ANNE CALDAS Montclair, N.J., May 22, 2011 To the Editor: Emphasizing "personhood instead of debilitation" is not going to prepare society for the huge costs, both emotional and economic, that are fast approaching with the aging of baby boomers and the expected explosion in the number of Alzheimer's cases.
For people who want Jesus to be just a person and not God incarnate, it's also understandable but lamentable that they would seize on every opportunity to emphasize his personhood, and thereby diminish his divinity.
For instance, although Kitwood (1997) emphasized that personhood, a status extended by others, is at the heart of person-centred care, to our knowledge, no one has demonstrated empirically that beliefs about patient status influence how care is provided.
A native of Kaškar, Iraq, Theodore was probably a monk in the Nestorian Christian church, a heretical group adhering to the teachings of the 5th-century theologian Nestorius, who emphasized the human personhood of Christ while attenuating his divinity.
"Relational" may also deny the metaphysical notion of atomistic personhood, emphasizing instead the idea that agents are socially and historically embedded, not metaphysically isolated, and are, moreover, shaped by factors such as race and class.
Brooker builds on Kitwood's work and emphasizes the importance of a caring culture that maintains personhood.
Feminist theory has countered anti-abortion portrayals of ultrasound images as "objective" evidence of fetal personhood by deconstructing such depictions, offering alternative readings of these images, and emphasizing the plurality of ultrasound across different contexts of its use.
Some recent discussions emphasize that a full account of rape's harm must incorporate both its denial of victims' personhood and its intimate, sexual and bodily nature.
Preparing for Super Personhood begins early.
Such are the politics of personhood.
