Is Uniqueness at the root of Personal Dignity?: John Crosby and Thomas Aquinas

The Thomist 69 (2005): 173-201 IS UNIQUENESS AT THE ROOT OF PERSONAL DIGNITY? JOHN CROSBY AND THOMAS AQUINAS STEPHEN L BROCK Pontifical University of the Holy Cross Rome, Italy PERSONS ARE INDIVIDUALS that exist for their own sake, not just for the use or benefit of some other. This truth, which I shall call the principle of personal dignity, has become so much of a commonplace in our culture that there may seem no need to defend it. And yet, there is anything but consensus about its concrete implications-about which ways of treating persons are and are not consonant with their dignity. This is evident in the ongoing, sometimes acrimonious debates over such issues as euthanasia or capital punishment. No doubt this lack of consensus has many causes, not all of which are matters for philosophy. But personal dignity itself is certainly a philosophical matter; and despite the general agreement about it, we cannot simply assume that we understand it perfectly. If we did, its implications would probably be dearer. What exactly does being for one's own sake consist in? And just what is it about persons that gives them this status? These are metaphysical questions. It belongs to metaphysics to refine our understanding of principles, by getting at the "ontology" that underlies them, their basis "in the things themselves." Some years ago, John Crosby published a broad study of the person entitled The Selfhood of the Human Person.1 The book's second chapter, called "Incommunicability," is aimed at 1 John F. Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996); cited hereinafter by page number alone. 173 174 STEPHEN L. BROCK establishing personal dignity in a rigorous way.2 Its thesis is that the dignity of persons rests chiefly upon what Crosby terms their "incommunicableselfhood." The expression is technical. Butwhat it means, put in plain language, is nearly as much of a commonplace as the principle of personal dignity itself. It is just what it says on the back of the book: "each person is unique and unrepeatable." There is something solemn about the pronouncement . It stirs our sense of how precious each of us is. Crosby's thesis, then, certainly has an initial appeal. Of course he is not just repeating commonplaces. His task is philosophical. It is the best effort I know to set forth this special, personal uniqueness in a precise and publicly verifiable way, and to show clearly how it makes each person to be, as he puts it, "incommunicably his or her own."3 In this article I wish both to draw attention to a number of very valuable points in Crosby's treatment, and to maintain that, despite these, the true basis of personal dignity must be something other than the sort of uniqueness that he proposes. I shall first try to show, partly on Crosby's own grounds, that his argument for the existence of this uniqueness is unsuccessful {sections I-IV). Then I shall argue (section V) that while the dignity of personstheir being for their own sake-does mean that they are irreplaceable in a way that other individuals are not, this irreplaceability is not a function of uniqueness; nor is it the very basis of the dignity, but rather the result thereof. My discussion relies heavily on the metaphysics of St. Thomas. I do not believe that it is therefore alien to Crosby's way of 2 Much of this chapter appeared previously as an article in The Thomist: John F. Crosby, "The Incommunicability of Human Persons," The Thomist 57 (1993): 403-42. 3 In a recent paper Crosby has returned to the defense of his thesis: "A Neglected Source of the Dignity of Persons," in John F. Crosby, Personalist Papers (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 3-32. As I read it, the paper has two main aims: first, to show that over and above common rational nature, a sufficient account of the dignity of persons must also include their incommunicability; and second, to resolve certain difficulties regarding the relation between the incommunicability and the common nature. As regards the basic argument...