Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

ST. AUGUSTINE’S CRITIQUE OF THE ADIAPHORA 191
trend is readily apparent in popular attitudes toward sexuality,
as well as in certain bioethical discussions regarding end-of-life
decisions.
In a sexual context, it is interesting to observe that those
who engage in promiscuous behavior often presuppose the
moral neutrality of their own bodily existence. For all its shallowness,
the current “talk show” phenomenon of American television
offers some educative illustrations of this viewpoint. I
have in mind those situations in which panelists or participants
proclaim (usually with great conviction) something on the order
of “what I do with my body is my business, as long as I don’t hurt
anyone.” The tacit assumption here seems to be that “my body”
is extrinsic to “my true self,” and therefore, morally irrelevant.
Such an attitude flows from a flawed conception of human nature
that separates “self” and “body,” and in the process, empties
the latter of moral content. If the body possesses any value, it is
grounded exclusively in its capacity to yield pleasure or to promote
one’s interests.
We likewise encounter a tendency to devalue the human
body in postmodernist responses to the issue of human personhood,
particularly (but not exclusively) in connection with
the debate regarding the moral status of Persistent/Permanent
Vegetative State (PVS) patients. In this connection, the postmodernist
understanding of personhood presupposes a dualistic
framework which dichotomizes the life of mind and body, and
deprives bodily life of any moral significance or value in its own
right. This anthropology is closely linked to the notion that personhood
is definable in terms of the possession of rationality
and the exercise of moral autonomy. For the postmodernist,
however, “rational capacity” translates into “consciousness” (or
conscious activity). From this perspective, PVS patients cannot
qualify as persons, precisely because they do not exhibit selfconscious
experience. 59 But on the basis of this criterion of per-
59
Cf., the remarks of BEN A. RICH, “Postmodern Personhood: A Matter
of Consciousness,” Bioethics 11, nos. 3 and 4 (1997): 208: “Personhood status
has been applied only to those actual or theoretical beings who possess
or can develop a sense of right and wrong and hence possess the capacity to
participate as a moral agent in a moral community.”