The Value of Human Life

Ethics
Agatha Ana Jumelle R. Servida
 The "sanctity of life" is the idea that human lives are inherently valuable —
more valuable than any other material thing there is.

• We unthinkingly accept that there’s something about human beings that we

ought to protect and, if at all possible, avoid harming. We value human life
in a way that suggests we have a magic and a sacred something that other
living things, like animals, do not possess.

Why, then, do we continue to value human life, especially above and beyond
animals?
Life in itself has no specific value to us, other than as the way we can have
experiences, and these experiences are what we find to be valuable.

Humans do not put the value of life into the physical state of mere aliveness,
but give it value through its ability to allow for experiences. Life, as a set of
experiences that are good, is what has value, and our capacity to have them
is the intrinsic value of life.

Ethically, some people are more valuable than others in terms of what we
accomplish in this world, what we have to offer, vs. what we need and want
to make our lives comfortable and worth living here on Earth.
• It is often said that human life is priceless. No amount of money or other
goods equals the value of human life. The only justification for not
preventing the loss of human life when one can do so is that it would result
in the loss of even more lives. In short, only human lives can be balanced
against human lives.
• The philosophical locus classicus for this view is Immanuel Kant’s claim
that human beings have dignity but not a price. By ‘price’, he did not mean
a merely monetary value but an equivalence. “Whatever has a price can
be replaced by something else as its equivalent.” thus, the claim that
human lives are priceless is not merely that no monetary value can
ethically be placed upon them, but that no exchange value of other goods
can be placed upon them.
 Two kinds of value
INSTRUMENTAL VALUE
which is value for what something does.
Values that we have because they help use
achieve something else – they’re a means to an
end. E.g. honest is valued because it’s good for
positive relationships.
We might claim that a human life can be
measured by the good it gives the world. If so, is it
not perfectly okay to harvest organs from a
vagrant and friendless scoundrel in order to keep
dozens alive?
INHERENT VALUE
which is valuable because it just is.
Inherent value is subjective value, but it is
properly determined by God. (Human lives, all of
them, are eternally priceless in the eyes of God.)
The other alternative is that we value life because
we’ve always valued life. There’s a kind of
collective unconscious that assents and reaffirms
the sanctity of life. By the stories we tell, good
parenting, and moral education, we teach each
generation that human life is valuable beyond all
else. We establish it as the sacred myth of our
time
 Two kinds of value
INSTRUMENTAL VALUE INHERENT VALUE
the value of human life is derived from its meaning that it has value in and of itself,
contribution to society or other external factors. regardless of any external factors or
For example, some might argue that human life is circumstances. This view is often associated with
valuable because of the contributions that religious and philosophical beliefs that hold
individuals make to society through their work, human life to be sacred or inherently valuable.
creativity, or other achievements.
 Aristotle
• According to Aristotle, there was only one true “good” in the
universe: A being that satisfies its purpose (or telos). He
believed everything should live exactly as it was meant to. For
humans, this means being rational and to flourish in being so.
Aristotle thought that all living things could be weighed by the
kind of soul they had. On the bottom rung, you have the
reproductive or nutritive soul, such as of plants and trees. Next
is the sensitive soul of perception and movement — the thing of
the animal kingdom. At the top of the hierarchy is the intellect,
or rational soul, which is uniquely human. All three souls are
nested, in the sense that the higher souls contain also the
lower ones; animals also reproduce, and humans also
perceive. From all this, Aristotle concluded that we should value
human life, due to our inherent capacity for reason.
 St. Thomas Aquinas

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, life is a gift from God to be loved, nurtured and lived in
proper charity. The human being, as a respectful steward of this gift, does not possess
absolute dominion over it. Absolute dominion over life belongs only to God (Summa
Theologica, II. II. Q 64 Art. 5.). Consequently, any willful destruction of one’s own life or the
lives of others, especially of the innocent, is always considered a serious objective evil
because it violates the natural law of self-preservation and charity toward the self and
others (Summa Theologica II. II. Q65, Art. 1). Such acts reject the proper limits of
stewardship and the sovereignty of God over life and death. This means that suicide and
homicide are sins against oneself, against community, and against God
 St. Thomas Aquinas

For St. Thomas, God is the ultimate meaning and purpose of every human life. Human life
is only a temporal reality. If the act of preserving life helps a person toward God as his or
her final end, then there is a moral obligation to take the necessary means conducive for the
preservation of life. But if preserving life hinders one’s ultimate union with the Creator, then
it would be an objective sinful act since it frustrates the ultimate meaning of one’s life.
 St. Thomas Aquinas

It is clear that for St. Thomas, the pursuit of health and life as a good should be done only in
accordance with whether such pursuit aids the person toward the goal of final union with
God. A person is morally obliged to take care of one’s own health and to prolong life in so
far as it is in accordance with that end. Just as it is possible for one to sin against
responsible stewardship of life through culpable negligence, it is also possible for one to sin
against responsible stewardship through an inordinate love of life by making its preservation
as one’s ultimate end.
 - End -
Thank You