HUMAN DIGNITY/

HUMAN
PERSONHOOD
Reported by:
GROUP 1
 What is human dignity?
• state of being worthy of honor and
respect

• state of righteousness, integrity, and virtue in

human beings

What is human personhood?

• Human personhood is the legal recognition of a human

being's full status as a human person that applies to all
human beings, irrespective of age, health, function, physical
or mental dependency or method of reproduction, from the
beginning of their biological development.
• Christian philosophers, including prominent
theologians, lament that there should be NO
DISTINCTION between the notions of human being
and human person. To them, human being is
synonymous with human person.

• Boethius, a renowned Medieval philosopher, was

quoted by Aquinas as having defined person as “AN
INDIVIDUAL SUBSTANCE OF A RATIONAL
NATURE”
• Christians expound the idea that EVERY HUMAN
BEING IS THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD.
This construct Imago Dei, however, makes sense
only as the creative and self-creative image of the
Creator God.

• Hence, its principal construction is directed

towards SELF-DEVELOPMENT – both individual
and communal – of all that best in human
potentialities
• Humans are considered by Christians as GOD’S
HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT.

• Personhood, therefore, IS INHERENT IN EVERY

HUMAN BEING.

• Personhood of man is the foundation of morality,

philosophy, art, science, law, and the like.
• Plato and Aristotle, are
philosophers who maintain that
SOUL IS THE PRINCIPLE OF
LIFE. This means that as long as
THERE IS LIFE THERE IS
SOUL. Ergo, everything that has
life has a soul.
 In the research of Sullivan, a physician by
profession

•the issue of personhood is the “ground zero” of bioethical

reflection.

• observes that Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Roman Catholic

put much respect and value to human life, because to them,
human life is sacred inasmuch as it is a special creation of God.

• “Only humans are ensouled; therefore, only human life has

moral value. There is no distinction between biological
humanhood and personhood”
3 KINDS OF SOUL according to ARISTOTLE

• VEGETATIVE- soul among plants and other

vegetations

• SENSITIVE- soul among plants

• RATIONAL- soul that is exclusive to humans which

is capable of performing the functions of both the
vegetative and sensitive souls, like feeding, growing,
reproducing, and feeling, specifically of pleasure and
pain.
• Sullivan believes that only humans are ensouled,
Aristotle argues that plants and animals, too, have
souls.

• The only variance between plant and animals souls

with the human soul is that soul of the latter is by
nature spiritual, meaning it is indivisible, simple (no
parts), indestructible (immortal), and immaterial.
According to John Polkinghorne

• “By a person, I mean at least this: a self-

conscious being, able to use the future tense in
anticipation, hope, and dread; able to perceive
meaning and to assign value; able to respond to
beauty and to the call of moral duty, able to love
other persons, even to the point of self-sacrifice”
According to John Ozolins, a professor at Australian Catholic
University

• pursued to study the views of thinkers who are

against the intrinsic-personhood-doctrine of humans.
• considered Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at
Princeton University who is also co-founder of the Great
Ape project.

• writes “Singer. . .argues that the marks of

personhood are the ability to exhibit rationality, self-
consciousness, awareness, sentience, autonomy,
[and] relate to others...”
 Many philosophers of note like Plato, Aristotle, St.
Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, INSIST THAT
THERE MUST BE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN A
HUMAN BEING AND A HUMAN PERSON.
On legal perspective

• no country yet in the whole world that criminalizes the

killing of a zygote, or an embryo

• but a lot of countries criminalizes abortion. Its

implication is clear, that is, laws acknowledge
personhood only when the life inside the uterus has
already reached the status of a fetus.
Does personhood begin when the life inside the
uterus is already a fetus?

A ruling was made in American Jurisprudence in

1973 that not until a fetus reaches 40 days after
gestation for a male and 80 to 90 days for a female,
only then shall it be deemed a human person.
Today, theologians and moralists teach that:

• after 14 days of gestation, the developing human

being is called a zygote

• after 6 weeks to be called embryo

• after 8 weeks of gestation until delivery shall the

developing human being be considered a fetus
 In this regard, nurses and other healthcare
professionals must always be cautious and
vigilant in protecting the safety and welfare of
the person inside the womb of the mother who
may be their patients.
Thank
You!