Enriquez, Angelique Jade C.
HUMAN DIGNITY VS. HUMAN PERSONHOOD
The mercurial concept of human dignity features in ethical, legal, and
political discourse as a foundational commitment to human value or human status.
The source of that value, or the nature of that status, are contested.
The normative implications of the concept are also contested, and there are
two partially, or even wholly, different deontic conceptions of human dignity
implying virtue-based obligations on the one hand, and justice-based rights and
principles on the other. Added to this, the different practical and philosophical
presuppositions of law, ethics, and politics mean that definitive adjudication
between different meanings is frustrated by disciplinary incommensurabilities.
Personhood is rather difficult to define. The answer depends on the onus of the
question. It can have a legal implication – when does a person become fully human
as far as society is concerned so as to be covered by the protection of the law.
Ethically personhood has been defined as a stage where a developing human is
either endowed with moral or social characteristics defining an adult with full moral
status, or importantly has the potential to develop those characteristics.
Theologically it can imply when an entity becomes fully recognised by God or as a
new creation or a new ‘soul’, hence the term ensoulment. Biologically, it can relate
to a particular stage in embryo development when a new individual is created or
when an entity has gained recognisable characteristics of a human being or a
particular capacity for independent existence.
The personhood of a human being is a foundational concept for all that we
are and all that we do. Throughout history, personhood has been a topic of human
inquiry, a subject of philosophy, and basis of political power. Each society finds in its
accepted construct of personhood the font of its government and laws. Application
of the construct of personhood finds social expression in multitudes of daily
decisions affecting the lives and welfare of all individuals.
HUMAN BEING VS. HUMAN PERSON
Person — a human being regarded as an individual. Human — characteristic
of people as opposed to God or animals or machines, especially in being susceptible
to weaknesses. Treating someone as a person means treating him or her as an
individual.
When you treat someone as a person, you recognize that he or she is another
individual, different from yourself, who has his/her own hopes and disappointments.
They have their own fears, strengths and weaknesses that may be identical, similar
or completely different from yourself. When you treat someone as a person, you
treat them as a man, woman or anything in between depending on the individual
person. You respect that person. You understand that this person has a story to tell
and you are curious to learn more about it without judgment. But what if you treat
someone as a human? If you treat someone as a human, you acknowledge the fact
that you are not different from them. Paradoxically you treat them as an individual
and as an indifferent member of a pre-defined group. When you treat someone as a
person, you are fair and you try to give them what they deserve, whether it be good
or bad. But when you treat someone as a human you realize that sometimes we all
need something that we don’t deserve. I love the final words from the Dark Knight
because they signify exactly this very idea (“He’s not the hero we deserve, but the
one we need”)
Treating someone as a human being instead of a person is often irrational,
selfless, and detrimental to our own good. It means giving someone a chance that
they never earned, forgiveness that they don’t deserve, or power that they can’t
handle.
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