EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

While policy experts from across the political spectrum hail the success of 1996’s welfare reform legislation, the philosophical foundations of this momentous shift in public policy are worthy of examination. At the heart of the debate over welfare reform’s past successes and future course is the underlying philosophical dispute about the meaning of human personhood.

Previous social welfare policies often focused on programs that delivered direct cash assistance, with a bias against evaluating behavioral patterns and social structures that contribute to poverty and state dependence. Evaluations by social service providers of personal choices, behavioral patterns, and the resultant social structures (or lack thereof) that emerged were deemed inappropriate and even counterproductive on the grounds that such judgments would curtail freedom of expression, constituting an attempt to shape the behavior of those in need. At root, such non-evaluative ideas of social policy and services embodied a kind of expressive individualism in its account of human life and action.

The 1996 welfare reform legislation, as well as those policies currently in consideration for the renewal of this legislation, rejects such expressive individualism as the foundation of sound social policy. Rather, the 1996 legislation, as well as current policy proposals, emphasizes the need to integrate the person into communities of meaning, particularity, and mutual moral obligation. As a result, the next phase of welfare reform must address the issues of marriage, the responsibilities of fathers, the dignity of work, the importance of moral formation in children, and the elevated role of faith-based organizations in serving the poor. A helpful and accurate analysis of these issues can be offered only in the light of the insights offered by an examination of the human person, in light of a Christian anthropology that understands humans as created in the “imago Dei,” the image of God.

In his essay, Gregory Beabout explores the philosophy of the human person, focusing on the book of Genesis, and the implications of this philosophy for the next phase of welfare reform. Specifically, he argues, humans are created as persons endowed with a capacity to know the truth and are capable of self-determination. Past articulations of social policy tended to ignore basic truths about the human person, leading to negative, long-term consequences for those in need. Beabout’s analysis indicates that people need structures of personal accountability because they are conditioned by disordered social structures that incentivize destructive behavior, break down community, and diminish one’s ability to exercise personal freedom responsibly. The rehabilitation of the proper exercise of human freedom is both the foundation and the goal of the future of welfare reform.

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Gregory R. Beabout, Ph.D., is an associate professor of philosophy at St. Louis University, where he teaches business ethics and social ethics. His areas of specialization include Catholic social thought, the philosophy of Pope John Paul II, and the philosophy of economics. He has published two books, Freedom and Its Misuses and Applied Professional Ethics, as well as articles in Faith and Philosophy, Philosophy and Theology, Commonwealth, and First Things.