More on Professor George's post and my response

I have received an e-mail from a MOJ reader (a Catholic priest) who prefers to be anonymous that helpfully contributes to the discussion we are having:

In response to your most recent post in reply to Robert George, I think you mistake his point about what it is to be a "rational animal organism."  Here he speaks in terms of Aristotelian categories, I think, wherein to be a member of the species is to share in its essence, regardless of the accidents of one's participation (in the embryo's case, the accident of being at an early stage of formation). The importance of this is that it moves the rights discourse to the level of the categorical, and away from the "sufficient set of properties" conversation required to justify (inter alia) stem cell research.

 

Historically, looking for sufficient properties (beyond the property "human") in order to deem a human "rights worthy" has taken us down some pretty dark paths--excluding genders, races, economic classes.  It is not at all clear when it has taken us down a bright path, except as defined by the dominant party doing the classifying.

 

Note that the category "having a brain" doesn't get one to rationality, either.  There are various states of brain impairment--the severely and profoundly mentally retarded come to mind--that would be hard pressed to qualify for rights under any sort of regime that I can think of that would exclude embryos. 

 

The kind of categorical thinking required by the Aristotelian/Thomistic categories has the neat feature of rejecting the historically failed attempts to get at the subset of human beings genuinely meriting rights, and of giving full-throated support to the rights of human beings simpliciter.  This strikes me as the most humane and defensible account of human rights one might imagine, and the most demanding on society.  Thus, the severely and profoundly retarded, who cannot defend themselves, also need not be defended by adding up "plus factors" as to their rational development or the like.  Rather, they are to be defended as having the profound dignity of the human being, full stop. 

 

Sounds even progressive to me, and the implications applying the same thinking to the embryo would have for social policies (if taken seriously by all of us) in terms of our duties to the unborn would hardly be the stuff of conservative politics as traditionally understood.