Personhood and Potency
I gave a paper at Notre Dame this weekend for their Conference on the notion of Personhood- my contribution was titled “Corporate Personhood Criteria”. It applies some earlier research I did on John Marshall and corporate personhood.
Here is the main thing my research dug up, and it's from Sir Edward Coke's ruling in Sutton's Hospital (1614). The legal principle and the examples Coke cites demonstrate that beings of a given kind are legally persons even if their potencies are not yet actualized- a General having received a commission, a chick being a bird even if it can’t fly yet, a Bishop elect not yet ordained, and a child to be born. Coke cites Aristotle's On Generation and Corruption:
…And as to the creation of an incorporation, an Hospital potestate, potentia, seu nomine [in authority, in possibility, or in name] sufficeth; as one may by Letters Patents be Governour of an Army before there be an army. And the same agreeth with Philosophy and reason. Aristotle lib. 3. De generatione1 saith, quod caro gignit carnem [that flesh begets flesh]; and that is true in potestate but not actu; and so any fowl so soon as it is hatcht is volatilis a volando, quia habet potest’ volandi quanquam act’ volandi non habet [because it has the potential ability to fly even though it has not yet the act of flight] So a child as soon as he is born is said rationalis [to be rational] because he hath potestatem [the potency], although he hath not, and perhaps never shall have rationem actu [rationality in actuality]…
…A thing which is not in esse [in being] but in apparent expectancy is regarded in Law, as a Bishop who is elect before he be consecrated, an infant in his mother’s belly before his birth.”
Why does it matter? Because 21st century utilitarian bioethicists like Peter Singer have claimed some human beings are not persons and are therefore without inherent value or dignity. Singer’s notion of personhood involves a rejection of the idea of a human kind or essence, and a rejection of the relevance of inherent potencies. His personhood criteria instead favors actualities like consciousness, awareness of the past, and plans for the future. My short paper makes the simple point that the utilitarian theory of personhood is a historical novelty and that the older understanding of personhood reflected in the likes of Coke assumed the potency/actuality distinction.
How important have the theories of personhood put forward by utilitarian bioethists like Singer actually been in our society?
I don’t know but I do know that John C. Calhoun’s theory that liberty and equality were “prizes to be won” rather than rights humans were created with was a powerful influence for slavery in the American south. Personhood is pretty fundamental and if you get it wrong, you can mess alot up.
[1] Speech on the Oregon bill, 1848. See: https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/speech-on-the-oregon-bill/.
I looked it up, and I think the Aristotle passage Coke refers to is found in modern editions in Book I, Chapter 6 of On Generation and Corruption: “Two preliminary distinctions will prepare us to grasp the cause of growth. We must note (i) that the organic parts grow by the growth of the tissues (for every organ is composed of these as its constituents); and (ii) that flesh, bone, and every such part-like every other thing which has its form immersed in matter-has a twofold nature: for the form as well as the matter is called 'flesh' or 'bone'.”