GENERALINTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 EXPLICATION OF TERMS
1.1 INVIOLABILITY
1.2 THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN LIFE
CHAPTER TWO
2.0 THE VIEWS OF SOME AUTHORS ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE
2.1 KARL PESCHKE ON HUMAN LIFE
2.2 FAGOTHEY ON HUMAN LIFE
2.3 OKECHUKWU ON THE INVIOLABILITY OF HUMAN LIFE
2.4 PAZHAYAMPALLIL’S VIEW ON THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE
2.5 A JUSTIFICATION/APPRAISAL OF THE FOUR REVIEWED PHILOSOPHERS
CHAPTER THREE
3.0 THE INVIOLABILITY OF THE HUMAN LIFE IN POPE JOHN PAUL II ENCYCLICAL: EVANGELIUM VITAE
3.1 THE INCOMPARABLE WORTH OF THE HUMAN PERSON
3.2 THE UNJUSTIFIABILITY OF THE PRESENT-DAY THREATS TO HUMAN LIFE
3.3 THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE ABOUT LIFE
3.4 GOD’S HOLY LAW: “THOU SHALL NOT KILL”
3.5 TOWARDS A NEW CULTURE OF LIFE
CHAPTER FOUR
4.0 A CRITIQUE OF SPECIFIC VIEWS ON VIOLABILITY OF HUMAN LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF POPE JOHN PAUL II
4.1 A CRITIQUE OF THE VIEW OF ABORTION
4.2 A CRITIQUE OF THE VIEW OF EUTHANASIA
4.3 A CRITIQUE OF THE VIEW OF SUICIDE
4.4 A CRITIQUE OF THE VIEW OF WAR
EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION
EVALUATION
CONCLUSION
BIBLOGRAPHY
ABSTRACT
Life is a precious gift of God to man. It is a truism that individuals value at least their own lives. There is that instinct in human [person to preserve his own life. God at creation made man and woman the crown of all his creatures by making them in his own image and likeness. Thus no man is a product of chance, since all is and will always be a product of the creative love of the Supreme Being (God).
From time immemorial to recent and contemporary epoch, the issue of the value of life has been a heated emotional argument. This has brought about a continual violation and destruction of life with reckless abandon by people. Do we opt for a total ban on human viability, bearing in mind the inviolable nature and dignity of the human person? The dangerous aspect of this debate is that most people are not fully aware of what violability is, in the real sense of the word and as a result are not well educated to make informed decision or contribution to the issue. What actually is human violability? Should human life be used as a laboratory guinea-pig? Is this an issue if the end justifies the means? This surely presents a sort of moral dilemma.
However, there is no value higher than life, no value in terms of which one can independently choose to live. Man’s life therefore remains inviolable and incomparable as seen especially in the views of Pope John Paul II.
This provokes this work to enable us to affirm, re-affirm, re-iterate the disputable fact that human life, ought to be given the prominence it deserves, given the fact that none of us can make bold the claim to authorship of life.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Since ethics is not only a normative but also a practical science, it cannot be satisfied to give only the general norms of morally good conduct but must try to apply these norms to the chief types of human conduct. Though human acts taken individually are indefinitely variable so that no two are ever exactly alike, they can be classified under certain heading, and the general norms can be made more specific so as to bring out more clearly the goodness or badness of each class of acts.
Earlier writers, such as St. Thomas, built their whole treatment of applied ethics around the classification of the virtues and opposed vices. Some modern writers prefer to make a specific investigation of the rights conferred and the duties imposed by the moral law. The first method, unless used skillfully, tends to become a sterile process of naming and cataloging. The second method gives the impression that ethics is restricted to the minimum of goodness imposed by law.
On this problem the findings of philosophical ethics appear thin, compared with the rich offerings of religion and theology, hence, this topic tends a broader approach to applied ethics. For Fagothey; “Among our rights, the right to life is fundamental, for there can be no further rights and duties unless there is someone there to have them.”[1]
That this is a natural law is evident. The only way I can fulfill my function as a person, reach the goal of my existence, and achieve my highest good, is by performing morally good acts. To perform those acts I must live. My very nature as a human person, therefore, demands that I have the right to life.
The supremacy of life is not controvertible amongst various cultures and religions of the world. For the Judeo-Christian culture, life is sacred, of God and must never be taken, hence the injunction of the Decalogue, “thou shall not kill”. The Judeo-Christian scripture also avers that “your body is a temple of the Holy spirit”. It does not end at this point; it goes ahead to show that man cannot choose when to die: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven; a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted”.
In the same token, Islam conceives life as not only sacred but also created by Allah and held in trust for Him. This is variously noted in Quran thus, “do not take life which God has made sacred except in the course of justice”. The holy Quran elsewhere equates the saving of a life with that of all mankind: “Anyone who saved a life saved the life of all mankind”.
The Vedic teachings equally rate life supreme. It does not only hold life as sacred but traces man’s problems on earth as resulting from the shedding of blood. The Bhagavad-Gita has this to say:
“Everyone must engage in some sort of activity in this material world. But actions can either bind one to this world or liberate one from it. By acting for the pleasure of the supreme, without selfish motives, one can be liberated from the law of Karma (actions and reactions) and attain transcendental knowledge of the self and the supreme”.[2]
Bhagavad-Gita by this is trying to tell us to go for good actions o9f preserving life. By so doing, the law of Karma will not befall us and hence less problems in human societies.
For the Igbos, the supremacy and sanctity of life could be derived from the sanctions given to any violator of the right to life. For instance, anybody that commits murder or manslaughter is banished for seven years in which he is regarded as dead in his community. Again, the name Ndubuisi (life is supreme) shows how valuable life is regarded in Igbo land. Edmund Ilogu infact asserts that “ndu”, life, is the summum bonum.
Life therefore is a precious gift of God to man. It is also a truism that individuals at least value their own lives. There is that instinct in the human person to preserve his own life.
Well-meaning individuals have and are still making efforts to provide ideas towards the improvement of the quality and the conditions of human life. This could be purely scientific and technological or economic, social and political. Some others approach it from the ethical and religious dimensions, yet each person has his own ideas about human life.
However, some important questions at this point come to mind: what ideas do I have? What objectives do they pursue? How do they affect my own life? How is the life of the other person affected? Yes, ideas the philosophers say rule the world, but may we not lose sight of the fact that life belongs to the Supreme Being (God) alone. Thus Pope John Paul II writes: ‘Human life is thus given a sacred and inviolable character, which reflects the inviolability of the creator himself’.[3]
As such, no man is a product of chance since each person is always the result of the creative love of God. The proponents of human violability have noted that it holds a great problem for humanity and posterity, with much emphasis on the general improvement in the standard of living and the condition of man. While on the other hand, its opponents posit that human life should not be reduced to a material for laboratory experiments and hence, advocate the prescription of human violability.
Suffice it to mention that the most dangerous aspect of this debate is that most human beings are not fully aware of what violability is, in the real sense of the word and as a result are not well educated to make informed decision or contribution to the issue. We can then ask actually is human violability? Should human life be used as a laboratory guinea-pig, no matter the consequences? Is this an issue of the end justifies the means? This surely presents a sort of moral dilemma – do we support and encourage human violability for the advance of science and the benefits purportedly associated with it, or do we opt for a total ban on human violability, bearing in mind the inviolable nature and dignity of the human person. One is then confronted with an existential, social and ethical problem, the solution of which we are set to find.
It is not my wish to make the final say or decisive say on human life but to provoke further erudite works and thoughts on the issue. Fully aware of the fact that this is already an issue of heated emotional arguments for many, this work moves on to critically examine human life with regard to inviolability. It is surely going to awake all in slumber, to rise so as to combat the dangerous attack on human life. This work is to announce an ethical gospel of life that is contended to stinging humanity into orientating their values on human life. Uzoewulu Cosmas, expresses the dilemma of our study by saying that: There is no value higher than life, no value in terms of which one can independently choose to live.[4]
Today, man continues to violate and destroy human life with reckless abandon. Thus this research work sets out to restore respect and dignity to human life, while at the same time stressing the indubitable fact that life must be respected and protected from the moment of conception.
It is then the aim of this work to achieve a total reframing of the minds of the populace about violability, as well as discourage ignorant people who practice violability of human life based on euthanasia, abortion, suicide, etc. This work will therefore serve as a scholarly apologia to antagonists of life, a corrective pedagogy to the mis-informed and also enlightenment to neophytes and snit-lifers on the moral inviolability of human life.
Well, given the restricted scope of this work, coupled with the quest for proper systemization and articulation, I set to discuss the Inviolability of Human Life in the light of John Paul II. This work therefore will contain four chapters. The introduction haven been made, chapter one will dwell on the explication of terms like inviolability and human life.
Chapter two will review relevant texts of outstanding authors who are for or against inviolability of human life. Chapter three will deal properly with the view of John Paul II. Chapter four will embody the critique of the proponents of the violability of human life. Then finally will attempt an evaluation and conclusion of this research work.
This work will be analytic, descriptive and evaluative so as to get a satisfactory and comprehensive understanding of the view of John Paul II on the “inviolability of Human Life”. It exposes the situation of things and then analyses it, in view to finding the socio-ethical, religious and psychological implications.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 EXPLICATION OF TERMS
1.1 THE MEANING OF INVIOLABILITY
The term ‘inviolability’ is etymologically derived from latin word “ïnviolatus” meaning “unhurt”. The adjective ‘inviolable’ is described by the 21stcentury chambers dictionary as “sacred” and that which cannot be broken or violated. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines it as; ‘that which must be respected and not attacked or destroyed”. [5]
The ethics of life as valuable has one major consequence; that of the inviolability of life. All research and all human efforts must champion the advance in the quality of human life, but in an integral manner. Any step that does not serve life in this fashion has lost its legitimacy. It should either reform or be destroyed.
Life is such a precious gift and responsibility that no one may tamper with life except in extra ordinary circumstances. Such would involve other lives and not mere peripherals of life. Indeed, life is the highest foundation, end-point of all values. Life is such an important value that makes my internal energies awakens to realities around me. I can then be aware and communicate with other beings in various living signs and symbols. Life begins with my ability to make reactions. Life is there when actions and reactions begin. Life is such an important value that it is rightly described as the ultimate of all other activities of the human person. It is thus, most valuable, indeed a mega-value. There is nothing lower than life that can be used in exchange for it. It has no alternative, no substitute.
Therefore, every human person has by virtue of being human, the right to live a decent human life, this right imposes on all those charged with the responsibility to provide the tools and create the circumstances that ensure and promote decent human life for all.
1.1.1 THE SACREDNESS AND INVIOLABILITY OF HUMAN LIFE
For John Paul II, it is incumbent on man to treat with care the life God has blessed him with, to preserve it and not to make it an object of insult and ridicule. Okechukwu has a view which harmonizes with that of John Paul II, when he captured it beautifully well; that
‘He (God) endowed them with life and all necessary to maintain life and so God’s will is that man’s action should be directed towards the preservation of the uniqueness of human beings.’[6]
1.2 THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN LIFE
The term ‘life” is generally interpreted as the existence of organisms which develop integrally in a series of complicated processes, according to their species and which move in their specific manner and later pass away on account of an irreversible process of decay or decline. From this general interpretation, one can talk of human life, the life of plants and that of animals. The human life with which we are concerned here can be interpreted from various aspects, viz; biologically, chemically, medically, philosophically, theologically, psychologically, anthropologically, ecologically, legally, and politically.
However, “human life is first understood as the biological dimension of the existence of a being with body and intellect.It is more of a personal history which extends from conception to death. The term ‘life’ has also a social dimension in as much as in all phases of man’s history, he is dependent upon his environment, his fellow man. The notion of life in philosophical reflection is interpreted as a mystery which gives rise to complex questions hardly answerable. Okechukwu asserts;
“Human life is understood as God’s gift to man. The creator alone is the Lord over life and death. Man has only the right to use his life but not that of disposing it”.
The above brief explanation of life in general and “human life” in particular clear the ground for a better appreciation of the discourse on the inviolability o human life.
1.2.1 RIGHT TO LIFE AND HUMAN DIGNITY
Let us briefly examine the concept of “right” before going into the analysis of the right to life and human dignity.
By “Right”, we mean a legitimate and moral capacity or power (as against physical power) to do, possess or demand something. Right is primarily subjective in the sense that it is a moral capacity or power that resides in the subject or the person possessing it. One of the fundamental rights of man is the right to life and this entails that at the realm of life we are at the realm of right and duties.
As Henry Peschke opined;
Respect for persons life, his bodily and mental integrity and health belongs to the fundamental right of man. To this corresponds the duty of respecting the health and life of others as well as one’s own person.[9]
Nobody has a right to authorship of life or the full ownership of life, life is a gift from the creator. No human can lay claim to life that is to be created, about to come into existence. But having received the gift of life, each person has a right to live, to maintain his or her life.
It is our duty as ethicists to uncover the moral implications of various unjust treatment meted on human life, such as abortion, euthanasia, murder and the likes. The submission here is that to treat any life badly in this extreme sense of reducing to a sub-human level of life is to make one’s own life one of indignity. It is to live a disfigured life, one that is unethical. On the contrary, to promote decent living for all is to live a high quality life, one that is dignifying and worthy of respect.
Life is a right to all who live and as such no one has the right to deny another person his or her natural right to exist and perform as a human being for all have an equal right to live. Life is such an important value that it is rightly described as the ultimate “raison d’ etre” of all other activities of human person. It is thus most valuable, indeed a mega-value. Hence all people and activities that diminishes life are in all cultures considered as evil, while those that promote it are regarded as good.
Consequently the most extreme evil in the universe is the removal of the life of a fellow human person. Every human person has by virtue of being human, the right to live a decent life and this right imposes on all those in charge the responsibility to provide the tools and create the circumstances that ensure and promote decent human life for all.
The dignity of life resides first in the irrepeatability of life. But above all the foundation and basis of human dignity is found on the great value that the author of life has reposed on it.
The life of man is to be respected and dignified because man was created in the image of God and so all forms of homicide, euthanasia and abortion is to be abrogated because human life is supernatural and divine. Because human life is divine, it must be taken loftily and with highest respect. It must be seen for what it is: of high value. It has a transcendental perspective. Life must be lived lively and meaningfully. That means it should be dynamically lived with purpose and orientedness to fullest life. Every life has a meaning and the highest meaning of life is to live for somebody, for something, for others, for society, for the world, for the entire universe and above all for God.
Life is a right to all who live. It is an imperative; the fundamental point of our argument is that no one has the right to deny another his or her natural right to exist and perform as a human being. No life is in itself superior to others. And before the creator, all lives are equally precious.