Page 357 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

T H E L AW A N D T H E H U M A N P E R S O N
vidualistic understanding of personhood tends to determine
personhood by consciousness. On that basis, the personhood
of the embryo is disputed. But if personhood is understood as
identity in and through relations, then it becomes exceed-
ingly difficult to justify abortion. The embryo in the womb is,
from conception—or at least from the moment it enters rela-
tion with its mother—not merely a potential but an actual
identity of relations.
A similar problem appears in the rights of infants and the
mentally challenged. If personhood is determined by con-
sciousness or understanding, then every human being with
diminished consciousness is also a diminished person. But
this leads inevitably to a gradation of personal value. Against
this, the concept of personhood as relational identity makes
clear that all such distinctions collapse. Infants, the mentally
challenged, and all who seem weak or limited possess equal
value and equal rights, because each one is a unique and un-
repeatable identity in relation to others. The law is therefore
obliged to protect each person, regardless of characteristics,
because every human being bears a relational identity and is
therefore a unique and unrepeatable person.
These issues can easily be extended to other contemporary
problems, such as euthanasia and the so-called right to physi-
cian-assisted death. Everywhere the same problem recurs: an
individualistic understanding of man leads to legal and moral
dead ends. What is needed is a rethinking of law from a per-
sonalistic perspective. The rights of the person are no longer
to be understood merely as the rights of the individual, but as
the rights of one whose existence is constituted in relation—
with God, with others, and with the world.
This becomes especially urgent in the light of the ecological
crisis of our time. Individual rights can no longer be consid-
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