5.1.3 |
THE RIGHT TO LIVE ON THE IMMUTABLE NORMS |
5.1.3.1
THE DOMINION OF THE X-IST FATHER AND HIS SONS
The fear of them and the dread of them
was upon everything on the ground,
and in the air,
and in the water;
upon every animal of the earth,
upon all mothers and daughters,
upon all fathers and sons
of a different persuasion.
Into their hands was everything delivered.
And the life and death of every living being
was subject to their exclusive use,
to their abuse.
[This prose poem was inspired by the
text of a theodemonist, sacred book.]
A principle of life, whether accepted or rejected as a
fundamental principle, is a (non-metadoctrinal)
doctrinal
principle. The value which life, conscious life, self-conscious life
or human life have or would have is a doctrinal datum. On the
metadoctrinal
model one cannot assign any value to anything, not because things would
not have a value, but simply because assigning values is a doctrinal
activity.
When all people have their own
right to personhood
according to metadoctrinal theory,
this is not because of some intrinsic value of their personhood,
or of personal life, but because of their role as rational,
moral agents who adhere to their own moralities, to their own
normative doctrines. It is this right to personhood which is the
foundation of all persons' right to life.
This right --as we have seen in
section 8.5.2 of the Book of
Instruments--
is an active, discretionary right, that is, it is a right to live
and to die. It is also correlated with a duty to respect other
people's personhood which entails that one must not kill or use
them either without their permission. However, rights to
personhood solely concern relations between people. In no way does it
follow from the metadoctrinal principle that one would be
allowed (or disallowed) to kill or use nonpersonal living
beings.
Since the right to personhood forbids the killing of people
without their permission, it might look as if the principle
underlying it were an identity-dependent principle of personal
life in which personal is not defined in terms of mere
selfconsciousness but in terms of adherence to one's own normative
convictions instead, or some such way. This, however, is a
mistake, for if the principle underlying the right to life as
ensuing from the right to personhood were a principle of
personal life, the right to life would not be discretionary. It
would still be life (even if only the life of personal beings)
which would be of intrinsic worth. Consequently, it would be
wrong ever to kill a person even with
'er permission. But on
the metadoctrinal level the concept of intrinsic worth is not
applicable, and it is only the person's integrity and autonomy
(as an independent decision maker) which matters, not 'er life
as such. Rather than being based on the value of life, or of
personal life, a person's right to life precedes all questions
of the value of life, at least if, and insofar as, it is used as
a trump in front of other persons.
The value of life as distinct from nontemporal nonlife, and
as distinct from preexistence and temporal death, is a doctrinal
issue. As a separate, fundamental principle of life cannot be
accepted for theoretical and practical reasons, the intrinsic
value of life has to be derived from other principles; or if not
the intrinsic value of life, then at least the general guidelines
with respect to killing, to risking lives, to letting die
and to letting be born or grow up. These subjects used to be, or
still may be, called "matters of life and death" in popular
parlance, but they are actually matters of life and nonlife,
that is, of life, death and preexistence or potentiality. They
encompass such general issues as the preservation of the natural
environment, the killing or saving of living beings in general
and of sentient beings in particular; and they encompass such
human issues as abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, execution,
assassination, war, famine relief and self-killing. Each of
these issues would require a separate chapter, if not book, to
deal with, something we have to forgo here.
What is more important is that a normative doctrine itself
would not suffice anyhow to solve all practical, normative
problems with regard to the above topics, because to do this one
also needs to have all relevant information, and to justify all
one's factual and modal presuppositions. This, however, is a
requirement which may lead to different conclusions at different
moments in time. (As to life and nonlife this applies in
particular to our knowledge of a living being's
happiness-catenality
and to areas with fuzzy boundaries between what is
and what is not plausible anymore. The advancement of
technology, especially medical technology, will also continually affect
the factual and modal conditions on which the decisions are to
be based.) A universal normative doctrine defeats its own
ends by making statements on specific questions which heavily
draw on the factual and modal conditions and suppositions of a
particular time and place, in the most banal case the time and
place of its origination. It has been done too often before, it
shall not be repeated here.
From the perspective of our own doctrine, our attitude
towards life and nonlife and towards causing, risking or
allowing certain transitions from life to nonlife, and from
nonlife to life, will reflect our adherence to the immutable
norms:
the norm of inclusivity and
the norm of neutrality.
Always and everywhere it is and will be our fundamental right to
live on
the DNI, that is, on the
principles of the DNI. This right itself, however, is part of
the extrinsic right-duty constellation.
The rules of this constellation primarily govern
our relationship with other people as people, and therefore it
is reasonable to start our general discussion of matters of life
and nonlife with the status of nonpersonal living beings or
systems of living beings. Since they can only have intrinsic
rights, it must be on derivative doctrinal values like well-being,
or the minimization of unhappiness, and equilibrium, or
the preservation of stability, that their rights rest.
