THE DOMINION OF THE X-IST FATHER AND HIS SONS
 
The fear of them and the dread of them
was upon everything on the ground,
and in the air,
and in the water;
upon every animal of the earth,
upon all mothers and daughters,
upon all fathers and sons
of a different persuasion.
Into their hands was everything delivered.
And the life and death of every living being
was subject to their exclusive use,
to their abuse.

[This prose poem was inspired by the
text of a theodemonist, sacred book.]

A principle of life, whether accepted or rejected as a fundamental principle, is a (non-metadoctrinal) doctrinal principle. The value which life, conscious life, self-conscious life or human life have or would have is a doctrinal datum. On the metadoctrinal model one cannot assign any value to anything, not because things would not have a value, but simply because assigning values is a doctrinal activity. When all people have their own right to personhood according to metadoctrinal theory, this is not because of some intrinsic value of their personhood, or of personal life, but because of their role as rational, moral agents who adhere to their own moralities, to their own normative doctrines. It is this right to personhood which is the foundation of all persons' right to life. This right --as we have seen in section 8.5.2 of the Book of Instruments-- is an active, discretionary right, that is, it is a right to live and to die. It is also correlated with a duty to respect other people's personhood which entails that one must not kill or use them either without their permission. However, rights to personhood solely concern relations between people. In no way does it follow from the metadoctrinal principle that one would be allowed (or disallowed) to kill or use nonpersonal living beings.

Since the right to personhood forbids the killing of people without their permission, it might look as if the principle underlying it were an identity-dependent principle of personal life in which personal is not defined in terms of mere selfconsciousness but in terms of adherence to one's own normative convictions instead, or some such way. This, however, is a mistake, for if the principle underlying the right to life as ensuing from the right to personhood were a principle of personal life, the right to life would not be discretionary. It would still be life (even if only the life of personal beings) which would be of intrinsic worth. Consequently, it would be wrong ever to kill a person even with 'er permission. But on the metadoctrinal level the concept of intrinsic worth is not applicable, and it is only the person's integrity and autonomy (as an independent decision maker) which matters, not 'er life as such. Rather than being based on the value of life, or of personal life, a person's right to life precedes all questions of the value of life, at least if, and insofar as, it is used as a trump in front of other persons.

The value of life as distinct from nontemporal nonlife, and as distinct from preexistence and temporal death, is a doctrinal issue. As a separate, fundamental principle of life cannot be accepted for theoretical and practical reasons, the intrinsic value of life has to be derived from other principles; or if not the intrinsic value of life, then at least the general guidelines with respect to killing, to risking lives, to letting die and to letting be born or grow up. These subjects used to be, or still may be, called "matters of life and death" in popular parlance, but they are actually matters of life and nonlife, that is, of life, death and preexistence or potentiality. They encompass such general issues as the preservation of the natural environment, the killing or saving of living beings in general and of sentient beings in particular; and they encompass such human issues as abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, execution, assassination, war, famine relief and self-killing. Each of these issues would require a separate chapter, if not book, to deal with, something we have to forgo here.

What is more important is that a normative doctrine itself would not suffice anyhow to solve all practical, normative problems with regard to the above topics, because to do this one also needs to have all relevant information, and to justify all one's factual and modal presuppositions. This, however, is a requirement which may lead to different conclusions at different moments in time. (As to life and nonlife this applies in particular to our knowledge of a living being's happiness-catenality and to areas with fuzzy boundaries between what is and what is not plausible anymore. The advancement of technology, especially medical technology, will also continually affect the factual and modal conditions on which the decisions are to be based.) A universal, normative doctrine defeats its own ends by making statements on specific questions which heavily draw on the factual and modal conditions and suppositions of a particular time and place, in the most banal case the time and place of its origination. It has been done too often before, it shall not be repeated here.

From the perspective of our own doctrine, our attitude towards life and nonlife and towards causing, risking or allowing certain transitions from life to nonlife, and from nonlife to life, will reflect our adherence to the immutable norms: the norm of inclusivity and the norm of neutrality. Always and everywhere it is and will be our fundamental right to live on the DNI, that is, on the principles of the DNI. This right itself, however, is part of the extrinsic right-duty constellation. The rules of this constellation primarily govern our relationship with other people as people, and therefore it is reasonable to start our general discussion of matters of life and nonlife with the status of nonpersonal living beings or systems of living beings. Since they can only have intrinsic rights, it must be on derivative doctrinal values like well-being, or the minimization of unhappiness, and equilibrium, or the preservation of stability, that their rights rest.