5.2.4.2. The foundation of human value
The absolute value of the human person is based on his
uncompromising nature, his intrinsic dignity which makes him a human being. The
concept of moral person within the meaning of the term seems to be unable to
make sense unless it is taken in a universal perspective that affirms the
substantial reality of any subject and that believes that every man whosoever,
has an intrinsic value beyond his physical characteristics, ethnic, social
status and everything related to it.
Immanuel Kant in his formulation of the categorical imperative
poses man as a moral being by essence because he has a legislative reason
through which he is faced with his duties before an intangible moral law. The
notion of person is even present in one of the formulas summarizing this moral
imperative that Kant describes as
I Ebenezer Njoh Mouelle, De la
médiocrité a l'excellence, Yaounde, I998, p. 43. If in
Yaounde and Douala the trader feels compelled to sell his Cameroonian eggs or
Cameroonian chicken, to stick labels stating: "eggs from France", "chickens
from Normandy," it is precisely because his compatriot on his return from
France has inoculated in him the shame and even the disgust of what is locally
made to the benefit of "wonders" from Europe.
categorical as opposed to the technical imperative that is a
simple calculation of means. Kant says: « Agis de telle sorte que tu
traites l'humanité aussi Bien dans ta personne que dans la personne
d'autrui toujours en même temps comme fin, jamais simplement comme moyen.
»1
This Kantian formulation could serve as a starting point for
any reflection on man's relationship to science and technology, man and
globalisation and especially that of man's place in the biomedical field. The
person in the Kantian perspective is presented as being embodied with humanity
in its moral dimension. In this sense, recognizing the person as an absolute
value is to consider him as an object of respect regardless of the status of
that person, even when he is limited in the exercise of his freedom.
For the Personalism of Emmanuel Mounier, the person
is the source of all values, a person who is defined not only by his intrinsic
qualities, but also by his social dimension and in relation to the human
community. She is neither an atomized individual nor an individual crushed by
society. If the person is defined within the scope of the reciprocity of
consciences, the society does not surpass the person; on the contrary, it must
organize itself in order to promote her dignity. Promoting the person is
promoting the humanizing values and discouraging all instrumentalist
inclinations leading to the devaluation of humanity. Yet, the notion of a
person cannot be reduced to reason, conscience and freedom. Otherwise, what
would be the status of the embryo that is not yet aware of its existence and
that cannot even lead it through reason or conscience?
Thus, we think that the notion of a person as an absolute
value transcends the merely moral framework to include the existential. The
embryo is existentially a person in becoming even if he is not yet a moral
subject. The absolute value of the human
I Immanuel Kant, Les Fondements de la
métaphysique des mceurs (I785), Paris, I988, p. I58. "Act in such a
way that you treat humanity in both your person as in any other person always
at the same time as an end and never simply as means."
person is linked to the indivisibility of the being of the
person, its uniqueness and its inherent dignity. To the extent that life begins
with conception, then the embryo deserves the respect that is linked to its
nature. It is a human being who only needs time to develop and actualize his
full potentialities. The absolute value of the person is her humanity, that
which makes him a human being beyond his social, moral or legal status.
In this vein, even mad people, the disabled, babies, children,
the elderly and even foetuses are entitled to respect because of the humanity
that is in them: they are human beings. We believe it is always necessary to
qualify as a human person, someone who does not have or who no longer has the
use of all his faculties that make him a whole person because of a disability
due to illness, deformity or injury. Moreover, we can ask ourselves this
question: did the one who lost the use of his faculties actually lost these
faculties? This plunges us into the metaphysical dimension of the individual,
that is, the ontological foundation of his faculties.
So, if we consider that a human being is a person, we mean
that we do not reduce him to a body, that we do not limit his being to its
materiality. This means that we assume in every human being a spiritual
principle inspiring respect. The absolute value of the person ultimately is
linked to her nature as a creature of God. The Bible teaches that God created
man in his image.I
It is the view of man image of God that gives full scope to
the absolute value of man. Recognizing their membership of a single creator,
men are called to respect the human, better, the divine in every individual
person. We will not go on the debate about the existence or non-existence of
God. We affirm that He exists and that everything comes from Him. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights for example is rooted in this vision of things,
recognizing that respect for human dignity is the foundation of freedom,
justice and peace in the world, while recognizing that people's lives must be
respected and preserved because they are sacred.
Yet, despite the commitments made more than fifty years ago,
there are men, women and children who continue to be displaced, abused,
persecuted or executed and the equality of men and women and physical integrity
of children are still not fully respected.
Moreover, the human person, considered as an end in itself,
with perfectibility and innate irreducibility, is not an instrumentalisable
reality. The international community should mobilize itself a little more to
promote respect for human rights within communities. Everyone, as individual as
well as citizen, whatever his beliefs, should defend the humanizing values
through any action in favour of the respect for human rights.
A genuine recognition of human rights on a global scale
involves both respect for differences and the definition of common boundaries
not to cross and sanctions for transgressions. These limits are imposed on us
by the indivisibility of the being of the human person, an irreducibility that
gives him the status of absolute value. In a world beset by genetic
manipulations and by the instrumentalization of man, it is now more urgent than
ever to affirm the value of the human person and to erect it above the
economic, social, legal and religious values. It is the task that Pius ONDOUA
assigns to philosophy and to the philosopher:
« Etre philosophe aujourd'hui, c'est prendre en
charge l'etre : a la fois la nature et la subjectivite humaine ; c'est prendre
en charge le reel et l'histoire dont il faut resituer le processus du point de
vue de la valeur absolue du sujet et de sa transcendance, pour battre en breche
le triomphalisme scientiste/positiviste ; c'est, en un mot, la recherche d'une
sagesse du present a partir de laquelle le sujet humain, de nouveau percu comme
transcendance, retrouve sa valeur absolue. 1
I Pius Ondoua Olinga, « Raison plurielle et
humanisme de l?avenir p, in Annales de la Faculte des Arts,
lettres et sciences humaines, vol.1. NO.6, Nouvelle Serie, Yaounde, 2007,
p. 29. Being a philosopher today, is to be concerned with being: both the
nature and the human subjectivity; it is to be concerned with reality and
history whose process must be resituated in terms of the absolute value of the
subject and of his transcendence, in order to challenge the scientist/
positivist triumphalism; in a word, it is the search for a wisdom of the
present from which the human subject, once more considered as transcendence,
recovers his absolute value.
Rather than rejecting the phenomenon of globalisation totally,
we think that a globalisation that takes account of the dignity of the human
person and that works for considerably reducing the gap between the strongest
and the weakest, the richest and the poorest, the North and the South, the
industrialized world and the underdeveloped world is possible. However, it is
necessary that we reconsider the scale of values, considering the fact that the
reckless pursuit of profit has led to the instrumentalization of man, actor of
globalisation. Rather than fighting against globalisation per se, we
are fighting against the Westernisation of the world, the homogenization of
cultures and the domination, as in a post-industrial jungle of the stronger
over the weaker, a real tragedy that expresses the law of the strongest that
exists in the animals jungle between the wolf and the lamb. Another form of
conviviality should be envisaged, a conviviality that respects differences and
diversities and that affirms complementarity, unity in diversity.
Globalisation will then be a true exchange, a Rendez-vous
of the giving and the receiving' where each people, refusing to
be self-sufficient opens itself to others, providing its positive values to
others and at the same time receiving the positive values inherent in other
peoples. We should therefore avoid dissolution in a totalizing universal,
destructive of specificities, cultural individual and collective identities.
This, in all optimism, remains possible if man, measure of all
things2 becomes the centre of everything, and therefore of
globalisation.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, globalisation is
thus, paradoxically leading the globe astray as far as human values are
concerned, as if it had constituted a historic phase in the history of mankind.
That is why it is necessary to consider whether another form of conviviality is
not possible. Are we really at the end of history with the triumph of the
Neoliberal ideology as claimed by Francis Fukuyama? For Teilhard de
117 Chardin, instead of proclaiming the end of history, we
should, in all optimism consider that globalisation will have sense if only it
becomes primarily a spiritual process where matter is serving the spirit.
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