Page 356 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
to protect the governed from arbitrary authority, and thus
they came to mean self-determined governance, excluding or
limiting interference from the state. But once the human being
is understood chiefly as a self-sufficient individual, a problem
immediately arises: how are the rights of “others” to be de-
fined? If personhood is not first understood as relationship,
the rights of others can only appear as limitations imposed
from outside upon the individual’s autonomy.
This becomes evident in a number of fundamental issues.
Does the right to self-determination in life or death—suicide,
for example—violate or respect the rights of others: relatives,
friends, children, all those connected with the one who dies
by bonds of love or necessity? How can such rights even be
measured if personhood is not first understood relationally?
In the same way, the right to dispose of one’s own body, before
or after death, is not disconnected from the rights of others.
In an individualistic view, the body is the fortress of the ego;
but for the person, the body is the means by which one com-
municates with others. Even our bodies belong to others, since
they exist in relationship. Thus self-murder and self-sacrifice
are two radically different things. Suicide is condemned be-
cause it springs from an individualistic standpoint; self-sacri-
fice is praised because it is for the sake of the other. The same
is true of the donation of organs: such giving confirms that the
body does not simply belong to an isolated individual, but
exists within a network of personal relations.
The same line of thought applies to abortion. From the
standpoint of the individual, the mother appears to possess
the right to rule absolutely over her own body. Yet the ques-
tion immediately arises whether this violates the rights of an-
other, namely the embryo. Is the embryo a person or not? This
question has been widely debated, and the dominant indi-
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