ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that certain (modern) concepts of ‘personhood’ are bad for ethics and unnecessary for Christian conciliar theology. Regarding personhood and ethics, it gives two arguments, the Moral Shift Argument and the Argument against Exclusive Moral Personhood, to show that these concepts of personhood unjustifiably discriminate against cognitively impaired or disabled human beings. The concepts of personhood in question are those that presume that the term ‘rational’ is a part of the definition of personhood or that ‘rationality’ is required for personhood. This chapter surveys a history of concepts of personhood to support the Argument against Exclusive Moral Personhood. It also uses this history to argue against the assumption that a Boethian concept of personhood, which adds ‘rational’ to the definition of personhood, is appropriate for conciliar Christian theology. Boethius’s adding ‘rational’ to the definition of personhood was, from a Christian conciliar point of view, an unnecessary add-on. In tracing certain modern conceptions of personhood back to Boethius and comparing them to non-Boethian Greek theological definitions, we learn that from its inception (modern) personhood was problematic and remains so in ethics and in Christian conciliar theology.
