Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives (1995)
Father Frank Pavone conducts six 25 minute audio interviews. These were originally broadcast in video format on EWTN TV, but no YouTube videos of Dr. Brennan are currently available.
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“A New Ethic for Medicine and Society”
California Medicine, Volume 113, Number 3, September 1970
Click ▼ to Read More…The process of eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun. It may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion. In defiance of the long held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or status, abortion is becoming accepted by society as moral, right, and even necessary. It is worth noting that this shift in public attitude has affected the churches, the laws, and public policy rather than the reverse. Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.
It seems safe to predict that the new demographic, ecological, and social realities and aspirations are so powerful that the new ethic of relative rather than of absolute and equal values will ultimately prevail as man exercises ever more certain and effective control over his numbers, and uses his always comparatively scarce resources to provide the nutrition, housing, economic support, education, and health care in such ways as to achieve his desired quality of life and living. The criteria upon which these relative values are to be based will depend considerably upon whatever concept of the quality of life or living is developed. This may be expected to reflect the extent that quality of life is considered to be a function of personal fulfillment; of individual responsibility for the common welfare, the preservation of the environment, the betterment of the species; and of whether or not, or to what extent, these responsibilities are to be exercised on a compulsory or voluntary basis.
The part which medicine will play as all this develops is not yet entirely clear. That it will be deeply involved is certain. Medicine’s role with respect to changing attitudes toward abortion may well be a prototype of what is to occur. Another precedent may be found in the part physicians have played in evaluating who is and who is not to be given costly long-term renal dialysis. Certainly this has required placing relative values on human lives and the impact of the physician on this decision process has been considerable. One may anticipate further development of these roles as the problems of birth control and birth selection are extended inevitably to death selection and death control whether by the individual or by society, and further public and professional determinations of when and when not to use scarce resources.
William Brennan, PhD, Professor of Social Work
 slu.edu/school-of-social-work/william-brennan-phd |
Research Interests: Human life issues; Impact of language on oppressionTeaching Areas: Human behavior and the social environment; Communicating with children; Family interaction under stress Education History: Community and Professional Service: Tegeler Hall, 306 |
| Dr. Brennan is a Professor of Social Work in the Saint Louis University School of Social Work. He has written and spoken extensively on how euphemisms and dehumanizing language facilitate massive oppression. His book, Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives (Loyola University Press, 1995), became a Loyola bestseller.His most recent book is “John Paul II: Confronting the Language Empowering the Culture of Death” (Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2008). Professor Brennan is currently working on a book-length manuscript tentatively titled, Killing in the Name of Healing: Technology, Rhetoric, and the Medicalization of Destruction. | |
Review
William Brennan – Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1995.
Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives, by William Brennan, is a book that merits being read by the widest possible audience. It is meticulously researched and well argued, and packs quite an emotional wallop to boot. In its discussion of such hot button moral topics as abortion, euthanasia, racism, sexism, and totalitarianism, this book will validate and fortify the beliefs of some (including those of the reviewer); infuriate others; and leave still others discomforted and shaken. This is a book about which it is difficult if not impossible to remain indifferent.
Brennan’s basic thesis is that the great crimes against humanity (abortion, attacks on the vulnerable, dependent and disabled, the exploitation of one sex by the other, anti-Semitism, genocide under Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism, racism and the enslavement of non-whites, and the virtual annihilation of America’s indigenous peoples) share in common a rhetoric or language of dehumanization. This common way of speaking, Brennan argues, takes a variety of forms, ranging from viewing the unborn, the dependent, women, Jews, Native Americans, blacks either as “deficient humans,” ”subhuman” or “nonhuman,” a “species of lower animals,” ”repulsive parasitic creatures,” ”diseased organisms,” “inanimate objects,” “waste products,” or ”legal nonpersons.”
Brennan argues that pinning such labels on people facilitates greatly or makes possible denying them their basic and essential dignity as full-fledged human beings. It follows that a critically important part of the solution to human oppression is a semantic sea change to rhetoric that is life-affirming and that is capable of counteracting the “toxic” rhetoric of dehumanization. Brennan speaks of an “expansive definition of humanity,” one that embraces all human persons regardless of their physical characteristics or stage of life. He points out rightfully that a shift in semantics will not in and of itself eradicate dehumanization. He recognizes that human institutions must change: laws ought to reflect an expansive definition of humanity, and social systems should not allow some people to dehumanize others for profit. However, the powerful role of semantic oppression, long neglected, is given its just due in this book.
Brennan addresses the critical issue of the grounds on which the ethic of expansiveness can be defended. He argues that an “expansive definition of humanity” can be based either on a humanistic or supernatural worldview. That is, its underpinning can be natural law (human beings regardless of characteristics or stage of life being entitled to inalienable rights to dignity and well-being) or divine law (human beings regardless of characteristics or stage of life being equally sacred and valuable in the eyes of God). Thus, Brennan clearly is not pitting secularists against those with an appreciation for the supernatural foundations of our existence: rather he is pitting those with an expansive view of humanity against those with an exclusionary or restrictive view of humanity.
I find myself in wholehearted sympathy with Brennan’s argument. It exemplifies a sociology that is morally grounded. A universal moral standard (an expansive definition of humanity) is put forward as a societal ideal. The sociological side of the analysis identifies those cultural elements (in this case linguistic symbols) that not only define how human beings are viewed but have implications for how various groups are treated differently. The sociological analysis helps us understand why the universal moral principle is not being realized and what steps need to be taken to bring the reality closer in line with the ideal. Clearly the sociological analysis constitutes an intellectual activity independent of the activity by which the moral standard is delineated. However, the sociological analysis is clearly subordinate to the moral mission which serves to frame that activity. Brennan’s argument is not esoteric, given the fact that his book is meant to appeal to a general audience and therefore a premium is placed on accessibility. However, the development of a morally-grounded sociology or a Catholic sociology requires systematic efforts to integrate two autonomous yet cybernetically linked intellectual activities-the development of universal moral principles upon which society should be grounded, on the one hand, and the identification of social and cultural forces that either support or impede the actualization of those principles, on the other. In unpacking Brennan’s argument, we are able to infer the outlines of such an integrated perspective. High on the agenda of those interested in developing, legitimizing, and institutionalizing a morally based sociology or a Catholic sociology should be to present such a perspective in as explicit and codified a form as possible.
—Anthony L. Haynor Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey
Ignatius Insight editor Carl E. Olson interviews Dr. Brennan about John Paul II: Confronting the Language Empowering the Culture of Death (2008)
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