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The spoonishness of a spoon
Jan. 7th, 2010 09:46 pmOne day around Christmas, I was in the kitchen with my brother and he asked me to give him a spoon, which I did.
Now, my brother likes to start on philosophical discussions with the least bit of encouragement, and this was one.
How did I know what he meant when he said spoon? How do I know what a spoon is, despite the fact that some are small and some are large, they are made of wood or plastic, steel or silver, with simple or decorated handles. What makes a spoon a spoon, and how do I recognise the spoonishness they all have in common?
Together with some other thoughts I had while reading a book on human dignity - what is it, what is it worth, who has it and how do you define it - and an anthology of texts trying to explain basic ideas of protestant Christianity, the problem of the spoonishness of spoons brought me to the problem of the humanness of humans. I don't want to say humanity, the word is used for other things too much.
What makes a human a human. We can't define it by the way we look. There are people who don't have two arms and legs, five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot, who don't have a nose and two eyes and two ears. There are people whose genes aren't the same as those of the majority.
Yet would a person with three instead of two chromosomes 21 not still be a human? Would a child born without arms not still be a human child, and a mute man or a blind woman still be humans?
We can't define the humanness within us as how we use our brains, because then what would a mentally disabled person be, or somebody who's in a coma?
Somehow, we share a general, silent agreement that all these people are still people, that they have something in common with us that is not shared by even the primates, who are so close to us in their behaviour, or the pigs, with which we share so much of our genetic make-up.
Not even the Nazis, who differentiated between life worth existing and life that had to be destroyed, expressed the opinion that disabled people were not human. In their ideology, a disabled person was still a person, though a person with no right to live.
Then what is it that makes us human? What is that thing that makes us different from every other being on this planet?
And even worse: When does this humanness appear, and when does it vanish?
Is it a human, that small bunch of cells in a woman's uterus?
Is it a human, that lifeless shell of a coma patient, only kept alive by machines?
How do we, the people who aren't biologists or theologists or philosophs, explain what we are? Not with a definition that applies to most of us, but with one that applies to all?
Then there is the term of human dignity. In the German constitution, the very first paragraph states that human dignity is inviolable. (Interestingly, if you look up the line in the English Wikipedia article on dignity, it is translated as Human dignity shall be inviolable., which is the translation officially used by the German government in English language publications. However, in German it says "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar - is inviolable, not shall be. To me, that is a more binding rule than saying that something "shall be".)
You'd think, therefore, that there would be a pretty clear general - or at least German - agreement on what this thing called human dignity is.
There isn't.
There are definitions that fall back on the human rights, but would a person lose his dignity when his human rights are violated? (And that doesn't even discuss the question of who has human rights...)
Christianity says human dignity is something we have because we were created in His image. Image, in this case, would be a rather loose term, considering the variety of humans we all know, but at least this would mean that because dignity is something that wasn't given to us at some point in our lives by somebody human, it is not something that can be taken away from us by anybody around us.
It would also mean that at every point in our lives, we are endowed with that dignity.
But if we don't know when we start and stop being human, because we don't really know what makes us human, how do we know when this dignity starts and stops being invested in us?
Many laws in many countries, and even more many of the problems we face with new technologies and new situations, would require if not knowledge, then at least agreement on the answers to these questions.
In the "Protestation" in Speyer in 1529 (hence "protestants"), the Protestant estates and towns declared "In things concerning God's glory and the souls' beatitude, everyone has to stand before God for himself and has to give account, so that nobody can excuse himself in this with the acts or decisions of a minority or majority." (The translation is mine, sorry about that.)
For me, that means that beside the law's definition, I need to come to an agreement with myself. Is it killing of a human being and violating his dignity when an abortion takes place, or the artificial respiration of a coma patient is switched off?
How do I define the terms human and human dignity? What does it mean for me, and what does that in turn mean for my life?
And, excuse my language, I think it's bloody damn difficult.
I can think of a number of reasons when I would consider abortion an option. I don't think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. However, I also believe that even an embryo, even a being in the first moments after fertilization, is human. And that means that while I think a mother can have good reasons to abort (illness of the mother or the child, rape, whatnot), I also think that the person making the decision should understand what she is deciding.
Similarly, if I was lying in hospital with lots of brain damage and little likelihood of ever even waking up again, I would prefer for the doctors to let me die. But it means the doctors - or my family through making the decision - have to kill a human being.
Sometimes, I wish I wouldn't think quite so much about things for which there are no simple answers.
Now, my brother likes to start on philosophical discussions with the least bit of encouragement, and this was one.
How did I know what he meant when he said spoon? How do I know what a spoon is, despite the fact that some are small and some are large, they are made of wood or plastic, steel or silver, with simple or decorated handles. What makes a spoon a spoon, and how do I recognise the spoonishness they all have in common?
Together with some other thoughts I had while reading a book on human dignity - what is it, what is it worth, who has it and how do you define it - and an anthology of texts trying to explain basic ideas of protestant Christianity, the problem of the spoonishness of spoons brought me to the problem of the humanness of humans. I don't want to say humanity, the word is used for other things too much.
What makes a human a human. We can't define it by the way we look. There are people who don't have two arms and legs, five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot, who don't have a nose and two eyes and two ears. There are people whose genes aren't the same as those of the majority.
Yet would a person with three instead of two chromosomes 21 not still be a human? Would a child born without arms not still be a human child, and a mute man or a blind woman still be humans?
We can't define the humanness within us as how we use our brains, because then what would a mentally disabled person be, or somebody who's in a coma?
Somehow, we share a general, silent agreement that all these people are still people, that they have something in common with us that is not shared by even the primates, who are so close to us in their behaviour, or the pigs, with which we share so much of our genetic make-up.
Not even the Nazis, who differentiated between life worth existing and life that had to be destroyed, expressed the opinion that disabled people were not human. In their ideology, a disabled person was still a person, though a person with no right to live.
Then what is it that makes us human? What is that thing that makes us different from every other being on this planet?
And even worse: When does this humanness appear, and when does it vanish?
Is it a human, that small bunch of cells in a woman's uterus?
Is it a human, that lifeless shell of a coma patient, only kept alive by machines?
How do we, the people who aren't biologists or theologists or philosophs, explain what we are? Not with a definition that applies to most of us, but with one that applies to all?
Then there is the term of human dignity. In the German constitution, the very first paragraph states that human dignity is inviolable. (Interestingly, if you look up the line in the English Wikipedia article on dignity, it is translated as Human dignity shall be inviolable., which is the translation officially used by the German government in English language publications. However, in German it says "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar - is inviolable, not shall be. To me, that is a more binding rule than saying that something "shall be".)
You'd think, therefore, that there would be a pretty clear general - or at least German - agreement on what this thing called human dignity is.
There isn't.
There are definitions that fall back on the human rights, but would a person lose his dignity when his human rights are violated? (And that doesn't even discuss the question of who has human rights...)
Christianity says human dignity is something we have because we were created in His image. Image, in this case, would be a rather loose term, considering the variety of humans we all know, but at least this would mean that because dignity is something that wasn't given to us at some point in our lives by somebody human, it is not something that can be taken away from us by anybody around us.
It would also mean that at every point in our lives, we are endowed with that dignity.
But if we don't know when we start and stop being human, because we don't really know what makes us human, how do we know when this dignity starts and stops being invested in us?
Many laws in many countries, and even more many of the problems we face with new technologies and new situations, would require if not knowledge, then at least agreement on the answers to these questions.
In the "Protestation" in Speyer in 1529 (hence "protestants"), the Protestant estates and towns declared "In things concerning God's glory and the souls' beatitude, everyone has to stand before God for himself and has to give account, so that nobody can excuse himself in this with the acts or decisions of a minority or majority." (The translation is mine, sorry about that.)
For me, that means that beside the law's definition, I need to come to an agreement with myself. Is it killing of a human being and violating his dignity when an abortion takes place, or the artificial respiration of a coma patient is switched off?
How do I define the terms human and human dignity? What does it mean for me, and what does that in turn mean for my life?
And, excuse my language, I think it's bloody damn difficult.
I can think of a number of reasons when I would consider abortion an option. I don't think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. However, I also believe that even an embryo, even a being in the first moments after fertilization, is human. And that means that while I think a mother can have good reasons to abort (illness of the mother or the child, rape, whatnot), I also think that the person making the decision should understand what she is deciding.
Similarly, if I was lying in hospital with lots of brain damage and little likelihood of ever even waking up again, I would prefer for the doctors to let me die. But it means the doctors - or my family through making the decision - have to kill a human being.
Sometimes, I wish I wouldn't think quite so much about things for which there are no simple answers.
