What Is a Person (Other Than Vampire Food)?

The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that being a human was not enough to make you a person. Instead, rationality, the ability to think, makes someone a person. We might wonder, what about computers? No one thinks we have to show respect for our computers or treat them with dignity. Despite their processing powers, we don’t count computers as part of the moral community.

To clarify, for Kant, being a person did not simply mean being “rational.” It meant “being part of the moral community.” To be part of the moral community means that because of your rationality you deserve to be treated as if you have rights; you deserve respect and dignity. Rocks clearly are not part of the moral community, but other cases are not quite as obvious.

The contemporary philosopher Mary Anne Warren asks us to imagine meeting a nonhuman being. We need to ask ourselves, “What qualities would a being possess to make humans consider that being a part of the moral community?” Warren argues that there are five qualities that would indicate whom we should treat with respect: (1) consciousness, (2) reasoning, (3) self-motivated activity, (4) the capacity to communicate, and (5) the presence of self-concepts.¹

Warren doesn’t believe that a being must have all of these characteristics to be treated as a person, but at least a combination of several is necessary, usually involving numbers one and three. For example, if I run into a being that is conscious and demonstrates self-motivated activity, even if it lacks the ability to commutate with me I would still treat it as if it deserves some rights.

Warren helps us realize how little importance should be placed on the biological difference between vampires and humans. Twilight’s vampires meet all five criteria. To say that they are not persons simply because they are physically different from us amounts to arbitrary speciesism. Tom Regan, a contemporary philosopher who defends animal rights, offers the following in response to those who deny animals rights simply because animals are not human:

There are those who resist the idea that animals have inherent value. “Only humans have such value,” they profess. How might this narrow view be defended? Shall we say that only humans have the requisite intelligence, or autonomy, or reason? But there are many, many humans who fail to meet these standards and yet are reasonably viewed as having value beyond their usefulness to others. Shall we claim that only humans belong to the right species, the species Homo sapiens? But this is blatant speciesism.²

Is there any legitimate basis for rejecting Regan? As Regan mentions, almost any criterion, other than “they aren’t human,” is one that humans can lack. For example, many very young children are not intelligent at all; in fact, an adult gorilla may be smarter than a young child. Why is it that we have to treat the child with respect and not the gorilla? It seems that the only answer we have is that the gorilla isn’t human, but of course, neither is Edward. Does that mean we should treat Edward the way that we treat animals? It’s easy to say that being human is necessary for respect when we want to eat the tastier animals or put exotic or attractive animals in cages for our enjoyment, but it becomes much more complex when we realize that other nonhumans, like Edward, may deserve to be part of the moral community.

What Humans, Vampires, and Animals Have in Common

Let’s consider a very different perspective on how we should treat others. Contemporary philosopher Martha Nussbaum doesn’t argue about how we can tell if something is a person as much as how we can tell if something has particular capabilities. If it has the capability for reason, for example, we shouldn’t interfere with that capability. Instead of arguing that Edward is intelligent and therefore he is a person, Nussbaum takes a simpler approach. She would say Edward is capable of reason, and so we should let him use his reason. In other words, if something has the capability to do something that doesn’t harm anyone else, why interfere with it?

Nussbaum provides us with a list of capabilities that are of central importance as a necessity for a fulfilling and happy life—what she calls “flourishing.” In order for you to flourish, a capability isn’t something you must fulfill, it’s just something others shouldn’t interfere with if you seek that fulfillment. Nussbaum argues that human beings have ten central capabilities:³

1. Life—the ability to live to the end of a life of normal length.

2. Bodily health—the ability to have good health.

3. Bodily integrity—the ability to be secure from violence and move as we choose.

4. Senses, imagination, and thought—the ability to use the senses, to imagine, think, and reason.

5. Emotions—the ability to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves.

6. Practical reason—the ability to engage in critical reflection.

7. Affiliation—the ability to live with and toward others and have self-respect.

8. Other species—the ability to live with concern for animals, plants, and nature.

9. Play—the ability to enjoy recreational activities.

10. Control over one’s environment—the ability to participate in politics and hold property.

The idea is that we should not interfere with someone else’s capabilities on Nussbaum’s list, because those capabilities are necessary in order to flourish. We have other capabilities not listed as central to flourishing, for example, the capability to kill. Nussbaum lists two reasons for this: (1) because it is not necessary for flourishing, and (2) because it interferes with the capabilities of others to flourish.

Nussbaum’s list doesn’t determine who should count as a person, but it does determine rights and dignities that should be granted to those who have what she terms central capabilities. For example, the capability life does not make something a person, but those who have it shouldn’t be denied it. If we used Nussbaum’s capabilities list as a way of determining how we should treat others, it is unlikely anything would be mistreated. This is important, because not all people we consider to be persons today have always been treated as persons. Notoriously, early U.S. law considered slaves to be three-fifths of a person; women were not even given the right to vote until 1920. Had Nussbaum’s capabilities list been followed, African Americans and others would not have been kept as slaves, and women would not have had to fight for the better part of a century to earn rights such as the vote.

If we used Nussbaum’s list, we likely would grant Edward all of the rights humans enjoy so as to not interfere with his capabilities. But the careful reader will notice that the capabilities also seem to apply to animals. Nussbaum realizes this herself and argues that animals should be granted certain rights based on their capabilities, like the rest of us.⁴ Animals should not be slaughtered for food, used for scientific testing, or mistreated in any way that denies animals flourishing lives. But let’s look at it from another perspective.

If Animals Are Human Food, Are We Vampire Food?

Rather than accept Nussbaum’s conclusion, you might simply ask, why not deny Edward personhood? After all, Edward is not human, and as noted earlier, he is very different. But why should difference matter? In many ways vampires are superior to humans. The very reasoning used to deny animals personhood would quickly work against us. The main reason animals are denied personhood is that animal intelligence and communication are different from that of humans. But the Volturi could argue the same thing regarding us. They are smarter, they are capable of doing many things we can only dream about, and if they chose to herd us like cattle into pens for the slaughter, they could with ease (and do, in the case of some rather unfortunate tourists). So on what basis do we say humans deserve special treatment in the face of nonhumans who can do everything better?

There is only one argument that counts us as persons to physically superior vampires: humans have souls. This makes us special. And in Twilight the soul is important; Edward even fears he has lost his and worries that Bella may lose hers, too, when she becomes a vampire.

But there’s a larger problem with the assumption that humans are special because of our souls: How do you know you have one? How do you test for a soul? Souls are a matter more of faith than of fact; there is no test ever that could confirm a soul’s existence. So how can we say that vampires don’t have souls? Imagine that a vampire argued that humans don’t have souls! How would we prove that vampire wrong? Vampires could argue that proof of their souls is in their superiority over humans. The vampire might argue that if humans had souls, God wouldn’t make them so easy to kill. (This is exactly the argument we often use against animals.)

There’s another issue here, too. Let’s say we could prove that we do have souls. Why should this matter? After all, human beings have many features that make us unique, but that have no weight whatsoever when thinking about morality. Humans are the only animals that make pizza, or buy stocks, or wage war. This hardly makes us better, morally speaking, than other animals. So what’s so great about this soul thing?

We can’t really use biology or souls to distinguish between a person and a nonperson, and this may mean that animals should also be granted a kind of personhood. The alternative in both the biological and the soul cases is to allow vampires the possibility of treating us as nonpersons because of their biological “superiority” to humans and our inability to prove who does, and who does not, have a soul. So instead I’d argue that Warren, Regan, and Nussbaum are all on to something. Personhood should be granted to those who demonstrate certain qualities such as consciousness and self-motivated activity; those who demonstrate certain capabilities such as practical reason and affiliation should also not be denied the ability to flourish if they so choose.

Naughty Vampire! No People for You!

Recall that sometimes we don’t grant that a certain human is a person. It might be because of arbitrary and bigoted reasons (we want to keep slaves) or because we believe that personhood requires certain ethical notions (notions a serial killer lacks, for example). Vampires often act in ways that we consider horribly unethical. If a person rejects the morals of the community in drastic ways that violate the personhood of others, then they themselves choose to be apart from the moral community, and thereby choose to stand outside the moral realm of persons.

This is different from the case of animals who cannot determine that they want to reject morality; they simply do not understand it. Animals are then objects of our moral treatment, though they couldn’t choose to participate fully in the moral community. Animals would thus have a limited kind of personhood. We wouldn’t grant them the right to vote, nor would we expect them to treat us with dignity. But we also should not eat them by virtue of Nussbaum’s capabilities list, because animals can be persons whose capabilities we respect. But we wouldn’t ask them to vote or serve on juries, because animals lack the capacity for such tasks. Their inability to participate fully, however, is crucially unlike the serial killer, who chooses to reject the moral community and the capabilities of others.

One might argue that vampires are serial killers. Most choose to reject conventional morality and exit the community. The Cullens, however, do not subscribe to the Volturi ethical system, so we cannot lump the Cullens together with the serial killer clan. This suggests a general policy for humans and vampires alike: Moral personhood may be judged only on a case-by-case basis. Each vampire should be judged as a participant in the moral community as an individual. We would reject, punish, or in the case of the Volturi, defend ourselves from those who choose to violate the personhood and capabilities of others.

The great irony, though, is this: If we choose to reject some individuals as nonpersons because of their willingness to harm others, we may find ourselves as only partial persons. Why? If by our accounts animals have a kind of limited personhood, then our treatment of them is analogous to the Volturi’s treatment of us. So if the Volturi should be punished or denied personhood because of their treatment of other persons, then we should similarly be punished for our treatment of these other weaker animal-persons. In the end Edward might be not only a person, but a better person than most humans. After all, he refrains from killing those who are weaker and less intelligent than he is, while humans gladly kill animals weaker with different intelligences.

Stephenie Meyer’s use of “vegetarian” vampires in her Twilight saga leaves great philosophical space to explore issues such as how we define personhood. Now that you know the criteria, are you worthy of being a person? It may not be as easy a question to answer as you think.

NOTES

1 Mary Anne Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” Monist 57:1, 43-61 (1973).

2 Thomas Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

3 Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, The Quality of Life (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1993).

4 Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstien (eds.), Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).