people that the character of a human being is established staff . We could say with Robert Spaemann that, "the recognition of a person's status is the expression of respect as a specific modality in which persons have been given to each other "2. I can define myself as a person only in relation to other persons. Persons are given to each other not as objects (etwas: something) to talk about and to dispose of, but as "subjects" (jemand: someone) to talk to and to respect in their own irreducible subjective otherness.
The ethical density of the interpersonal relationship is the context in which the recognition of the dignity of the person occurs or does not occur. Recognising persons as persons is thus revealed as the first and fundamental duty, indeed, as the radical foundation of all subsequent duties. The relationship with the person of the other is the original ethical experience, in which the absolute of moral duty is born. Emmanuel Lévinas has understood in great depth the fact of the "emergence" of the ethical dimension in the meeting with the face of another person: "the relationship with the face is immediately ethical. The face is what cannot be killed: its meaning consists in saying 'you will not kill me'"3.
The experience of moral duty corresponds to the perception of the person and his or her dignity. We speak of duties only on reference letter to persons. To understand the meaning of the expression "dignity of the person", it may be useful to refer to the reflection proposed by Immanuel Kant in his work The Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals. He affirms that the term "dignity" indicates those realities which, due to their intrinsic and singular value, do not admit of equivalents and which, for this reason, cannot be substituted by other analogous realities, being superior to any mercantile evaluation of exchange. On the contrary, what can be substituted by an equivalent cannot have dignity, but, in any case, a "price": this is why things have a price and are bought, while people, who are unique and unrepeatable, have a dignity and are beyond any market evaluation 4.
The recognition of the person in his or her own dignity as an end and never as a means, as a subject and not as a thing, as "someone" to respect and love and not as "something" to use, appears as an act that is due, as a response of freedom, adequate to the reality of the other and to the justice of a relationship. It presents itself with features of absolute singularity, it imposes itself on the conscience in an unconditioned way, although not in a necessary way. The denial of this obligatory recognition of another person has, however, a most important impact on the subject who does not realise it: the one who does not treat the other human being as a person, thereby injures his or her dignity as a person. To deny the ethical density of the interpersonal relationship means to fall from the level at which being a person also has meaning.
Moreover, it is precisely the recognition of fundamental human rights that is the substance of a just and democratic society. What, then, is the relationship between respect for life and democracy? Can a democracy that Withdrawal places the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" at its very foundation, thereby failing to protect the life of all human beings without discrimination, be said to be a just ordering of society? Or, on the contrary, is it not rather in contradiction with itself? We are at the heart of the current discussion question on the nature of democracy.
What characterises democracy is not only the possibility to freely express any opinion and to confront it with the opinions of others with the intention that, through the confrontation of the various opinions, the opinion held by the majority of citizens will emerge. This "formal" aspect is certainly an important factor in democratic life, but it cannot be the basic principle and cannot extend to everything. There is something that defines the "substance" of democracy much more adequately. Indeed, the event of democracy implies an event of a moral nature.
What constitutes the essence of democratic consensus is something that comes before any discussion in which the criterion of the majority can intervene with its decision. At the root of democratic life is precisely the firm will to respect every human being without distinction of race, sex, status , economic status, age, religion, etc., and without discrimination beyond the differences that characterise each one of us. The substance of the democratic ideal, then, is the idea that there is equal dignity among all men, that they are born free and therefore have a primordial and inviolable right to life. Here we find the recognition that the human person has primacy over society and its institutional organisation: the laws that a society gives itself do not constitute the fundamental rights of the person, but rather recognise and protect them. They are, therefore, in function of them, and must be verified in their quality as just or unjust laws, precisely on the basis of their conformity with the demands of the good of the person and not only on the basis of reference letter to the principle of the majority.
III. recognise the ethical good of the personhood of the human embryo
But let us now turn to the decisive question: Is it really reasonable to recognise the ethical good of the human person, with all that derives from it, from an ethical and legal point of view, even in the case of a human embryo?
Around the question of the recognition of the human identity and staff of the embryo, source of the ethical obligation, there is a complex crossroads of diverse cognitive perspectives, which, while respecting the epistemological status of each of them, converge in a unitary act of knowledge of great density staff. Biological science, philosophical, ethical and theological reflection, despite the distinction of specific approaches, of the object and method of research, are called upon to interact, merging their contribution in view of the synthetic act of knowledge. Each one offers a peculiar contribution, which derives from the methodology and the presuppositions that contradict it. In order to reach a satisfactory result it is necessary to respect the distinctions between the levels of the affirmations of each of the respective sciences, and, at the same time, to find ways of appropriate coordination.
It is true that the starting point of every speech on the human embryo must be found in the biological sciences, which deal with the human living organism according to the method proper to modern experimental science, and thus in continuity with the study of other lower living forms. If the question can be formulated in the following terms: "when did I begin to exist", the search for an answer must certainly begin with the body, which is an essential component of my person, through which I am part of the visible world5. My body undoubtedly began at the moment of the fusion of the gametes, one from the father and one from the mother of whom I am the child.
And yet man is more than the body itself, he is more than the physicality and biological life of an organism. Man is a person, endowed with a spiritual soul. However, the personhood of the human individual is not ascertainable by the methods of the empirical sciences. Evangelium vitae reminds us that "the presence of a spiritual soul cannot be deduced from the observation of any experimental data" (EV, n. 60). And yet, continues the pontifical document, "the very conclusions of science about the human embryo offer a precious indication for rationally recognising a presence staff from this first emergence of human life". The rational discernment of the status of personhood belongs, therefore, to the Philosophy, which, for its part, must base its conclusions on empirical data .
In order to recognise the value and specificity of this decisive rational reflection of the Philosophy, it is necessary here to overcome the reductionism of the concept of reason realised in the sphere of enlightenment rationalism and positivism.
Firstly, the legitimacy of a knowledge different from that of the modern empirical sciences must be recognised. These have devoted themselves to the knowledge of the measurable quantities of things, disregarding what is not measurable and the subject who knows them. By means of this "reductive" method, modern sciences have built up the universe of the scientific knowledge "goal", making it possible to achieve great efficiency in its various applications. But it is easy to go from a legitimate methodological delimitation to an undue and reductive ontological affirmation, such as the one made by "scientism", for which only what is remarkable with the methods of the empirical sciences would exist. It is therefore necessary to recognise the existence of a knowledge about man, different and ulterior to that of the biological sciences, a knowledge that does not set aside neither the non-measurable qualities of experience nor the subject of knowledge itself.
At this point a second element comes into play: the prejudice of the separation between reason and freedom, which seeks to establish the question of truth independently of the question of meaning, must also be overcome6. When it comes to moral truths, in which human existence itself is at stake, the price of certainty is the price of the implication of the freedom of the one who knows. "He who does the truth comes to the light" (Jn 3:21)7.
The ethically relevant evidence on the status staff of the human embryo is not attainable without freedom being available and actively involved in order to recognise the call for respect that this incipient life addresses to the interlocutor. A person is not known in the same way as a thing is known: it is necessary to have the modality proper to a dialogue, whose indispensable condition is availability to welcome the other and to listen. What is essential, i.e. the character staff of the human embryo, whether in the handicapped person, the comatose patient, the demented elderly person, etc., is not accessible through the method of the empirical sciences. This can be understood, on the basis of the data of the sciences themselves, by means of a knowledge in which the heart, i.e. freedom, is also involved.
IV. Biological Perspectives on the Human Embryo
But, returning now to the central question, after these reflections on method: what are the data of biological science that allow rational reflection to recognize a presence staff in the human embryo, from the moment of conception? Scientific knowledge about the neo-conceived in its very first phase of unicellular existence (the zygote) allows us to be certain that we are dealing with a new human being, diverse and distinct from its parents: we are dealing with the body of a human being, from the moment that its genome is human, just as the design-project inscribed in it is human8. The neo-conceived is an unrepeatable subject of the human species, characterized by a specific individuality, which, always preserving its identity, continues its own life cycle (assuming all the necessary and sufficient conditions) under the autonomous control of the subject itself, which builds itself in a highly coordinated process, dictating to itself the directions of growth according to the execution program inscribed in its own genome.
The human neo-conceived maintains in each evolutionary phase the ontological unity with the preceding phase, without solution of continuity, without leaps of quality and nature. Its development manifests, from the beginning, the intrinsic finalism of human nature: the gradualness of the biological process is teleologically oriented, according to a finality already present in the zygote. There is no stage of its development qualitatively different or separate from the global process initiated at the moment of conception. Therefore, from this moment onwards, we are always dealing with the human being himself.
We find confirmation of all these statements in in vitro fertilisation itself and in the observation of the embryonic development in its early stages. Prof. Jérôme Lejeune wrote: "At fertilisation, the 23 chromosomes from the father join the 23 chromosomes of the mother. At that moment, all the information Genetics necessary and sufficient to express all the future characteristics of the new individual is constituted". The embryo can then be defined as a "very young human being".
proposal It is evident at this point how untenable it is to separate "human being" and "person" and to assert that not all human beings are persons and have the rights of persons. The absurdity of this proposition should lead, in all logic, to the affirmation that conscience would be a factor occasionally attached to man in order to produce the person9. Such an identification of the dimension with an accidental biological or functional quality of the human being is a consequence of the adoption of an empirical-sensical cognitive perspective, for which there is only the "fact" ascertainable through biological science. A proper anthropology unmasks the falsity of these reductionisms. staff
In this sense, it is not correct to speak of a "person in potency": persons are always in act. Personality is not the result of a development, but the intrinsic characteristic structure that allows the same development. On the other hand, it is contradictory to pretend to base or make the unconditionality of the requirement of respect due to the person, in its concrete applications, depend on the ascertainment of particular empirical presuppositions, which by their very nature are always hypothetical. It must therefore be concluded, with Robert Spaemann, that there is only one criterion for personhood: biological membership of the human species. "The being of a person is the life of a human being. (...) And therefore personhood is the human being and not a quality of the human being "10.
V. Singularity staff of the human embryo
The hypothetical object of the knowledge on the human embryo and foetus, whose conditions we are investigating, is the human person. This concept, which some people wanted to leave aside in bioethical reflection, has for some time now been making a strong comeback to the centre of the discussion, as an essential point of reference letter . It is true that there are very diverse and reductive interpretations of it with respect to the classical conception in the western tradition, inspired by Christianity11. In this paper we will consider only the "strong" metaphysical conception of the person, insofar as it is capable of founding an absolute moral respect for human life from its origins. Such a delimitation of the question is required by the object we are dealing with: the epistemological conditions by which it is eventually possible to affirm that the embryo and the human foetus must be respected "as a person".
reference letter The concept of "person" expresses, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, "that which is most perfect in all nature, that is, a being subsisting in rational nature "12. While the term "man" refers to the universal human nature, to the common species expressed in so many examples, the term "person" indicates the singular human being in his concrete individual reality. The concept of person is intrinsically associated with the fact of having a particular dignity, which must be respected13. The philosophical definition is closely linked to a specific and original moral perception of the ontological dignity to be honoured. It is in the person that human nature reaches its ultimate perfection, the act of being, perfection of all perfections: "...magnae dignitatis est in rationali natura subsistere " 14.
Now, what must be carefully observed is that the proper and specific reason for the respect due to every human being is not the common human nature of which he shares, but his being properly a "unique and unrepeatable" person, as John Paul II often says15. Basically, there would be no decisive and insoluble moral objection against the destruction of a singular human individual, since his perfection can be found in another human being. Thus Plato, who, although he was able to analyse so wonderfully the greatness of the human spirit open to truth, nevertheless had no special moral difficulty in admitting the death of defective newborns16. If the human being is nothing more than the substitutable realisation of a specific nature, then one is merely a specimen of a species, so that nature and the species are worth more than the individual, and to the general welfare the individual can and must be subordinated and eventually sacrificed.
The reason for the singular and eminent dignity of the human person is not simply his rational nature, but his way of existing as incommunicable17. Despite the fact that there are and have been innumerable people in the course of history, every person exists as if he were unique: he is sui iuris et alteri incommunicabilis. It is a very concrete whole, in which the nature of the species with all its characteristics is certainly included, but this nature is appropriated to the subject in an absolutely singular way, so that his existence eminently transcends that nature. Richard of St. Victor's formula, "intellectualis essentiae incommunicabilis existentia "18, surpasses and specifies the Boethian definition of "substantia individua naturae rationalis "19. The concretely existing totality transcends by its value the common nature and the sum of its parts. As R. Guardini says: "The person himself is the fact that he exists in the form of belonging to himself" (in der Form der Selgstgehörigkeit)20.
Would the internship, so far only hypothetical and projective, of human cloning, constitute a falsification of the person as unique and unrepeatable?21 The problem, before being an ethical problem, is a metaphysical problem. One must here distinguish individual uniqueness from uniqueness Genetics. The uniqueness Genetics is not metaphysically necessary to establish the individual uniqueness of a person, as in the case of identical monozygotic twins, which, despite having the same genetic heritage, are not the repetition of the same being. The human being is more than the genetic heritage itself and its uniqueness and unrepeatability is not only founded on the uniqueness of identity Genetics. On the metaphysical level it is the soul that establishes the unrepeatable uniqueness of the human being, in dialogue with God. It is clear, however, that a deliberate violation of the uniqueness Genetics of the human being constitutes, from an ethical point of view, a violation of his dignity as a unique and unrepeatable person: it is a loss of the value of the person, reduced to a product, treated as a manipulable combination of subject , separated from the context of personal relationships and degraded to the level of a "thing". When procreation is separated from sexuality, the human being is reduced to a thing that reproduces itself: it is treated as a "re-product" and not as a "pro-created", even if, on the ontological level and despite the abuse, the human being resulting from cloning is a unique and unrepeatable person, endowed with a spiritual soul, immediately created by God.
We must now ask ourselves: how does one know a person? The person in his singularity (ut haec) can never be known as an object of universal science: he is on the one hand intangible, in that he is incommunicable in his way of existing, and on the other hand he is knowable only in an interpersonal relationship, from subject to subject. However, in the particular experience of the person, the universal can be reached in the particular: as St Thomas says: in the sensitive knowledge of Socrates and Callia, I also recognise them as "these particular men "22. The knowledge of the quality staff universal (persona ut sic) is always born of such an experience and becomes concrete and applicable only in the reviviscence of it. Now, if it is precisely from this experience of the relation staff that I can institute a universally valid knowledge , then the interpersonal conditions of such a knowledge inevitably come to the fore.
The method of knowledge follows the object of the method; the person cannot be known as a "thing": it is a "subject" and not an "object". The initial hypothesis about its possible character staff, also necessarily implies a certain way of situating oneself before the human embryo that is appropriate to it. A person can be known as a person only in a "re-knowledge" of the person: there is thus an inevitable co-implication of the subject and his freedom staff in the act of knowledge - recognition of the other as a person23.
The moral dignity of man as a person then manifests itself existentially in the framework of the manifold forms of practical relations of proximity according to which the other appears to me. In the case of the concrete application of the qualification staff to a human being, there is always a credit of humanity and meaning at stake. True wisdom, which grasps the concrete person in the meagre signs he sends, is conquered only at the cost of the risk of the freedom that approaches and becomes position24. This does not mean in any way to affirm that it is by force of our recognition that the other becomes a person. It is only in fables that by treating a wooden puppet as a child that it becomes a real child.
In the case of a knowledge which takes place within an interpersonal relationship, the certainty of the human identity and staff of the embryo takes the form of an anticipated credit , I recognise the embryo, so that it can develop and become manifestly what it already really is, but in germinal form. This is how the German philosopher R. Spaemann puts it: "The very way in which the child becomes a human being means that he must be regarded as a human being from the very beginning and not as a thing. If the educator treats him as a thing so that the first signs of rationality do not appear, these first signs will never appear. Man has the right to enjoy in advance a credit of humanity "25.
VI. The fundamental ethical-legal principle and its normative implications
We are now at status to be able to formulate the fundamental ethical principle that affects the human embryo and we can do so with the words of the Encyclical Evangelium vitae: "the fruit of human generation, from the first moment of its existence, must be guaranteed the unconditional respect that is morally due to the human being in his full bodily and spiritual totality and unity. The human being must be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception and, therefore, from that very moment, the rights of the person must be recognised, among which, principally, the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life" (EV, n. 60).
This is a fundamental axiological truth, which expresses both the dignity staff of the human embryo and the duties which derive from it for the persons to whom it is entrusted and who enter into relationship with it. Christian revelation offers further confirmation to the indications of biological science and the evidence of philosophical reason, shedding new light on the unique dignity of the person. In fact, from a historical point of view, the very concept of "person" has developed in a theological context, more specifically Christological26. It is the instrument developed to understand the central mysteries of the faith: the Incarnation and the Trinity. The divine person of the Son of God is the subject who in the Incarnation assumes human nature, without abandoning the divine nature. Thus, in the Holy Trinity the unity of the same divine nature subsists in three really distinct persons. The concept of person has been secularised only at a later time, in the philosophical reflection of Severinus Boethius27 , becoming available for philosophical anthropology.
The ultimate root of the unique dignity of the human person, which is the heritage of Western culture, is therefore to be found in Christianity. Faith reveals to us that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God, created in Christ and called in Him to share in the communion of divine life28. The truth about the ethical good of human life is one and indivisible, and faith strengthens our vision to the point of enabling us to understand the infinite value determined by the relationship staff that, by grace, man has been called to live with God. Every human being, from the moment he begins his earthly existence, finds himself in a mysterious dialogue with the Father and no other creature has the right to put an end to his life. This truth about the dignity of the person is, therefore, a specifically Christian truth, but it can be received and, in fact, has also been received and understood by human reason29.
The formulation, which has been proposed in the words of the Encyclical Evangelium vitae, has the character of a moral truth: "the human embryo must be respected as a person". It is, in a certain way, relatively independent of anthropological affirmations, because - as the pontifical document itself affirms - it is "beyond scientific debates and beyond the philosophical affirmations themselves, in which the Magisterium has not expressly engaged". So what is the meaning of this distinction and of this caution: does it mean that the demand for absolute respect for human life from its very conception, affirmed with great force and authority, would not be so firm from the ontological point of view and that, therefore, it is recognised that, at least in this aspect, there may still be doubts?
If one reflects well on the nature of moral truth, according to the above considerations, it seems to me that one would reach diametrically opposite conclusions. Far from expressing or legitimising the weakness of a doubt, the magisterial formulations manifest rather the eminently ethical context of dialogical dialogue, in which reason internship reaches the truth about the good of embryonic life. The act of knowledge of the nature staff of the human embryo is also immediately an act of moral interpellation of the subject, called to recognise it as such and to assume this recognition as the rule of his or her action. Here, in fact, to recognise is not a neutral act, of a purely speculative character, but also a "re-knowing" of the dignity of the subject, in a status that inevitably has a dimension internship30.
From the fundamental ethical principle derive the detailed normative dimensions, which cannot be fully exhibition covered in this contribution31 . I will therefore limit myself to indicating the essential lines of development.
Implicit in the ethico-legal principle according to which the "human embryo is to be respected as a person" are normative consequences of a universal character, valid indifferently for every human being regardless of his status, and also particular applications relating to the specific condition of the embryo itself. There are also normative aspects aimed at protecting the dignity staff of the embryo expressed in a negative form, i.e. by prohibitions, and normative aspects that suggest rather in a positive form how such dignity should be respected and promoted. Naturally the negative norms are simpler to formulate, more universal in application, more binding and essential.
First of all, the unavailability of the human embryo must be mentioned. The biological dimension of embryonic life cannot be treated as a thing to be disposed of, i.e. as if it were mere "biological material" for scientific research or for therapeutic operations on behalf of other human subjects. On the contrary, it is this bodily dimension of a person that must be respected, since the person exists in a unified totality of soul and body, a totality thanks to which the body participates in the dignity staff of the subject. Any intervention on the body is an intervention on a subject and must be carried out for the good of this same subject or, at least, without prejudice to his or her fundamental rights. The biological life of the human embryo cannot, therefore, be considered as an instrument to be used for ulterior purposes, even if these purposes may be noble and valid. This brings to mind the Kantian maxim: "act in such a way that you regard the person of the other as an end and never merely as a means".
Moreover, the intrinsic value of human life from its very beginning implies its very inviolability. The respect due to the person requires the prohibition of any intervention that suppresses life or harms its physical or psychological integrity. It is not permissible to intervene by hindering, diminishing or altering the identity, balance and development of the embryo. Any intervention on embryonic life must be carried out in the interest of the embryonic human being itself, balancing the risks against the prospects of benefit for the embryo itself.
position In a positive sense, treating the human embryo as a person will mean showing the solidarity due to someone similar to one who is in a weaker condition and, therefore, taking care of him by taking care of his life in a way that is appropriate to the status in which he finds himself. In the case of a being in a condition of particular weakness and poverty, a life that is still dependent in everything on others, care must be taken to ensure the appropriate and proportionate modalities for the support of his development, in relation to life, to health, to the safeguarding of the essential relationships within which human existence can mature. Naturally, the care of embryonic life must be offered according to the criterion of reasonable proportionality, avoiding excesses of therapeutic incarnation and the adoption of survival measures that have morally negative connotations (such as, for example, the so-called "prenatal adoption" of embryos fertilised in the womb by women who are not the mothers). In any case, the evaluation of the proportion of the therapeutic means employed looks only at their efficacy and at a judgement on the "quality of life" expected for the human embryo. Indeed, respect for the dignity of the human embryo staff excludes the possibility of other subjects being the arbiters of the decision whether the embryo deserves to live or die.
The central questions of respect for human life, such as the protection of prenatal life, manipulation Genetics, artificial reproduction interventions, transplants and euthanasia, to which these "International Bioethicsconference ", opportunely organised by the University of Navarra, are dedicated, have been prophetically perceived by the Magisterium of the Church in their dimension not only of individual morality, but properly social: they are like the "new frontier" of the social question32. Affirming the dignity staff of the human embryo is a decisive question for the very identity of man - as was said at the beginning of lecture - and even more so for the human culture of the third millennium that has just begun. It means, in fact, to rediscover a contemplative gaze on man and on his human relationships, which constitute the vital environment of society (EV, n. 83). This is the highest and most necessary form of human ecology.
Against the ideology of domination over life, which reduces everything to a manipulable subject and causes the loss of the humanum, it is a matter of safeguarding the culture of the dignity of the human being, who, as a person, is the subject of life itself, as a sacred gift from God, and who is called to respect and value in himself or herself and in others. We are called to respond to a culture of "things", which is also a culture of death, with a culture of persons, which is a culture of life. To the reductionism of the expression "in the end it is nothing more than...", which, like a myopic parasite, mortifies science, we are being provoked to respond with an integral vision of human dignity, in which science is inserted with its decisive contribution, finding at the same time the meaning of its effort and the criterion of verification of its authentic progress.
Notes
(1) Cf. J. Pieper, Schriften sur philosophischen Anthropologie und Ethik: Das Menschenbild der Tugendlehren (Hrsg. B. Wald), in Werke, B. IV, Meiner, Hamburg, 1996, 2.
(2) R. Spaemann, Personen. Versuche über den Unterschied zwichen "etwas" und "jemand", Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 1996, 193.
(3) E. Lévinas, Etica e infinito. Dialogui con Philippe Nemo, Rome, 1984, 101; see in particular chapter VII on 'Il volto', 99-107.
(4) Cf. I. Kant, Fondazione della metafisica dei costumi, (trans. R. Assunto), Laterza, Bari, 1980, 68-69.
(5) On this subject, see the important document Identità e statuto dell'embrione umano published by the Centro di Bioetica dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, in "Medicina e Morale", supplement to n. 4 (1989). More recently and with a very rich and careful scientific documentation is the contribution of R. Colombo, "Statuto biologico" e "statuto ontologico" dell'embrione e del feto umano, in "Anthropotes", XII/1, 1996, 133-162.
(6) Cf. G. Angelini, Il dibattito teorico sull'embrione. Riflessioni per una diversa impostazione, in "Teologia", 1991, 16, 147-166. On a more fundamental and general level: L. Pareyson, Verità e interpretazione, Mursia, Milano, 1971.
(7) On the incidence of morality in the dynamics of knowing, see: L. Giussani, Il senso religioso, vol. I of "Il percorso", Jaca Book, Milano, 1986, 37-49. With reference letter specifically to the practical character of the moral knowledge , I would like to refer to my study: L. Melina, Conscience and truth in the Encyclical "Veritatis splendor", in Aa. Vv. (a cura di G. Del Pozo Abejón), Comentarios a la "Veritatis splendor", BAC, Madrid, 1994, 619-650.
(8) Cf. A. Serra - R. Colombo, Identity and Status of the Human Embryo: The Contribution of Biology, in J. Vial Correa - E. Sgreccia (eds.), Identity and Status of Human Embryo, LEV, Città del Vaticano, 1998, 128-177.
(9) Cf. E. Agazzi, L'essere umano come persona, in "Per la Filosofia", 1992, 9, 28-39.
(10) R. Spaemann, Personen, op. cit., 264.
(11) For a critical review of the various philosophical proposals of the concept of the person in the field of bioethics, see the documented essay by L. Palazzani, Il concetto di persona tra bioetica e diritto, Giappichelli, Torino, 1996.
(12) "Persona significat id quod est perfectissimum in tota natura, scilicet subsistens in rationali natura", S. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 29, a. 3.
(13) "Impositum est hoc nomen persona ad significandum aliquos dignitatem habentes (...). Propter quod quidam definiunt personam, dicentes quod persona est hypostasis proprietate distincta ad dignitatem pertinente": Ibidem, ad 2.
(14) Ibid.
(15) Among so many expressions, see the particularly strong and vibrant one in the inaugural Encyclical of the pontificate: Redemptor hominis, 13, 3.
(16) Plato, The Republic, V, 460, IX c.
(17) Cf. J. F. Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC, 1996, 41-81.
(18) Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate, IV, 23.
(19) S. Boethius, De persona et duabus naturis. Contra Eutichem et Nestorium, II, 4-5: taken by St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa theologiae, I, q. 29, a. 3. The progress made by Richard of St. Victor with the introduction in the definition of person of the term existence instead of substance is consciously taken up by St. Thomas, who later develops the relational aspect of the term, in relation to the Trinitarian mystery. On topic see, V. Melchiorre, Pour une herméneutique de la personne, in "Notes et documents pour une recherche personnaliste", 1986, 14, 84-99.
(20) R. Guardini, Welt und Person, Würburg, 1962, 128: "To the question 'what is your person', I cannot answer 'my body, my soul, my reason, my will, my spirit'. All this is not yet the person, as if it were the whole of what he is made of. The person itself is the fact that it exists in the form of belonging to itself".
(21) See purpose: Pontificia Academia Pro Vita, Riflessioni sulla clonazione, LEV, Città del Vaticano, 1997; G. Russo, La clonazione di soggetti umani, Coop. S. Tom., Messina, 1997.
(22) Cf. In II Post. Anal. On topic see: B. Lonergan, Conoscenza e interiorità. Il Verbum nel pensiero di S. Tommaso, EDB, Bologna, 1984, 58 ff. and J. L. Marion, La intentionnalitè de l'amour. In hommage à E. Lévinas, Paris, 1986, 111 ff., affirms that only love allows us to discover the irreplaceable singularity of the other, his "haecceitas".
(23) Cf. M. Nédoncelle, La réciprocité des consciences. Essai sur la nature de la personne, Aubier, Paris, 1942.
(24) In this sense, G. Angelini pronounces himself in the aforementioned article : Il dibattito teorico sull'embrione.
(25) R. Spaemann, Discussioni sulla "vita degna di essere vissuta", in "Cultura e libri", 1987, IV/27, 506-512.
(26) See A. Milano, Persona in teologia. Alle origini del significato di persona nel cristianesimo antico, Dehoniane, Napoli, 1984; by the same author: La persona nella novità cristiana dell'Incarnazione e della Trinità, in "Studium", 1995, 4/5, 549-568. For an elementary history of the concept: G. Lauriola, La persona: storia di un concetto, in F. Bellino (a cura di), Trattato di bioetica, Levante, Bari, 1992, 205-216.
(27) Cf. L. Pallazzani, Il concetto di persona, op. cit., 16-25. 223-248.
(28) For an essential definition of the elements of theological anthropology in question, see: L. Melina, Corso di bioetica. Il vangelo della vita, Casale M., 1996, 79-94.
(29) It can be said that the fruitful meeting between faith and reason, of which the recent Encyclical of John Paul II, Fides et ratio, n. 76, speaks, has been verified here.
(30) See: L. Melina, Epistemological Questions with Regard to the Human Embryo, in J. Vial Correa - E. Sgreccia (eds.), Identity and Statute, cit.
(31) I refer on topic to the contribution of M. Cozzoli, The Human Embryo: Ethical and Normative Aspects, in J. Vial Correa - E. Sgreccia (eds.), Identity and Statute, cit.
(32) Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Evangelium vitae, 5. Also on topic cf. Chapter IV "La questione bioetica nell'orizzonte della dottrina sociale della Chiesa", in my volume: L. Melina, Corso di Bioetica, cit.