Person and Face: The Constitutive Principles of Personalist Bioethics

Abstract

The person and the face are at the heart of the ethical reflections in this article. The fact that these two categories are the subject of study allows the authors some impact on the personalist reflection proposed by the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Personalist philosophical anthropology introduces some indispensable characteristics that are constitutive of personalist bioethics and allow us to arrive at the “human care” determinant that leads us to all ethical responsibility. Human life is portrayed as the primary value to be protected, since it underlies the human “selfsameness” that enables us to recognize ourselves and, at the same time, to be accepting of others and “relating” to the anonymous face. The presence of the face of one’s semblance or likeness speaks to the maximum obli­ gation of every Jewish prescription; that is, not to threatening life, which is the justification Lévinas uses to introduce us to an ethics of the “other”, specifically one that allows us to be joint stewards, contemplating the whole of humanity in the face of the “other”.