Children: an inheritance from the Lord. Infanticide and the value of life

Thesis

Arguing from preference utilitarianism, contemporary moral philosopher Peter Singer considers infanticide permissible because infants lack the cognitive capacity to prefer life over death. Christian theologians object that Singer’s general theory offers too thin a conception of ‘the good’, fails to recognise the dependence of value on purpose and abstracts moral value from common humanity. Few confront him directly on infanticide.

Singer’s empirical claims are unconvincing, but scientific evidence alone cannot refute his judgement that the properties which normatively distinguish infants from adults (‘childness’) offer no inherent value. I argue that a Christian moral anthropology, too, privileges adultness over childness if it holds imagehood to represent properties such as rationality that adults have in common with God, but not with infants.

I set out an alternative anthropology that draws on scripture, Christian eudaimonism, neuropsychological research, and the theology and philosophy of childhood. I suggest the value of present moral action in respect of any human is the extent to which it facilitates her vocation. I describe modes in which childness enables humans to flourish at any age, thus extending the range of cognitive properties that can confer personal value on the eudaimonist account beyond rationality to include many that infants possess.

I conclude that, even while infants, humans have a vocation and are equipped both to flourish and contribute to the flourishing of others. Killing humans during infancy imperils human flourishing as decisively as during adulthood and is usually wrong, irrespective of individual capacity to prefer to live.

Authors: Hain, RDW

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-qo2p519yo
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Value of life; infanticide; Children; Moral anthropology; Paediatrics; Theological anthropology
• Subjects: Infanticide; Christian ethics; Death; Ethics; Pediatrics--Decision making