A Philosophical Happy Hour on persons and personalism.
If someone came up to you—someone you know, perhaps not very well, but with whom you have had association for enough time to reasonably say, “Yes, I know him [or her]”—and said any of the following to you, how would you react?
- You have no personal rights.
- You have a bad personality.
- You have no personality.
- You are a bad person.
- You are not a person.
Most of us, I suspect, would find ourselves at least mildly offended, if not outright threatened, by at least some of these statements being made to us. We all feel ourselves to be persons, and, being persons, to have certain rights. Moreover, it seems much of what we do—consciously or not—strives to cultivate personal goodness and to have good personalities… whatever that might mean.
But of course, this seems vague and, in that vagueness, open to a great many abuses: subjectivism, relativism, emotivism, and so on. But the chief error likely found in an overemphasis upon one’s personhood is a kind of elevation of the self above all else: to be among those who “erect their personality into a universal standard of value.”[1] While it is likely that not many persons do this consciously or deliberately, a little reflection upon many interactions will reveal that many persons do it nonetheless—perhaps, even, at times, ourselves.
And yet—would any of us really want to give up claiming to be persons? To have personalities? To see something more in our personhood than our mere individuality?
The Individual and the Society
There is a long dispute about the relationship between the individual person and the common society. Partially, this depends upon the meanings of “individual” and “person”. Partially, it depends upon the notion of the good that belongs to or constitutes the “common society”. The most (in)famous incident in this dispute’s history unfolded in the 1940s in the Francophone world of Thomistic philosophy, where a series of writings authored by Jacques Maritain, Charles De Koninck, I.T. Eschmann, and Yves Simon—among others—waged an argument in print.
We will turn momentarily to the meaning of the term “person”. First, let us consider “individual”. A few weeks prior, we discussed the perennial (and perennially-difficult) question of “the one and the many”. There, we discussed that we understand unity primarily through a kind of negative definition: not-being-divided, that is, being “in-“ (or “un-“) dividual (“divided”). Each of us, undoubtedly, is an individual (though arguably with different degrees and kinds of unity): whatever I am, it is something one and whole. Divide that which is me and you end me. In other words, to be an individual is also to be a whole.
Notably, however, each human whole is also a part of society. It belongs to us by nature to be social. We are radically dependent on social relations for not only the preservation of the species (since human beings do not asexually reproduce) but also for most of our needs. Someone may survive on his or her own, in the wild, hunting and gathering from the fruits of nature—but thriving, under conditions in which survival is far from a foregone probability—will certainly not happen. Each individual, in being part of society, thereby serves a whole greater than himself. One could also argue that, being a creature that is part of creation, likewise one ought to serve the purpose of the created whole. These “common goods”—of the society, of the universe—seem to demand a certain subordination of the individual.
The Meaning of Person
A not-quite-contrary but nevertheless opposed position is often offered by proponents of “personalism”: namely, that there exists in each human person a “value” or worth that exceeds the entire material universe. Some personalists advocate for this position from the standpoint of a secularist humanism: no being other than the human can choose freely, and from that free choosing, the human person attains alone that which can be called dignity. Conversely, others hold for this dignitatis humanae on the basis of an explicitly theological claim: man is made in the image and likeness of God, and this divine image reflects an irreducible worth.
The former position typically stems from a Cartesian dualist presuppositions (sometimes recognized explicitly, sometimes not): one that places a kind of antagonistic opposition between the person and the individual, or between person and nature. Though it may not guise itself today under the name of personalism, such a way of thinking undergirds, among other contemporary problems, advocation for postgender and “polyamorist” ideology.
This belief in a kind of radical right to absolute self-determination resounds, I believe, because it hits upon a truth. But it perverts that truth by breaking it off from its true foundations: it makes the person consist primarily in will. But the will of the person—though it may order the person towards an infinite good and therefore has an unparalleled capacity for dignity in all worldly creation—is itself radically dependent. We must resolve this paradox if we are to understand the “person”.
Personalism: a Philosophy or a Principle?
Join our conversation this Wednesday (7/31) as we take up the question of personalism, in which conversation we will ask the following questions:
- Is personalism a philosophy?
- If so, is it a good one?
- What does it mean to speak of “Thomistic” personalism?
- Should we instead understand “personalism” as a principle within a broader philosophy?
- What is the worth of a person?
- How bad is your personality?
- What makes a good one?
- And more!
philosophical happy hour
« »
Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
[1] Yves Simon 1944: “On the Common Good: De la primauté du bien commun contre les personnalistes by Charles de Koninck – a review” in The Review of Politics, 531.
No responses yet