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Mänsklig värdighet och den döda kroppen
No full textAbstract The human person has a certain dignity. This is a key understanding of Christian anthropology and a fundamental for The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Created in the image of God, the human person is different from the rest of created life. But like every form of life, human life is finite. Mortality is a defining fact and through her embodiedness, the human person is limited. This, however, does not alter or lessen her dignity; rather, the limitations of the body is an integrated part of what it is to be human and to have dignity. But what does that mean in relation to the dead body? What can be said about human dignity after life ends? And what does it mean to treat a dead body with respect? This study aims to relate a contemporary understanding of human dignity to ethical thought in Christian theology as it appears in two recent documents. One is from the Roman Catholic Church: Dignitas Infinita: On Human Dignity, and the other from Church of Sweden: Livets början och livets slut: Redskap för orientering i etiska vägval. The purpose is to clarify how dignity can be understood in a way that also has relevance for the dead body. Three aspects of dignity will be used to analyze the teaching in the documents. These aspects - dignity as worth, as virtue/character, and dignity as standing - will each help me interpret dignity as it appears in the presented texts. I will also employ an understanding of dignity found in the Catholic ethicist Jean Porter’s article Torture and the Christian Conscience- a Reply to Jeremy Walderon. In the article, the author elaborates a certain understanding of dignity, coming from the reversed perspective of what it means to harm or destroy human dignity through torture. I will then proceed to a discussion of how the found theological understanding of dignity, can inform ethical considerations on what it means to respect the dead body. I will argue that dignity means to honor the Image of God in each person, especially in situations of vulnerability. In my understanding, being dead is to be considered an extreme state of vulnerability for the body. When the image of God is disrespected in the vulnerable, it is also injured in the person not taking responsibility. To safeguard the image of God in the dead person, is to keep it alive in the living. Regarding the dead body, this means a responsibility not to leave the person alone and to treat the body of a deceased person with due respect
