Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

Volume 76, 2002

Philosophy at the Boundary of Religion

What Are Persons Made Of?

Many current debates between Catholic and secular bioethicists stalemate upon one central dispute: whether human dignity is a property persons bear at conception, or a product of social engagement, i.e., whether persons are born, or made. We need not resolve that dispute, however, to affirm two points that the prospect of human cloning should teach us. First, whether persons are born or made, whether we affirm a creationist, traducian, or even reincarnational view of the soul, the prospect of cloning highlights the inescapably communitarian dimensions of human dignity. Second, within a pluralist moral culture, we’re best advised to conceive human dignity not only as a property ascribed to us through divine grace, but also as an ethical imperative to be inscribed, by us, in the dignifying social practices by which we bear and raise persons.