I join Richard in recommending Carter Snead's opening essay in Public Discourse's series "Liberty, Justice, and the Common Good: Political Principles for 2012 and Beyond." The whole series looks excellent -- check out the program.
Carter's piece includes a paragraph that I think goes to the heart of why the "life" issues continue to be so central to so much of political debate. It explains, I think, why pro-lifers sometimes get tagged with being obsessively single-issued -- this one issue does, in fact, drive our perspectives on so much else. Carter writes:
At bottom, the “life issues”—including especially the conflicts over abortion and embryo-destructive research—involve the deepest and most fundamental public questions for a nation committed to liberty, equality, and justice. That is, the basic question in this context is who counts as a member of the human community entitled to moral concern and the basic protection of the law? Who counts as “one of us”? Equally important is the related question of who decides, and according to what sort of criteria? These are not narrow concerns commanding only the attention of a small number of highly motivated activists at the fringes of our society. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a public matter that is more important than this “question of membership.”
I just now saw a new paper on SSRN that puts this question into the context of the UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It's by Michael Neil, a graduate student at the School of International Studies at the University of Denver: "Reasonably Confused: Human Rights and Intellectual Disability". I haven't read the paper yet, but the chilling final sentence in support of Carter's point seems like a very real question, not just rhetorical hyperbole: "Can we include all of our family members and neighbors without fear of our system imploding?"
Here's the abstract:
In a conversation I recently had with Laura Hershey, friend, disability rights advocate, and participant in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, I brought up the problem of rights, personhood, and rationality. I wanted to know why, when the working group, of which she was a member, designed the CRPD, they did not implicitly address the redefinition of the notion of personhood to describe the status of all human beings, without consideration for reasoning ability. She was surprised that I would suggest any implicit exclusion existed or that people without the ability to reason currently hang in limbo within important primary human rights documents. Her understanding was that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, true to its name, was universal in its scope and that the CRPD followed in its sentiment.
Unfortunately, for her view, the UDHR, in Article 1, states, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience (italics the author’s) …” Political theory, from Socrates to Rawls, has conflated reason with recognition and inclusion in the political system. The UDHR is irreconciled on the status of people with severe intellectual impairment. Even as Article 1 defines human beings in terms of rationality, the Preamble states, “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world…” Similarly, Article 2 states, “Everyone is entitled to all of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind…” The unaddressed questions are, “What does the term “human family” mean?” “Does “everyone” really mean everyone?” and “Is there a difference between human being and person?”
This work will address the various historical meanings of personhood, including person as Homo sapiens, rational chooser, or contributor, and investigate what recognition of the eight-hundred pound gorilla might mean. Are the universality of human rights and the primacy of reason incompatible? Can a third position emerge that acknowledges reason as a “light of the world” and a “chief glory of man” while also acknowledging relational abilities, demonstrated by people with severe cognitive impairment as equally essential aspects of what it is to be human? Can we include all of our family members and neighbors without fear of our system imploding?
Here is an excellent piece by Carter Snead entitled "Protect the Weak and Vulnerable: The Primacy of the Life Issue." This is the first installment of The Public Discourse's 2012 Election Symposium.
Richard M.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Why do we punish the murder of a member of Congress, or the President, or a police officer (and there are other examples) more harshly than we do the murder of an ordinary person? This seems to be a fundamentally anti-egalitarian way to do things, and yet it is the way that we do them now. What difference should the status of a victim make to the punishment of the offender? The value of every human life is equal to the value of every other human life, isn't it? Why shouldn't it then rub our collective rhubarb that punishment for the intentional taking of a life is not distributed equally?
The most common kind of answer to these questions is consequentialist. We have a greater need to deter the murder of politicians or police officers than we do to deter other murders. Society couldn't function properly (or perhaps even at all) if these kinds of killings occurred without harsh punishment, and we need to drive the point home with a punishment which is harsher than it would otherwise be.
This has never seemed a very compelling answer to me. First, what we are really talking about is not the harsh punishment itself, but the extra quantum of differential harshness imposed for the taking of these lives. As with all arguments from deterrence, I have to think that it is quite difficult to measure whether that extra quantum of punishment serves as any additional deterrent that has not already been generated by the severity of punishment for any other murder. Second, there is something a little question-begging in the consequentialist answer. What is it exactly about these sorts of crimes which hampers our, or "society's," capacity to function properly, and which therefore merits enhanced, and unequal, punishment? What society-preserving quality is really at stake?
I want to suggest a fundamentally non-consequentialist reason to punish the murder of a politician, or a judge, or a police officer, or (more controversially), of a priest, or even of a mother or father, with greater -- and therefore unequal -- severity. Crimes against these kinds of victims are not only individual crimes; they are also crimes against institutions. The consequentialist argument for differential punishment in these kinds of cases, I want to say, depends on the valuation of certain social institutions as intrinsically worthwhile. It is because those institutions are good that we rightly punish more severely those people who not only murder an individual, but in so doing strike a blow against a valued social institution.
Continue
reading
Yesterday, Pope Benedict addressed young university professors at the Monastery of San Lorenzo while in Spain during his participation in the World Youth Day in Madrid. His address is HERE.
Although it is brief, the address contains some important thoughts for those of us who have dedicated our lives to tertiary and professional education. The pope’s words are all the more relevant as we begin a new academic year in which many of us wrestle with the objectives of our teaching, advising, and research. In addition, for those of us who may have the opportunity to consider new faculty hiring, the Holy Father’s words serve as a resource for considering the qualities of candidates who will be considered for faculty positions. Surely the pope’s thoughts about qualities for teaching also apply to us who are already teachers.
What are these qualities?
Pope Benedict begins by contending that a teacher has a responsibility to search for and disseminate the truth. For the Christian and Catholic, this truth is Jesus Christ, God incarnate. A person disposed to this has a solid chance of acknowledging and discussing with others the inextricable nexus between faith and reason. For the skeptic who may take issue with this assertion, one needs to take stock of the fact that the foundations of the great western universities of today rest on this nexus and search.
In addition, a further desirable quality related to the first is the zeal to engage colleagues in other disciplines which have a bearing on the fields of teaching and research that one pursues in his or her own work. Of course this engagement is not simply geared to self-improvement of the individual teacher. It also provides considerable benefit to the students by demonstrating that learning leads to knowledge and knowledge leads to wisdom about the nature and essence of the human person. This wisdom, moreover, enables a person to see the danger that inheres in the utilitarian fragmentation of knowledge that too often accompanies the work that takes place in universities today. Combating this academic fragmentation provides an important basis for helping teachers and students address the fundamental questions of education: who am I? What am I? What is my relation to the world and the university? What is my relation with others? What is my relation with God? Pope Benedict argues that the authentic educational enterprise is geared to pursuing these questions in order to save humanity from the “reductionist and curtailed vision” which is cultivated by academic disintegration.
Anoter question for ourselves and for those whom we consider to join our faculties is this: do we share in Benedict’s definition of the university as the “house” where the inhabitants seek “the truth proper to the human person”?
Once again, Papa Ratzinger provides the benefit of his many years of teaching experience in this wonderful address. Tolle lege!
RJA sj
