Q&A: What, Essentially, Is a Human Being, and What Is His Value?
What, Essentially, Is a Human Being, and What Is His Value?
Question
Hello Rabbi. An interesting philosophical question occurred to me, and I’d be glad to hear your opinion.
From the moment of fertilization until the eighth week, a human is an “embryo,” but from the eighth week onward, after the development of the brain, the embryo becomes a “fetus,” and around that time, according to Jewish law (“after 40 days the soul enters,” etc.), there is a tendency to be more lenient in certain cases of abortion.
Maimonides also says that the image of God in a person is his intellect.
My question is: what value do people with intellectual disability, insanity, or in short, any disorder or illness that causes them to think they’re on Mars and lose their mind, actually have? That is, something that essentially causes them to be without reason?
Is it more valuable to save Einstein from a burning building than an ordinary person, who is presumably less intelligent than him?
If intellect is in fact the essence and the image that exists in a human being, then is the difference between a human and a cat basically the same difference as between a very intelligent person and a person with intellectual disability?
Is the value of people with intellectual disability proprietary (belonging to their guardians), or is it like the value a person has in himself (in the name of which value we kill animals but not people, respect other people, and care for their welfare)?
The rationale here is actually fairly strong, even though intuitively it is very hard.
I’d be glad to hear your opinion.
Thanks
Answer
Indeed, intuitively there is logic to this. Along these lines, halakhic decisors and commentators argued regarding priority rules in rescue situations between a young person and an older one, or a sick person and a healthy one (temporary life versus a full life). Here too there is a plausible basis for priority. It is accepted among halakhic decisors that such distinctions are not made, and apparently this is a “no distinctions” rule because of concern over ulterior considerations and problematic preferences. If you have the possibility of saving one of two people, and one has an intellectual disability, there is moral logic in saving the more lucid one. By the way, even if this is not the essence of the image of God in a human being, there is still an advantage here that breaks the symmetry.
Save the Bibas family last