Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics

Ethics & Medicine,  Fall 2001  by Austin, Michael W

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Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000 ISBN 0-8308-1577-5, 384 pp., paper $22.99

What is a human person, and what follows from the metaphysics of personhood when applied to the bioethical issues of our day? In Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics, J. P. Moreland and Scott Rae offer an excellent treatment of the key theological and philosophical issues relevant to human personhood and its implications for bioethics.

In Part I, Moreland and Rae spell out a metaphysical account of human personhood, drawing from Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and biblical exegesis for their substance dualist view. Where fitting, they employ insights gained from science and other disciplines in formulating their view (they point out as well that ethical knowledge can be used to adjust one's ontology of human personhood where appropriate).

Moreland and Rae argue that human persons are substances, in a certain philosophical use of the term, and not property-things. Space does not allow for a thorough explanation of these terms and the relevant distinctions. However, several things that we seem to know about persons are better accounted for by a substance view of human personhood than the property-thing view held by naturalists and Christian complementarians. For example, the fact that human beings possess absolute personal identity through change is easily accounted for by the substance view, which holds that a human person is essentially identical to her soul, so that regardless of whatever physical and temporal changes she undergoes, she remains strictly the same person. Naturalists and Christian complementarian views cannot account for this truth, and seem to be compelled by their ontology of human persons to hold that persons are not substantial continuants, but rather are property-things that do not retain absolute personal identity through change. Yet we seem to know in our own first-person cases that we are the same person today that we were five years ago. We may have gained or lost certain parts and/or properties, but we are still the same possessors of those parts and properties.

In chapter six, there is a particularly interesting discussion of the relationship between the soul and the body. On this Thomistic substance dualist view of a human person, there is one substance, namely, the soul, as well as the body, which depends on the soul for its existence and development. The soul contains various mental states and also possesses different capacities, some of which are actualised and some of which are not (e.g. one may have the capacity to speak English and the capacity to speak Russian, but due to education and location only the capacity to speak English has been actualised). The authors argue that it is the soul which guides the development of the body. Taking into account current understandings of the operation of DNA, they take an organocentric view of DNA, living organisms and morphogenesis, and maintain that the living organism as a whole is the fundamental unit of morphogenesis. DNA specifies the patterns for making proteins used in the growth and development of an organism, and genes help stabilise certain aspects of this development, but for Moreland and Rae it is the soul which yields the overall plan and internal organisation of the parts of the organism.

After developing their ontology of human personhood, in Part II Moreland and Rae apply their view to certain ethical issues: the moral and metaphysical status of the unborn, reproductive technologies, genetic technologies, human cloning and euthanasia/physician-assisted suicide. Central to this discussion is the fact that on their view, there can be no such thing as a human non-person. It may be the case that certain human beings fail to actualise certain soulish capacities often thought to be essential to human personhood, but all that follows from this is that such capacities are latent within the person, not that there is such an entity as a human non-person. Consciousness is often, either implicitly or explicitly, thought to be one such essential component of personhood, so that the foetus who fails to possess it can be justifiably aborted. However, the authors point out that as a member of the natural kind `human being', a foetus possesses the ultimate capacity for consciousness, even if that capacity has not yet been actualised. Since no reason can be given for preferring actualised capacities over latent ones, and since foetuses are not potential persons but rather persons with potential, it follows that intentionally ending the life of a foetus, especially due to a failure or lack of birth control, is morally problematic.

I leave it to the reader to explore in detail the implications of this ontology of human personhood to the bioethical issues mentioned above, and commend this book as one well worth the read for the person interested in an engaging and robust Christian account of human personhood and its implications for bioethics.