An examination and defence of the concept of personality, long central to Western moral culture but now increasingly under attack, by a leading European philosopher. It takes issue with major contemporary philosophers, especially in the English-speaking world, who have contributed to the eclipse of the idea, and traces the debate back to the foundations of modern philosophy in Descartes and Locke. There are extended discussions of the sources of the idea in Christian theology and its development in Western philosophy. There (...) are also a number of pointed discussions of pressing practical questions - for example, our treatment of the severely disabled human and the moral status of intelligent non-human animals. The book covers a great deal of ground before coming to a focused conclusion: all human beings are persons - and perhaps all porpoises, too! (shrink)

In this excellent and clearly-written introduction to ethical thinking, Spaemann provides a stimulating discussion of the fundamental concepts we use everyday when we deliberate, alone or with others, about the moral aspects of our action.

This book is written for theologians as well as philosophers - indeed for anyone who is concerned with the meaning of a 'life well lived', with good and evil ...

The several stages in the progresive abandoning of teleology in the natur from the constitution of the modern science and the new attempts of its reintroduction, are reconstructed. In contemporary thought the crisis of unlimited dominion over the nature favours the adoption of the teleological point of view. Only the consciousness of an end given in a natural way makes the conscious aim of objectives possible.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IS EVERY HUMAN BEING A PERSON?* ROBERT SPAEMANN Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich, Germany I. DEFINING THE QUESTION THE PAPAL encyclical, Evangelium vitae (EV), declares solemnly that "... the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral" (EV 57). This unconditional ethical obligation to respect every human life is justified by reference to "the incomparable dignity of the human person." Such an unconditioned claim is made upon (...) us by the face of every human being we meet. The encyclical supports this claim of intuitive perception with two arguments. First and foremost, the claim to unconditional respect is based biblically and theologically on the recognition of the human being as the imago Dei. The human is the "image" of God. Humans, however, are not unconditioned simply taken in themselves ; merely as such, theirs is a most conditioned, finite being, which can be transformed from living to dead with hardly the lifting of a finger. And yet, such violence, while always possible for us physically, is absolutely impossible on another level. In the human being something "reveals" itself to us that is more than any finite and conditioned mode of being; thus, the term "image." In contrast to mere pictures, which are images only in an accidental sense, the human is created as image. Human being is being an image. Thus human being participates in the 'Translated by Richard Schenk, O.P. 463 464 ROBERT SPAEMAN incorruptibility of the One of whom the human is an image. Human beings are called to eternal life. The second and secondary argument is based on the consequences of not respecting the unconditioned dignity of the human being. The encyclical points out that an order of law in which the freedom from being at another's free disposition is lacking does not deserve the name of law; it is merely an organization of the power of the stronger over the weaker. In section nineteen the pope mentions a theory held by some who would acknowledge only those humans as subjects of legal rights who already manifest certain signs of personal autonomy. He also speaks of the theory of those who would "identify the dignity of the person with the capacity for explicitly verbal communication." Not included in this category are therefore the unborn, the dying, and severely impaired or senile humans; although not mentioned by the encyclical, it must be added that by this theory infants are excluded as well. In his book, Practical Ethics,1 the most influential proponent of this theory, Peter Singer, has declared outright that the life of a human infant is of less value than that of an adult pig.2 Because the encyclical argues for the most part theologically, it does not deal closely with the arguments proposed by Singer and his followers in their attempt to eliminate human rights and to claim that not all human beings are persons.3 The Holy Scriptures do not speak of "persons" as such, but simply of human beings. For revelation, humanity is one single family: all that are begotten of humans belong to this family. The conviction that even newlyborn children possess human dignity is reflected in the infancy 1 Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). An expanded second edition appeared in 1993 (Cambridge University Press). 2 "A week-old baby is not a rational and self-conscious being, and there are many nonhuman animals whose rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, and so on, exceed that of a human baby a week, a month, or even a year old. If the fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either, and the life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee" (Singer, Practical Ethics, 122-23; in the second edition this statement appears with slight modifications on p. 169). 3 Cf. also Norbert Hoerster, Abtreibung im saekularen Staat: Argumente gegen den Paragraphen 218 (Frankfurt, 1991). IS EVERY HUMAN BEING A PERSON? 465 narratives of the Gospel, where shepherds and kings worship the child at Bethlehem. The conviction that human being begins... (shrink)

Nietzsche diagnosed a tendency for self-destruction within the Enlightenment movement. According to him, in giving up the idea of God, the idea of non-perspective truth, that is the faith in reason, falls victim to it. Wittgenstein und Jaspers reflected upon the characteristics of this faith in reason, which starts where scientific knowledge ends, respectively, where it becomes aware of its hypothetical status. Plato reserved the term of “knowing” for this relation of a presuppositionless conceptually inexplicable “megiston mathema”. In Jaspers′s concept (...) of a philosophical faith not based on revelation, both elements of the platonic knowing of the “good itself” can be found: the greatness of the matter, transcending everything being the case, and the intensity of being really touched. Yet with regard to philosophical radicalness, the explanatory function of the “absolute knowing” for each kind of truth seems to exceed the faith of Jaspers. (shrink)

The beginning and end of human life is in our days a controversial issue. The most significant achievement of actual discussion is that a human being does not "become" a human being; but rather, that he "is" a human being from the moment of conception. Such demands an adequate treatment of his dignity in all stages of existence.

The analysis of relations between morals and rituals show how morals are not unconditional. Ethics are refereed to an ethos which has a continuity with its ritual origin, and, at the same time, ethics are expressed in rituals which constitutes our Lebenswelt.

The author of this article shows that the existence of things is always corroborated with cognitive criteria. Thus, human knowledge implies an anthropomorphical way of approaching reality.

1. Gesammelte Reden und Aufsätze I -- 2. Gesammelete Reden und Aufsätze II.