What Makes A Human Being To Be A Being of Moral Worth?

WHAT MAKES A HUMAN BEING TO BE A BEING OF MORAL WORTH? THE PURPOSE of this paper is to explore the question "What makes a human being to be a being of moral worth? " 1 By a being of moral worth I mean an entity that is the subject of inalienable rights that are to be recognized by other entities capable of recognizing rights and that demand legal protection by society. By a being of moral worth I mean an entity that is valuable, precious, irreplaceable just because it exists. By a being of moral worth I mean a being that cannot and must not be considered simply as a part related to some larger whole. I believe that human beings are such entities. I realize, of course, that many people do not believe that human beings are beings of moral worth. Yet this belief is at the heart of Christian faith,2 and it is, moreover, central to the "American 1 Although he does not use this term, the question of man's moral worth is central to the thesis developed by Mortimer Adler in his The Difference of Man and The Difference It Makes (New York: Meridian, 1968). A more recent study by Roger Wertheimer, "Philosophy on Humanity," is another essay of crucial significance for the theme of this paper. Wertheimer does not use the expression " being of moral worth," but he argues that every member of the human species enjoys what he terms "human " or " moral status," and as a result there is a "kind of independent and superior consideration to be accorded " entities having human status. Wertheimer himself does not regard it as a definitional truth that human beings have human or moral status, but the entire thrust of his paper is to argue that being human is a relevant moral consideration precisely because we are to accord an independent and superior status to human beings. His paper has appeared, since this article was written, in Abortion: Pro and Con, edited by Robert Perkins (Cambridge: Schenkman Books, 1975), a volume that also includes an essay by the present author. • The dignity, indeed the sanctity, of human beings as beings of moral worth has been consistently taught by the Church. A recent reaffirmation of this teaching can be seen in The Pastorol Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) promulgated at Vatican II. See, in particular, paragraph 19. 416 HUMAN BEING AS OF MORAL WORTH 417 Proposition." It is one of those truths that we hold in common, as a matter 0£ shared consensus,3 and it is what one contemporary author terms a " Standard Belief." 4 Although many of our contemporaries may radically deny this belie£, claiming that it is completely false as a proposition about the meaning of human existence, it is certainly operative on a pragmatic level in American society-and indeed it seems to be a belief operative in other societies as well, including the international society as organized in the United Nations. B. F. Skinner, it can truthfully be maintained, would not maintain, as a statement of metaphysical truth, that a human being is a being of moral worth-a being of inherent dignity and incomparable value, a res sacra-but he would maintain that he ought to be so regarded in his sociopolitical life. For him and £or many of our contemporaries it is " true " in a pragmatic sense that a human being is a being 0£ moral worth; belief in this proposition makes good laws possible. None 0£ our fellow citizens (no human being, really), save for pathological conditions, wants his fellow human beings to treat him as an object to be manipulated or managed or even destroyed for the interests of others. This is at the heart of the " Golden Rule," which can, I believe, be understood as follows: You, a moral being or agent, are to do unto others, beings of moral worth, as you, a being of moral worth, would have others, moral beings or agents, to do unto you, a being of moral worth." 5 That a human being is an entity of moral worth is something recognized publicly in the United...