Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.
Beginning of human personhood
The beginning of human personhood is the moment when a human is first recognized as a person. There are differences of opinion about the precise time when human personhood begins and the nature of that status. The issue arises in a number of fields, including science, religion, philosophy, and law, and is most acute in debates about abortion, stem cell research, reproductive rights, and fetal rights.
Traditionally, the concept of personhood has included the concept of the soul, a metaphysical concept of a non-corporeal or extra-corporeal dimension of human beings. In modernity, the concepts of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, personhood, mind, and self have come to encompass a number of aspects of humanness that were previously considered to be characteristics of the soul.[1][2] One question about the beginning of human personhood has been the moment at which soul enters the body. An alternative question, both historically and in modern times, may be at what point does the developing individual acquire personhood or selfhood.[a]
Issues relating to the question of the beginning of human personhood include the legal status, bodily integrity, and subjectivity of mothers,[3] and the philosophical concept of natality, i.e. "the distinctively human capacity to initiate a new beginning" that a new human life embodies.[4][5]
Discussions of the beginning of personhood may be framed in terms of the moment life begins. James McGrath and others argue the beginning of personhood begins is not interchangeable with the beginning of a human life.[6][7][8]: 845 According to Jed Rubenfeld, the terms human being and person are not necessarily synonymous.[7][9][10][11]
- ^ Taylor, Charles (1992). Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-521-42949-8.
- ^ Foucault, Michel (2005). The Hermeneutics of the Subject. New York: Picador. ISBN 0-312-42570-8.
- ^ Bordo, Susan (2003). "Are Mothers Persons?". Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. pp. 71–97. ISBN 0-520-24054-5.
- ^ Kompridis, Nikolas (2006). "The Idea of a New Beginning: A romantic source of normativity and freedom". Philosophical Romanticism. New York: Routledge. pp. 48–49. ISBN 0-415-25643-7.
- ^ Charles E. Rice, The Dred Scott Case of the Twentieth Century, Houston Law Review, 10:1059, 1972-1973
- ^ McGrath, James F. (30 July 2024). "Why "Life Begins At Conception" Is Simply Not True". Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
- ^ a b Dias, Elizabeth; Mollenkof, Bethany (1 January 2023). "When Does Life Begin?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:4was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Rubenfeld, Jed (1991). "On the Legal Status of the Proposition That "Life Begins at Conception"". Stanford Law Review. 43 (3): 599–635. doi:10.2307/1228913. ISSN 0038-9765. JSTOR 1228913.
- ^ "Concept of Personhood". University of Missouri School of Medicine, Center for Health Ethics. Archived from the original on 30 June 2024. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
- ^ Kaczor, Christopher (2005). Spicker, Stuart F.; Engelhardt, H. Tristram; Wildes, Kevin W. (eds.). When Does a Human Being Become a Person?. The edge of life: Human dignity and contemporary bioethics. Philosophy and Medicine. Vol. 85. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 5–39.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
Previous Page Next Page
