Le patient grabataire non communiquant dans l′évolution finale d′unedémence : réflexion sur la notion de personne

Our traditional concept of the human person is challenged in the difficult situation of the non-communicating bedriddenpatient in the terminal phase of Alzheimer or Alzheimer-like dementia. Thissituation can lead to radical positions. Deeper thought on the question leadsto a renewed perception of the human person, not only because of the principle-responsibility concept as described by Hans Jonas, faced with disastrous consequences these implications could have, as destruction of the social relationship or as retrograde demise of the fundamentals of human rights, but also because of the partiality of moral rationalism and its incapacity to apprehend the full richness of humanness with its differences,history, and interiority through which persists an intersubjectivity even though certain criteria of personal life have been lost.