essay about human person

The Human Person: Nature, Ethical and Theological Viewpoints

Philosophical meaning of Person . The Person as a living concrete reality: its origin and constitutive elements. Logical, ethical and social consequences. Theological implications .

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The concept of Person needs to be clearly established by philosophical considerations that go farther than the merely measurable parameters of the physical sciences. We use the term in everyday life and we seem to be clear about its meaning, even if we do not define it explicitly: a person is not a thing in the wide sense that includes mostly inanimate objects, but a living reality, thus implying a source of activity that is self-originated and that shows a spontaneity not found in the physical laws by themselves.

But this is just the first step. Nobody thinks of microbes, insects, fish or even other larger and marvelous living things as persons. While there is a common tendency to describe some animals –mostly in mythological or poetic terms- as fictional characters speaking and acting as we do, we do not take this seriously, except –perhaps- when regarding house pets or primates as basically so similar to ourselves that we uncritically attribute to them our own vices and virtues.

In our experience and common language we encounter persons, and describe them as such, only when we consider human beings. Something new is present in the way Man acts that is the common root of self-appreciation, culture (both in the sciences, the humanities, the different religions) and of the structure of society at all levels. This basic and universal root we call human rationality and thus we define Man as a Rational Animal .

A Person is thus defined by an activity in which ends are freely sought after being known as concepts (containing information that goes past the data of the senses), and valued as good. Rationality is expressed and realized in the search for Truth, Beauty and Goodness, a multiple activity that corresponds to the two powers of the human spirit: intelligence and free will, to know and to love. Knowledge in this case is not a mere reaction to an external stimulus (this is the first source of our acquaintance with the world, through sense impressions), but a process where the data are consciously analyzed to obtain ideas of universal value, and inferences or deductions that apply to them well beyond the direct experience.The person is conscious of multiple possibilities, both of representing reality and of acting, and looks for the best explanation of facts and for the consequences of various courses of action, either as ends in themselves or as means to other ends. This leads to value judgments that embody purpose and free choice . Thus we apply to the person’s activity the categories of truth-error and of suitability and “goodness” that presuppose ends and means in acordance with the nature of things.

The philosophical concept of nature expresses the essence of a given reality in so far as it is the sufficient reason for its activities: acting should be tied to what the agent is. This is applied in science when we define matter –at any level- precisely by its form of interacting with other matter, including our laboratory instruments. An unnatural behavior has the connotation of error, it is something wrong and inappropriate, that is never found in the simple processes of the inanimate world, but that can be due -in the case of a person- to a free decision. In such a case we speak of right and wrong, the basis or moral judgments and of the concepts of rights and duties both at the personal level and also in the context of society.

Only Man, in our known Universe, has the power to know and choose in this way. While animals exhibit wonderful behavior, their acting cannot be attributed to a free choice arising from the conscious and free selection of alternative paths. A genetic program, coupled with conditioned responses from experience, rules animal activity. Consequently, no animal is bound by “duties” nor can it be the subject of corresponding rights, but we can be bound by duties towards animals even those that are not considered property of another human person.

Summing up : t he human animal is “Person” because human activity includes new concerns , due to intellectual powers and free will. By itself, intelligence is not a new way of acting but of knowing, and it is this new knowledge that should direct the free actions of the subject. Because the activity is not automatically predetermined, Man is held accountable for those free acts and is judged ethically good or evil. But the coexistence of biological conditioning and personal traits makes the human animal a profound mystery, frequently expressed in the terms of “the Mind-Body problem”, where the findings of different sciences have to be brought together into a satisfactory synthesis. We need to look at rationality –personhood- from different viewpoints to inquire about its origin and consequences, at the individual and the social level.

Inputs from the fields of Biology, Metaphyics, Ethics, Theology and History, will lead to a better understanding of how the concept of Person has been incorporated in different cultures, in codes of Law and in patterns of behavior. From Biology we should clarify the role of bodily structures, of genetic programming and conditioning,, of possible malfunctions at the organic level that will influence human behavior. From physical and metaphysical considerations we have to establish a logically sufficient reason for the traits that define a person, thus providing a basis for the concepts of rights and duties (human dignity and responsibility).

This will be clarified and extended by the theological ideas of personal relationships with a Creator who is also personal in nature, and both the first source of being and the final end that constitutes our eternal destiny. How these ideas have in fact appeared in different cultures through human history should be taken into account as well, not to make our reasoning depend upon a kind of democratic consensus, but rather to see the limitations and even errors of restricted ways of thinking in merely natural terms. It is obvious that a complete development of this outline would require a very extensive treatment by different experts in all those fields, something clearly not possible within the limits of this essay.

SOURCES OF PERSONAL ACTIVITY – THE ORIGIN OF MAN

We are part of the panoply of life forms at the animal level here on planet Earth, the only place where we have data and where scientific studies are possible. It is well established from biology that there is an intimate relationship among all living beings in the sense that all use the same set of aminoacids with the same chirality, the same cell size, the same basic chemistry in a liquid medium (carbon compounds in water). From the first cells of 3500 million years ago an unbroken process of development can be traced up to the present variety of orders, genres and species, culminating in the primate level that includes Man. Even if five great extinction events (some of astronomical origin) have eliminated perhaps 90% of all previous living forms, there are no indications of multiple starts from inanimate matter. The tree of life has lost many branches and has sprouted new ones, but there is only one trunk. Both the geological record and comparative anatomy support this view of a common origin and progressive development (evolution), even if many details have to be worked out to establish genetic descent and the concrete steps that led to each species.

The two key questions that cannot be answered in a scientific way by the available data concern the steps from inorganic material to the first living cell and from non-intelligent primates to Man. We are interested at this point in the second one: what is there that explains the difference between instinctive behavior (no matter how wonderful) and the new way of knowing that leads to purposeful and responsible acts, thus establishing the personal character of the human animal. Is it logically possible to say that organic evolution suffices to expect the emergence of intelligence and free will as the natural outcome of brain development and other anatomical changes? This is the hotly debated problem of Body and Mind, that we can clarify by accurately defining both terms with the methodology of the physical sciences and our own subjective experience.

The study of the material world begins with our sense reactions to external stimuli that impinge upon our sense organs. This implies a form of energy , understanding this term as the capacity to change in some way the state of a recipient (doing work). In fact, all of physics –from astronomy to chemistry and atomic theory- is the study of interactions ruled by conservation laws , the most basic of them being that in any material process there is never a creation from nothing nor a reduction to nothing, but only some change of a previous reality of the material world. The effect of material activity can only be found in something that will have material properties and that will be able, in turn, to cause further material interactions: from matter, one can only expect to obtain matter.

Modern science attributes all interactions to 4 “forces”: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear. They have different intensities, ranges and outcomes, as well as the possibility of affecting only specific types of particles under concrete conditions. A common view that makes science possible as an objective description of the material world is stated as the “Cosmological Principle”: matter is the same everywhere in the Universe and it follows the same ways of acting under the same circumstances, so that the “Laws of Nature” are applicable everywhere and at all times. No cultural or personal conditionings or preferences will change the outcome of an experiment: human psychology has no influence outside the human person when we study the physical world. Scientific methodology requires that all processes be reproducible by any scientist using the correct experimental technique.

The only logical basis for this view is that human thought and free will cannot be considered as matter, endowed with the energies that cause the 4 interactions previously mentioned. This is also underlined by the obvious fact that neither can be measured in any experiment, since there are no parameters of mass, electrical charge, spin, wavelength, or anything else that physics uses to describe the components of matter. And if we deal with a new reality that is immaterial , we have to admit a source for it that is also immaterial: a human spirit that cannot be the result of organic evolution, even if it is found after matter has evolved to the highest degree of structure and complexity in the human brain.

A new spiritual element in Man needs a creating Spirit, a Creator who with a free act determines when and where the first Man appears on Earth after evolution has prepared the suitable organic structure. We can infer the presence of this new element in the life chain from evidence of rationality in the assembly of complex tools, the decoration of instruments and caves, the burials that include offerings for a mysterious life beyond the grave. Once the organic basis is sufficiently developed to be joined to the spirit, it is out of the realm of science to decide if the first Man had to be only one or several, at one point on Earth or many. The biological compatibility of all humans presently on Earth is a persuasive argument towards the acceptance of a single origin, geographically and in time. We are thus led to the statement that all human beings on Earth share the same nature, belong to the same species, have the same basic abilities and are subjects of the same rights and duties. They are Persons in the full sense of the word, without distinction of color, race, or culture.

Our conscious identity implies the unity of subject for all processes, material and intellectual, so that body and soul –matter and spirit- form a single unit in a mysterious but undeniable whole, excluding any accidental dualism. The human Person has to include the totality of Man, with mutual conditioning between matter and spirit, but with end-products of two clearly distinct levels. Any attempt to reduce Man to just spirit or just matter is unacceptable when applied to our total experience. Since our reasoning leads to a non-material (spiritual) reality as the source of thought and free will , we have the required reason for considering Man as a Person.

One rarely finds a denial of our body, but in some environments it seems logical to say that intelligence and free will can be explained in terms of electrical currents in the brain or quantum-mechanical effects in cellular structures. This is to reduce the real problem of sufficient reason to ways of detecting the presence of mental activity or of purposeful behavior. One cannot attribute the informational content of a TV show (interesting or boring) to the properties of the electrical currents in the receiver, or the poetic meaning of a literary work to the cellulose and ink of a book. The simple bending of an arm when I want is more important than the release of energy in the muscles and the leverage exerted by tendons and bones. The dependence upon a free decision excludes the deterministic process of simple physical forces, and the obvious fact that our will is not random but purposeful makes its operations incompatible with the probabilistic fluctuations of quantum-mechanical systems.

We know ourselves, and the world, by experience, by reasoning from sense inputs, and by acquiring knowledge from others. We first become aware of our thinking and of bodily changes from interactions between sense organs and “forces” in our surroundings. When the senses perceive and quantify inputs beyond their normal range of responses –with the help of instruments- we enter into the methodology of “science”, as applied to the properties and interactions of matter.

Intelligence looks for relations of cause, order (Beauty) and desirability (Goodness) in the data. This implies the use of the principles of identity, non contradiction and sufficient reason , that necessarily underlie all aspects of rational thought, be it in the development of science or in philosophy or theology. From the principle of identity we derive the constancy of behavior in non-living matter: things are what they are, and their properties determine their activity, thus supporting the objectivity and constancy of the laws of nature. The principle of non-contradiction requires self-consistency and the absence of absurd consequences in any reasoning process, so that in pure Math the only criterion of correct deductions is that they do not lead to a contradiction in their development or necessary consequences.

The search for a sufficient reason leads to hypothesis that should be examined in their theoretical sources, their logical consequences, and in the actual experimental checks when these are possible. We never accept as a sufficient reason a “just because” that doesn’t satisfy even a small child. This is frequently the real meaning of attributing to “chance” a physical result for which we have no known cause, as is the case when we try to establish a relationship between events that really have no logical connection. We should remember that chance is not experimentally measurable, it is not a parameter of any elementary particle or material structure, it can never be the cause of any event, and still less of order at any level.

The innate desire to find order in our knowledge is expressed in the search for patterns –physical or conceptual- where one finds the special satisfaction that we express with the general word beauty or harmony . It can be the simplicity and power of a mathematical expression or a generalized understanding of diverse aspects of nature previously unconnected in our experience: we can appreciate the beauty of the Law of Gravitation, applying to common objects, to planets and galaxies, and expressed with a simple equation by Newton. It is not uncommon for scientists to judge a hypothesis or theory in terms of its beauty: it introduces nothing superfluous or contrived or, on the contrary, seems cumbersome and arbitrary.

The same is true in the world of nature or art: combinations of shapes, volumes, lines and colors can give the pleasure of balance, proportion, contrast, gradual development, even just marvelous complexity at the microscopic level or overwhelming majesty in the grandeur of the heavens. It has been said that science develops from the sense of wonder that the thinking person cannot avoid feeling when studying nature at all levels. And it is well known that cave Man left paintings of great skill and beauty, as well as carvings and even primitive musical instruments: activities that have no relationship with mere survival or other practical concerns. They might have been considered of some magical value, but this is precisely the new “spiritual” aspect of human activity that includes symbols and concepts that are not found in any other species in the living world.

The search for Goodness is due to a value judgment regarding the suitability of some action to obtain a desirable end. Anything that is consonant with our needs, either at the biological or spiritual level, constitutes a good, from survival (which includes food, shelter, rest) to the fulfillment of our desire for affection, companionship and even knowledge and beauty, can be classified as a good that attracts and leads to activities ordered to obtain it. Whether those activities are consonant with human dignity –of the subject and of others- or opposed to it, determines the ethical value of an action.

ETHICAL CONSEQUENCES

Since the human person has some activities of a private order, while others impinge upon other members of the human family, the way human activity is subjected to norms and value judgments will address the question of what is consonant with human nature at both levels.

The development of rationality requires the constant search for Truth: no responsible decision can be based on wrong knowledge. This implies rights and duties concerning education, beginning with the family and continued at higher levels, made possible by society, not to impose any “brain washing” but to open all legitimate avenues of learning. Professional activities require competence that has to be acquired by learning in the proper institutions, and that then implies the right to compensation for services in any field.

The right to the necessary sustenance, to health care, to housing and work opportunities, will also be a consequence of the need to develop the individual, both physically and culturally. Society needs laws that ensure that this is the case for all citizens. International bodies are legitimately entitled to regulate commerce, travel, exchange of information, in order to achieve equal opportunities for everybody. Echoing Pope John Paul II at the UN, “society is for the individual, not the other way around”.

This is stated in the Declaration of Human Rights signed by members of the UN in 1948. These rights are not due to some concession by any kind of government, and they cannot be legitimally abrogated or conculcated. Because those rights are rooted on the very nature of the human person, they have to be respected at any stage of natural life , from conception to death, even if age, sickness or genetic disabilities make the full use of intelligence and free will impossible in some cases or circumstances.

The Person can never be reduced to the level of a “thing” to be manipulated or disposed of for economic or scientific reasons. This is especially relevant in the fields of Medicine or Biology: no treatment can be allowed for any other purpose than the good of the patient. Laws that ignore this norm cannot be legally binding, but must be resisted and repelled.

Because ethical considerations flow necessarily from the sense of dignity and responsibility of an intelligent subject, this aspect of human life must be present from the very moment that Man appears on Earth. Primitive burials are a clear sign of the conviction that other humans are different from animals and that somehow their existence after death must be helped by rites and objects that must accompany the deceased. The evidence of protracted care for the sick (for instance, when people subjected to a trepanning of the skull lived long enough for the bone to heal and close the opening) is another indication of family and social ties that imply a common feeling of dependence and duties for those unable to survive by themselves.

Still, in a primitive world where small groups lived in almost total isolation from other tribes, ethical norms developed in many different ways. Science, philosophy, art and ethical norms, form human culture , that is not inherited genetically, but transmitted by signs, endowed -arbitrarily and freely- with meaning : sounds (speech), visible forms (writing, comprehensible images) or gestures that convey information, a new category not found by any experiment. Because cultures evolved independently, different places and times gave rise to codes of ethics and laws that –in many cases- contradicted each other.

We can simply mention how all over the world we find indications of past slavery,, caste systems, denials of rights to women and children, human sacrifices, war as the common state of confrontation with nearby groups. But this kind of behavior is akin to the modern control of the individual by totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Communist societies) and it is necessary to state that a significant number of signatories of the UN “Declaration of Human Rights” still fail to comply with the solemn compromise accepted in 1948. In those the human Person is rather considered only as a productive element for the impersonal State, and it is subjected to a control that restricts even the most basic rights of education, work, marriage and free movement, the practice of religion and association for legitimate ends.

In modern times, where the constant exchange of information and world-wide travel tend to create a uniform way of life, the final outcome of such contacts might lead to a common “culture” where the individual is led to think that whatever others do is correct for everybody. An implicit “relativism” will finally deny that there are ethical norms that arise from human nature itself and that anything that is not forbidden by law is morally acceptable. This is the underlying justification for abortion, euthanasia, genetic manipulation: instances where the person is degraded to the level of laboratory guinea pigs, useful as “things” to be manipulated for the benefit of others or destroyed when they become cumbersome and unprofitable for society.

A common statement that expresses this attitude is that “all cultures are equally to be respected”. If the word “culture” is not defined, the statement is meaningless: it can mean the way a group builds homes or entertains their citizens with music and dances. The most basic meaning should rather be the “system of common ideas that structure a given society”. Those ideas should determine personal and social behavior, thus being incorporated into codes of law, administrative and practical structures, rules of personal behavior. Over the course of time, the “way of life” transmitted from one generation to another within a human group, can also be termed a “culture” in so far as it incorporates commonly held values and concerns.

But the appreciation of a culture cannot simply rest upon its existence through a short or long time. If the culture leads to the denial of human rights to any kind of member of the group, or it incorporates a negative and hostile attitude toward other groups, the culture has no right to be respected and preserved. We must remember again and again that the human person is the subject of rights and duties by the dignity that is rooted upon the unique power to think and act freely. No external imposition can legitimately deprive a single person of what nature implies. Even civil disobedience might become a moral duty, no matter what the consequences, when moral good and evil are concerned.

One should also mention that the right of every person to have access to education, health care, modern developments of a kind that improves substantially human life, should take precedence upon considerations of an egotistical nature even if they seem to be justified by the desire to maintain primitive tribes in their original state to allow for their scientific study. To deny to a sick child the life saving attention that it needs and the opportunity to learn and develop fully as a human being is not acceptable from the moral viewpoint, either in a slum of a modern city or in the jungle of the heart of Africa. We might be unable to provide that help everywhere, but it should be our impossibility and nor a false respect for a primitive culture the deciding factor.

Governments everywhere have the duty to eradicate every type of exploitation of the weak and poor, be it through some kind of slave labor or its equivalent, or the demeaning traffic of drugs and prostitution, or racial and religious intolerance. The human person –every person- is the highest value we find on Earth.

Global concerns –about climate, overpopulation, famine, migration – are clearly in need of ethical rules that should look at the good of the persons affected, now and in the future, but destroying lives or condemning undeveloped nations to hunger and ignorance cannot be an option. The resources of our planet are more than sufficient to give every human being a level of nutrition, housing, education and medical care suitable for human dignity.

THEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The human spirit, created by a Personal Creator, intelligent and free, appears as the apex of the development of the Universe. The Anthropic coincidences, at the very first instant of the Big Bang, can only be explained by a purposeful plan of the Creator to establish a meaningful relationship with personal beings. To invoke for their existence either a childish ”just because”, or to have recourse to chance within an unverifiable multitude of universes, is unscientific and totally empty of explanatory power. On the other hand, an intelligent and infinite Creator will not act without a purpose, and this cannot be an empty desire to watch how stars burn or lizards scurry over a planet. A Person is not satisfied with anything less than other persons.

This means that the “deistic” God accepted by some scientists as the final reason “why there is something instead of nothing” ends up by being absurd. Such a Supreme Creator would create a marvelous Universe just as a banal exercise of omnipotence, without caring for the persons who are able to reason to a First Cause and to be grateful for their existence. This is still more absurd if we extrapolate the evolution of the Universe to remote future ages when all the stars will be dead cinders and no life can survive anywhere.

In some Eastern philosophies, the final state implies the dissolution of individual persons into an undiferentiated “something”, not truly divine in a transcendent sense, where personal identity is lost. This is philosophically untenable and incompatible with the true idea of a Creator who is always infinitely superior and different from any creature: one cannot take seriously the proposal that finite and infinite will become an undifferentiated mixture and that the very notion of person will no longer be applicable. The same can be said of the recycling of human beings through reincarnations where the distinction between persons and animals is erased. And the final state, after the supposed purification attained in those reincarnations is described once more as the cessation of personal existence and activity.

In the Christian Creed, God is confessed as a Trinity, where the concept of Person surpasses our philosophical intuitions by presenting a unique Nature realized in three distinct Persons, with only one intelligence and will, so necessarily related that no single Person can exist or be described without reference to the other two. Thus the unicity of the Divinity is insisted upon, while stressing the divine life as a total and necessary communication of the entire nature from the Father to the Son and from both to the Holy Spirit. We cannot understand this, but we cannot understand matter either, when we try to reconcile the particle-wave duality into a single picture of elementary units of everyday matter.

No human philosophy or poetic effort could have imagined the Trinity, and we can only accept it through a Revelation that was not present in the Old Testament books of the Bible but that was gradually uncovered in the teachings of the New Testament. As we develop Theology –the effort to understand the revealed truths- we come to appreciate the depth of this mystery where the most intimate nature of the Godhead, while still incomprehensible, appears as the logical source of God’s relationship to humankind. If in the creation of finite spirits (angels) God can be said to seek living images of the divine nature, endowed with intelligence and free will and existing without constraints of space and time, their perfectly simple nature is so completely indivisible and self-contained that the communication of life –the very essence of the Trinity- cannot be shared by the created beings. They are incomplete images of the living God in that respect.

The creation of matter does provide the possibility of finding complex structures that can give part of themselves as a seed for new members of the species. But matter cannot have intelligence and free will, thus precluding the existence of Persons within the realm of pure matter. Without those attributes, there can be no meaningful relationship with the Creator.

The further step of joining matter and spirit in Man does achieve the complete image of God as a reality endowed with intelligence, free will and the ability to communicate life. Thus we find the description of the origin of Man in the poetic language of Genesis. Everything leads to the masterpiece of divine power, an Image and Likeness of the Creator, destined to share the divine happiness in a final state of intimate knowledge and love, outside the limits of space and time.

The Incarnation adds another mystery regarding the concept of Person, while underlining the infinite love of God and the dignity of Man. Christ, as God-Man, is adored as God, while being true Man, with soul and body on a par with ours. But we profess only one Person, divine, as the ultimate subject of activity and attribution, so that human activities are attributed to God and divine activities to the Man Jesus. Again, we cannot truly understand the mystery, but we can say that God has entered the human family, and that no greater glory can be imagined for any possible created being than to have God as brother.

It is true that we cannot do more than to accept a mystery that has baffled the best minds through the centuries, giving rise to all kinds of efforts to avoid the true divinity of Christ or to attribute to his humanity a nature that ultimately would deny his common descent from other human members of our race. Councils and Church Fathers were adamant in their insistence on the dual nature of Christ in the unity of a divine Person. Only thus could the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption be truly maintained.

Christ’s Resurrection is the final act of the saving and transforming plan of God for all mankind. A divine Person, with a body taken from the ashes of stars that formed our Earth and with a human mind and will, encompasses all levels of existence and carries our human nature to the intimate essence of the Godhead as the first fruits of the new kind of life that God wants for all of us. As individual persons, we are destined to exist forever, attaining the fullness of life with unlimited knowledge satisfying our minds and infinite love giving us the happiness proper of God in an unchanging eternity. The incredible variety of each human being through all of history will be a galaxy of lights, each different in a unique way of reflecting the perfection of the Creator, thus expressing as persons the multiple ways of sharing in the generosity of the Father from whom all good things come.

In terms of physical laws, the future of the Universe, with its predictable final state of emptiness, darkness and cold, seems to make its existence pointless, and the fact of the creation by God so that human persons will appear would no longer seem its sufficient reason. The only answer to the apparent absurd could be found in the immortality of the human spirit, not tied to the laws of physics by its very nature. But Theology goes farther, asserting for the human Person, body and soul, this new life inchoated by Christ’s resurrection and promised to all those who are joined to Him in a new kind of activity that is proper to God alone and that will be shared outside the limits of space and time.

Only in Christian Theology, based upon clear concepts of God and Man, of matter and spirit, is the unique dignity of each Person conserved.

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What It Means to Be a Human Person

It is time we get clear about the ontology of personhood..

Posted December 10, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

• Christian Smith's excellent book, "What is a Person?," clearly spells out an ontology of human persons for sociology.
• The Unified Theory gives a clear ontology of the mental that directly aligns with Smith's view of human persons.
• There is now a clear bridge from psychology into sociology that clarifies the ontology of both mental behavior and human persons.

A central feature of the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) is that it affords us a way to scientifically frame the ontology of the mental (see here for this argument in detail). Via the Tree of Knowledge System, it shows how "mental evolution" began with the evolution of animals with nervous systems and complex active bodies during the Cambrian Explosion approximately 550,000,000 years ago. In addition, it clearly defines the mental behaviors of "minded animals" as consisting of sensory-motor looping functions that allow animals to develop paths of behavior investment via recursive relevance realization that produce a functional effect on the animal-environment relationship. Moreover, via the Map of Mind 1,2,3 , UTOK specifies why there are three domains of mental behavioral processes that must be differentiated, both ontologically and epistemologically.

The domain of Mind 1 refers to the domain of covert neurocognitive processes (Mind 1a ) that regulate the overt mental behavioral activities that are observable to others (Mind 1b ). Mind 2 refers to the subjective conscious experience of being in the world and it is only directly observable from the inside, that is from the subjective perspective of the animal. Mind 3 is present in human persons and refers to the self-conscious justification processes that take place within the individual's subjective field of experience (Mind 3a ) or between people in the form of verbal expressions to others (Mind 3b ).

Getting clear about the ontology of the mental is necessary to solve the problem of psychology. And this is a necessary step to link psychology to the social sciences. Indeed, it is at the intersection between psychology and the social sciences (as well as humanities and philosophy ) that we find one of the most central problems in the academy, which pertains to the question of what is a person? This question is directly taken up in Professor Christian Smith’s excellent work, What Is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life and the Moral Good From the Person Up .

Smith tackles this perspective from the vantage point of critical realism and personalism. Critical realism is the philosophy of science developed by the visionary Roy Bhaskar It can be thought of as developing a synthetic, " metamodern " philosophical position that effectively bridges between modernist scientific traditions that emphasize analytic truth claims and postmodern critical positions that emphasize the social construction of knowledge. That is, critical realism effectively works to clarify both the process by which humans socially construct knowledge (i.e., epistemology) and the scientific reality of nature as stratified levels of complexity (i.e., ontology). Smith combines this with personalism, which he acknowledges is less easy to summarize as a clear statement. He characterized personalism as a broad school of thought and collection of thinkers that enables us to emphasize the reality of human lived experience and human dignity. Smith puts the issue as follows:

The central idea in personalism that is relevant for my argument is deceptively simple. This is the belief that human beings are persons.

At first, this might sound silly as it seems self-evident and thus might appear to be akin to saying something like dogs are canines. But it is not. In fact, it is very consequential because persons are a particular kind of thing . Indeed, a central insight from UTOK’s analysis of the mental and the difference between animal-mental behavior and human mental behavior is the conclusion that humans are both primates and persons.

The question thus emerges regarding what Christian means by a person. Through a long series of detailed and powerful arguments, Christian delineates how personhood has emerged in evolutionary and social history and consists of a long list of intersecting capacities. Ultimately, he comes to define persons as follows:

By person I mean a conscious, reflective, embodied, self-transcending center of subjective experience, durable identity , moral commitment, and social communication who—as the efficient cause of his or her own responsible actions and interactions—exercises complex capacities for agency and intersubjectivity in order to develop and sustain his or her own communicable self in loving relationships with other personal selves and the nonpersonal world.

Smith’s analysis of the ontology of human persons is remarkably consistent with UTOK’s analysis of the ontology of the mental, from the animal into the human, and then into the emergence of the Culture-Person plane of existence. Indeed, I have argued repeatedly that the key to understanding humans from a scientific perspective grounded in a coherent ontology is to see them as primates that are organized by the two metatheories of Behavioral Investment Theory and the Influence Matrix and as persons, which is framed by Justification Systems Theory. Justification Systems Theory provides a framework for understanding the emergence of the domain of Mind 3 and the Culture-Person plane of existence. It aligns remarkably well with Smith’s analysis.

Importantly, Smith is a sociologist, not a psychologist. Indeed, his book has almost no psychology in it at all. Rather the book positions his argument for the ontology of human persons in relationship to other traditions in sociology, such as social constructionist traditions, network structuralist positions, and variable aggregate analyses. As such, we have a strong, independent, convergent argument, when the two positions are placed side by side.

According to the UTOK, the Enlightenment failed to produce a clear framework for understanding the proper relationships between matter and mind and science and social knowledge. This is called the Enlightenment Gap . It resides at that center of our modern state of chaotic fragmented pluralism. This gap means that we cannot go from our relatively coherent knowledge in the physical and biological sciences into the psychological and social sciences. Although he did not directly call it as such, the gap was nevertheless very well seen by Edward O. Wilson in his important book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge . He described it as follows (p. 126):

We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture. We also know that biology has an important effect on the origin of culture and its transmission. The question remaining is how biology and culture interact, and in particular how they interact across all societies to create the commonalities of human nature. What, in the final analysis, joins the deep, mostly genetic history of the species as a whole to the more recent cultural histories of far-flung societies? That, in my opinion, is the nub of the relationship between the two cultures. It can be stated as a problem to be solved, the central problem of the social sciences and the humanities, and simultaneously one of the great remaining problems of the natural sciences. At present time no one has a solution. But in the sense that no one in 1842 knew the true cause of evolution and in 1952 no one knew the nature of the genetic code, the way to solve the problem may lie within our grasp.

Another way of saying this is that the Enlightenment left us with a gap in scientifically understanding the ontological evolution of the animal mental into human persons and modern societies. This is why we cannot clearly trace the ontological trail from biology into the animal mind into a clear map of human mental behavior and the assemblages of societies.

UTOK’s frame affords us a way to bridge and resolve the Enlightenment Gap. Most importantly, it affords a coherent naturalistic ontology for the animal-mental into the culture-person plane of existence. Put differently, via its unified theory of psychology, UTOK bridges the gap from ethology and cognitive-behavioral neuroscience into human psychology. This "human psychology" sits at the base of the social sciences and frames human mental behavior.

What is so encouraging about Christian Smith’s work is that it shows how we can pick up the baton of understanding from human psychology and place it directly at the base of sociology, and from there advance into the social sciences that study large-scale social systems. Success in this means that the stage is being set for our capacity to resolve the Enlightenment Gap. This will enable us to start moving toward a second Enlightenment that gives rise to a scientific understanding of a coherent naturalistic ontology that is well situated to revitalize the human soul and spirit in the 21st century.

Gregg Henriques, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at James Madison University.

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Question of the Month

What is a person, each answer below receives a book. apologies to the entrants not included..

One of the most fundamental questions of anthropology is that of personhood. We might also consider it the starting point for all philosophy. Indeed, it was Martin Heidegger who most forcefully underlined the connection between anthropology and ‘the apprehension of Being’, that is, metaphysics. For him, only the human person might hope to find meaning in the world around them. Hinging on this dilemma of how to define the person are all of the perennial issues of philosophy, of ethics, and of sociology.

To define it succinctly: a person is a being endowed with imagination . A person is able to think abstractly, to project themself into imaginary situations, to plan for the future, and to reflect on the past. In other words, a person acts in the present moment not bound by mere instinct, but usually able to transcend the limits of the animal mind. A person is also inherently social. In order to flourish, a person should exist in communion with other persons, and in sovereignty over its inanimate surroundings. Its faculty of imagination is constructed of accumulated experience, and thereby continually works in relation to the world and to other beings inhabiting it.

This definition covers many possibilities. It seems likely that our Homo erectus ancestors would qualify for personhood. It also seems plausible that future artificial intelligence could hit the mark. Perhaps certain animal species might exist on this spectrum, at the lower scale. But what happens when we pass through the spectrum of personhood onto something greater ? Why should consciousness end with personhood? Might there be other levels of consciousness superior to that which the person enjoys? Such a state would pass beyond both instinct and imagination to something more. Might this be what the Scholastic philosophers termed ‘Perfect Knowledge’? Such knowledge would go beyond instinct and imagination in the way we apprehend them, ignorant as we are. In a certain sense, then, personhood is constrained only by Plato’s cave of illusion, and by our bodily limitations. This might not be a bad thing. It is our cave after all, our world, and our social playground.

Anthony MacIsaac, Institut Catholique de Paris

The question of what a person is, isn’t exclusive to philosophy. Consequently, there are many answers. In a physiological and biological context, a person is a human with certain essential physiological and biological characteristics. Legally, the answer is broader. According to the law, a person is anyone or anything that can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings. By this conception, any adult, corporation, or institution is a person, but a minor is not a person, a foetus is not a person, and a humanoid robot like Hansen Robotics’ ‘Sophia’ is not a person. This highlights that legal personhood is dependent solely on legal recognition. In this sense a legal person is similar to a political person. A political person is anyone who has citizenship. The robot Sophia has been granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia, which demonstrates the contingency of political personhood. Moreover, there is no shortage of people who have had their citizenship stripped, whose political personhood is therefore non-existent.

In philosophy, morally, a being is a person if they’re a moral agent, making moral judgements and taking moral actions. Metaphysically, the set of criteria for personhood include rationality or logical reasoning, consciousness, self-consciousness, use of language, ability to initiate action, moral agency (again) and intelligence. Robot Sophia, a young child, and even an alien may meet sufficient criteria here. Even a foetus would potentially meet the criteria.

In practice, however, only legal and political personhood are of significance, and these are contingent on recognition by political or legal institutions. However, metaphysical and moral personhood provide an intellectual foundation upon which to discuss legal and political personhood. Therefore I suggest that a person in its full sense – both theoretically and practically – is a metaphysical and moral being with legal and political recognition . The latter is sufficient for practical personhood, the former for theoretical personhood, and both are necessary for full personhood.

Diogo Joao Baptista Gomes, Brachtenbach, Luxembourg

The answer is deceptively simple at face value. I am a person. You are a person. Every relative, friend, colleague, and acquaintance in your life is a person. Perhaps then you are tempted to say that a person is a human being. However, ‘human being’ evokes the human animal, whilst ‘person’ is something more esoteric, linked with one’s personality or intelligence, for example.

Boethius agreed. In his Theological Tractates he defined ‘person’ as ‘an individual substance of a rational nature’. Boethius used the etymology of the word to help him to form his definition. I find this interesting because ‘ persona ’ in Greek was a theatrical mask. So is personhood a mere façade? Are we all just animals masquerading as something more? And if we are all lowly beasts with overblown egos, is it possible that other species fit the criteria for personhood better than we do?

John Locke argued that a person is something that ‘can conceive itself as itself’. By that definition, it isn’t just human beings who qualify for personhood – great apes, elephants, and dolphins would qualify too. Philippa Brakes published an article titled ‘Are Orcas non-human persons?’ Orcas are self-aware, intelligent, and emotional beings. Their paralimbic (brain’s emotional) system is highly developed, even when compared to those of humans, and their insula cortex (which is linked to compassion, empathy, self-awareness, and sociability) is the most elaborate in the world.

No doubt some will reject this. Orcas can’t be people . They are infamously brutal killers: they’re even colloquially known as ‘killer whales’. A recent paper by John Totterdell described a coordinated, gruesome orca attack against a blue whale, in which the orcas stripped the creature of its blubber and fed off it whilst the whale was still alive. Surely this can’t be the behaviour of a person? Yet this response ignores the innumerable atrocities committed by human hands.

It scares us to think that other creatures could match, or perhaps exceed, our own intellectual and emotional understanding. But perhaps it is time to broaden our minds beyond the anthropocentric definition of personhood.

Rebecca McHugh, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire

In the first place, to be a person is to be human. Humans are animals, but they are animals who know . All animals can be said to ‘know’ in limited ways, largely defined by their bodies and their physical needs: they recognize what is good for them and they pursue it. This is not to say that we humans are not limited or defined by our physical bodies and needs: indeed we are! Every human person has a body, lives and grows in and as that body. But we can know in a way that extends far beyond the physical. We can abstract and define realities: we do not just see a rabbit and chase it; we know it as a rabbit. I can know myself as myself. We grow in self-knowledge and in knowledge of the world around us. Why ? and What ? are favourite questions. We become aware of the self-evident principles of life. I remember an occasion when I was looking after some small nieces and their even smaller brother. I bought them ice-creams; and because the boy was so small, I offered him half an ice-cream. But no! He was already aware that ‘whole’ is more – and more desireable – than half!

We are aware of and conscious of ‘myself’, but we are also know others as ‘not me’, and in our relationships with others our self-identity, our personality , develops. It is of course possible for the development of personality in a child to be, as it were, smothered by too much attention from already-formed personalities. Ideally, and normally, a child develops as a person as their knowledge of the world grows, relationships flourish, and choices are made and lived. For with knowledge we have free will, just because, unlike the rest of the animal world, our choice is not determined beforehand by the physical – by our bodies. Although the physical necessarily plays a large part in our development, nevertheless, the human, the person, is equipped freely to choose what he or she knows to be good.

Sr. M. Valery Walker OP, Stone, Staffordshire

Perhaps being a person requires some kind of psychological continuity involving memory and self-awareness. Yet, even if Uncle Rob has serious dementia we will continue to treat him as if he is a person. It is as though the term ‘person’ is not really descriptive , more evaluative . We continue to care for him and continue to feel compassion and love for him. Could not one therefore argue that a person is a being that is capable of being an object for care, compassion and love ?

It may be thought that this is irrational and sentimental. After all, we might care for our goldfish but be unconvinced that the goldfish is a person. We might love our teddy bear, which is clearly not a person. But the relationship we have to Uncle Rob is different to those we have to a goldfish or teddy bear. How we treat Uncle Rob is related to our wider vision of human life, including such fundamental factors as the powerful human intimacies that bind us to him, and the suffering and death that comes to all families. Curiously, in this marvellous yet horrendous nexus, Uncle Rob’s lack of cognitive capacity, far from disqualifying him from personhood, becomes one of the facts that reminds us that he is a person. While diminished cognitively, he yet remains an undiminished person . He remains fully the object of the kind of concern we can only direct at persons.

Such a view of persons partly explains our discomfort at regarding computers as persons, despite their cognitive capacities. Even a figure as complex as the Terminator does not strike us as fully a person. We feel that we are dealing rather with a cognitively sophisticated other . This also reflects the fact that the term person , because it is partly evaluative, does not pick out a metaphysical category, but expresses a relationship of concern we have for certain beings.

Robert Griffiths, Enton, Godalming

In a rush to bring order to the perceptual chaos that is our environment, the human brain tends to use rules of thumb, which, by their very nature, promote generalization based on information from prior experiences. In a way, the brain is constantly playing connect-the-dots by making predictions about how the dots are supposed to be connected. Personhood, in essence, is a cognitive construct – a mental picture of an individual drawn by connecting the dots, which are the perceptual features or physical characteristics of the individual. Unlike ‘human’ – a concept grounded in the biological reality of neurons, tissues, and bones – a ‘person’ exists purely within the mind, and thereby is influenced by cognitive schemas of one’s own or with whom one interacts.

This view implies that you can play host to multiple persons, where you are at least partially in control of the kind of person you are, constantly changing and modifying it in response to feedback from your surroundings. That, in turn, affects others’ perception of you, and elicits a similar feedback loop within them, which then changes your surroundings again. You connect the dots of your personhood in a particular way based on your beliefs, while others do it per their own beliefs. The resulting pictures are quite different. Making things even more chaotic, the constant back-and-forth between individuals and their surroundings means the dots keep moving while the lines are being drawn.

We can see evidence for this view of personhood in colloquialisms like ‘He became a completely different person’ or ‘You’re not the same person I fell in love with’. Interestingly, such sentiments are usually not observed when an individual changes their gender or radically alters their features through surgical means. That again suggests that a person is not a physical object but a mental concept, an effort by our brains to construct coherent narratives from the multiplicity of sensory experiences. An individual is a lot like a complex number. The equivalent of the real part is the physical, mechanical structure of a body, while anchored to it is a mental part that contributes to the behaviour and nature of the whole. That mental part is the person.

Rudradeep Guha, Vadodara, India

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin’, thought Alice;’but a grin without a cat! It is the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

The inner world of the human being is surprisingly similar to the grin of the Cheshire Cat: the ‘psyche’ (consciousness, perception, needs and motives) seem to be there, but the ‘owner’ is not visible. To see the owner behind the grin is to answer the question ‘What is a person?’

We are each ultimately unknowable to other people, but we also need other people to come to know ourselves. We are dependent on the perceptions of people outside ourselves. According to the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), another person can be revealed only in a dialogue, in the process of mutual understanding in which “the activity of the knower is combined with the activity of the discoverer.” A person then is the mutual co-existence of ‘I’ and the ‘other’ and as such cannot be an ‘object of study’: it can only become a subject in a dialogue, for whom the other is not ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘I’, but a completely developed ‘you’. Therefore, the self is not an individual psychological phenomenon, but a decentred, dynamic and permeable social entity in which consciousness is not the property of the individual but a shared social phenomenon. Consciousness is always a product of responsive interactions, and cannot exist in isolation. Even hermits are still in dialogue, with their ecological surroundings, or with multiple inner voices.

Bakhtin noted that a person has no internal sovereign territory, but is wholly and always on the boundary; looking inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another with the eyes of another. So the ‘owner’ behind the grin is a being for another and through the other, for oneself.

Nella Leontieva, Sydney, N.S.W.

Person’ is an important word. Since a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion, Americans have bitterly argued whether a baby in the womb is a person. If it is, it has moral and legal rights, such as the right to life, and thus it shouldn’t be killed. Note that I said ‘baby in the womb’ and ‘killed’. Those favoring unrestricted abortions would replace ‘baby’ with ‘fetus’, which is a mass of cells that can be aborted instead of ‘killed’. Words matter. However, whatever terms you use, the issue is the same: ‘Is the baby/fetus growing in the womb a person?’

Is the issue a metaphysical one or a moral one? One of being, or one of status in the moral order? At first it seems to be the former, but I believe it is the latter. The biology is comparatively straightforward; everyone can agree on the biological situation, but not whether it is a person. The real issue is, ‘What rights (moral and legal) shall we say that the baby/fetus has?’

It would be wonderful if we could definitely say what a person is so that all the world would agree. But we cannot. Attributes commonly describing a person are consciousness, self-awareness and personal identity, individuality, rationality, feelings (pain and pleasure, love and hatred, fear of death, etc), ability to choose (free will), set long term goals, and experience humor and beauty. I am inclined to think all of these attributes are necessary to the concept of personhood. Unfortunately, each of these attributes seems to allow gradation. Also, the marginal cases, such as newborn babies and comatose individuals on life support systems, lack one or more of the ‘required’ attributes. These considerations imply a scale of personhood. This is disturbing, for in the past such thinking has justified oppression and slavery. Most of us demand that a newborn baby and the comatose patient be considered persons, because we care for them as persons. Our pets have feelings and we have feelings for them, and so in some respects they deserve that we treat them as persons. And we do, but not fully so. As for aliens and robots, I think they can wait until we have a better grasp of the issue here and now.

John Talley, Rutherfordton, NC

Who am I? The crying child asked the father. When am I? The heart beseeched the absent lover. Why am I? Existence sighed under the sullen sky. Where am I? The mind questioned the tired body. What am I? The man whispered unto himself.

“You are stars stirred with consciousness” The mirror whispered to the man. “You dwell in purpose, promise, dream and future plan” The body told the broken mind. “You are nothing beyond the will to be” As the spinning heavens rained its light on me. “You bleed when nothing else matters” The lover nursed her broken heart. “For you are a window, a forest, a reason, a door, Life’s memory of what came before, Because you are a person” The father held the crying child. “Man unbeknownst to himself Being unreconciled Nothing less, my love, And nothing forevermore.”

Bianca Laleh, Totnes, Devon

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The Human Person

What Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas Offer Modern Psychology

• © 2019
• Thomas L. Spalding 0 ,
• James M. Stedman 1 ,
• Christina L. Gagné 2 ,
• Matthew Kostelecky 3

Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, San Antonio, USA

St. joseph’s college at the university of alberta, edmonton, canada.

Discusses the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the human person

Reviews the ways in which the Aristotelian-Thomistic view can provide a philosophically sound foundation for modern psychology

Offers an interdisciplinary and integrative approach to theoretical psychology and cognitive science

Represents the first attempt to apply classical realism to all or most areas of modern psychology

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

• Thomas L. Spalding, James M. Stedman, Christina L. Gagné, Matthew Kostelecky

The Metaphysical Foundations of the Human Person

Human and non-human cognition, embodied and humanistic views of cognition, emotion and cognition, human flourishing, the human in society, summary and conclusions, back matter.

• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics
• Thomas Aquinas
• Theoretical Psychology
• Embodied Cognition
• Flourishing
• Human and Non-Human Animal Cognition
• Concepts and Categorization

About this book

This book introduces the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the human person to a contemporary audience, and reviews the ways in which this view could provide a philosophically sound foundation for modern psychology. The book presents the current state of psychology and offers critiques of the current philosophical foundations. In its presentation of the fundamental metaphysical commitments of the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, it places the human being within the broader understanding of the world.

Chapters discuss the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of human and non-human cognition as well as the relationship between cognition and emotion. In addition, the book discusses the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of human growth and development, including how the virtue theory relates to current psychological approaches to normal human development, the development of character problems that lead to psychopathology, current conceptions of positive psychology, and the place of the individual in the social world. The book ends with a summary of how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory relates to science in general and psychology in particular.

Authors and Affiliations

Thomas L. Spalding, Christina L. Gagné

James M. Stedman

Matthew Kostelecky

About the authors

Thomas L. Spalding is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Associate Dean Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the psychology of concepts and the relation between the human conceptual and language systems and has been funded by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). He is the author of over 65 journal articles and book chapters and over 100 conference presentations and invited talks.

James M. Stedman is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas, Health Science Center at San Antonio. He has written on an array of topics in psychology, including child clinical pathology and treatment, education in clinical and counseling psychology, and application of Aristotelian Thomistic philosophy to modern psychology.

Christina L. Gagné is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta. Her work focuses on the human conceptual system and compositionality/productivity within the conceptual system and language system.  Dr. Gagné’s research is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and she has been the author on over 70 book chapters and journal articles and over 100 conference presentations and invited talks.  She has served on several editorial boards and is an associate editor of The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Morphology.

Matthew Kostelecky is an Associate Professor, Philosophy, at St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta. He works on the history of philosophy with a particular focus on medieval metaphysics and cognitive theory. He is the author of multiple articles on the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, his sources, and his larger context. Additionally, he is the author of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra gentiles: a mirror of human nature , a monograph that disentangles the role and method of metaphysics from the other sciences in Thomas Aquinas’s thought, while simultaneously presenting his account of human nature.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : The Human Person

Book Subtitle : What Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas Offer Modern Psychology

Authors : Thomas L. Spalding, James M. Stedman, Christina L. Gagné, Matthew Kostelecky

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33912-8

Publisher : Springer Cham

eBook Packages : Behavioral Science and Psychology , Behavioral Science and Psychology (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-33911-1 Published: 19 December 2019

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-33914-2 Published: 19 December 2020

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-33912-8 Published: 13 December 2019

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XIII, 172

Number of Illustrations : 1 b/w illustrations

Topics : Cognitive Psychology , Philosophy of Mind , Personality and Social Psychology , History of Psychology , Ontology

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Human persons and human dignity: implications for dialogue and action.

By: Thomas Banchoff

August 19, 2013

" Contending Modernities ," August 19, 2013

What is the human person? As human beings, we are biological as well as social creatures; we inhabit both physical and cultural space. What distinguishes us as persons , and not just as organisms, is a culture of human dignity – the shared idea that, as human beings, we are entitled to respect and recognition from one another.

Where does the dignity of the human person come from? Broadly speaking, one can distinguish secular-scientific and religious foundations.

From a secular and scientific angle, we have dignity and should respect and recognize one another because of our common humanity. Some emphasize our shared capacity for independent thought; in line with Immanuel Kant, they see autonomy and rationality as a foundation for human dignity. Others focus more on our ability to identify and sympathize with others, an approach related to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s concept of “pitié” and Adam Smith’s “moral sentiments.”

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and neuroscience have deepened our understanding of this latter, relational approach to the foundations of human dignity. In the long run, evolution appears to have favored the development of ecological sensitivity, group identification and solidarity, and cooperation in the acquisition and shared use of resources. In the here and now, new developments in neuroscience suggest that our brains are much more than autonomous information processors; they change and grow through our interactions and relationships with others and with our external environments.

Interestingly, scientific methods that do not begin with the concept of human dignity are increasingly leading to a conclusion compatible with it — that we have good evolutionary and biological reasons to acknowledge one another as fellow human beings worthy of respect and recognition and therefore endowed with an intrinsic dignity.

For Catholicism and Islam, the focus of the Contending Modernities project , the dignity of the human person has divine foundations. Because God created each of us and cares for each of us, each individual person has an intrinsic and inviolable dignity. The moral theology of the person is most developed in Christianity; it is connected with the mystery of the Trinity (one God in three persons), and in the Incarnation (God becoming a human being.) But the idea of the person, as a creature of an all powerful and merciful God, also plays an important role in Islam. God reveals his law to humankind and calls us to live as His co-regents on earth, honoring one another with recognition and respect.

There is, of course, a fundamental asymmetry between the secular-scientific and the religious understandings of the human person. The non-believer will reject the idea that the dignity of the human person has divine origins, while the believer will typically assert that human dignity has both divine and natural foundations.

Yet this asymmetry need not be a barrier to dialogue. In our contemporary era, even those who reject the idea of human dignity as fuzzy and unscientific generally affirm the importance of according basic respect and recognition to all human beings. The basic idea of the human person and of universal human dignity is shared, even as terminology differs. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which emerged out of decades of contestation within and across secular and religious traditions – and in revulsion against the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust – remains the clearest and most powerful expression of this far-reaching consensus.

In practice we know that this broad contemporary convergence around the idea of the human person and human dignity, across the secular-religious divide, coexists with fierce disagreement on a range of ethical and policy questions. Is the human embryo or fetus a human person deserving of protection? Are primates or other non-human animals to be considered persons with intrinsic dignity or rights? Should governments work to secure equality of opportunity for their citizens and provide a minimum standard of living for all? Should governments and citizens share their wealth with those in need outside, as well as inside, a nation’s borders? Questions relating to the human person and human dignity can be multiplied across economic, social, cultural, and foreign policy domains (even if, in the United States, they tend to center on bioethics).

A key challenge in such ethical and policy debates, within and across secular-scientific and religious communities, is to keep the ideas of the human person and of human dignity in the foreground. That means asking what is at stake for particular people and their livelihoods in particular contexts, as well as thinking through the ethical implications of our individual and collective decisions for global humanity, at a time when the rapid advance of technology and of globalization in all its dimensions is rendering those decisions more complex and consequential.

A focus on the human person has a further implication, perhaps the most challenging of all – that in all these ethical and policy controversies, we should acknowledge the humanity and dignity of our interlocutors, no matter how much we may disagree.

This article was originally published on the University of Notre Dame blog " Contending Modernities ."

What Makes Us Human?

• Philosophical Theories & Ideas
• Major Philosophers

There are multiple theories about what makes us human—several that are related or interconnected. The topic of human existence has been pondered for thousands of years. Ancient Greek philosophers Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle all theorized about the nature of human existence as have countless philosophers since. With the discovery of fossils and scientific evidence, scientists have developed theories as well. While there may be no single conclusion, there is no doubt that humans are, indeed, unique. In fact, the very act of contemplating what makes us human is unique among animal species. 

Most species that have existed on planet Earth are extinct, including a number of early human species. Evolutionary biology and scientific evidence tell us that all humans evolved from apelike ancestors more than 6 million years ago in Africa. Information obtained from early-human fossils and archaeological remains suggests that there were 15 to 20 different species of early humans several million years ago. These species, called hominins , migrated into Asia around 2 million years ago, then into Europe and the rest of the world much later. Although different branches of humans died out, the branch leading to the modern human, Homo sapiens , continued to evolve.

Humans have much in common with other mammals on Earth in terms of physiology but are most like two other living primate species in terms of genetics and morphology: the chimpanzee and bonobo, with whom we spent the most time on the phylogenetic tree. However, as much like the chimpanzee and bonobo as we are, the differences are vast.

Apart from our obvious intellectual capabilities that distinguish us as a species, humans have several unique physical, social, biological, and emotional traits. Although we can't know precisely what is in the minds of other animals, scientists can make inferences through studies of animal behavior that inform our understanding.

Thomas Suddendorf, professor of psychology at the University of Queensland, Australia, and author of " The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us From Other Animals ," says that "by establishing the presence and absence of mental traits in various animals, we can create a better understanding of the evolution of mind. The distribution of a trait across related species can shed light on when and on what branch or branches of the family tree the trait is most likely to have evolved." 

As close as humans are to other primates, theories from different fields of study, including biology, psychology, and paleoanthropology, postulate that certain traits are uniquely human. It is particularly challenging to name all of the distinctly human traits or reach an absolute definition of "what makes us human" for a species as complex as ours.

The Larynx (Voice Box)

normaals / Getty Images 

Dr. Philip Lieberman of Brown University explained on NPR's "The Human Edge" that after humans diverged from an early-ape ancestor more than 100,000 years ago, the shape of the mouth and vocal tract changed, with the tongue and larynx, or voice box, moving further down the tract.

The tongue became more flexible and independent and was able to be controlled more precisely. The tongue is attached to the hyoid bone, which is not attached to any other bones in the body. Meanwhile, the human neck grew longer to accommodate the tongue and larynx, and the human mouth grew smaller.

The larynx is lower in the throats of humans than it is in chimpanzees, which, along with the increased flexibility of the mouth, tongue, and lips, is what enables humans to speak as well as to change pitch and sing. The ability to speak and develop language was an enormous advantage for humans. The disadvantage of this evolutionary development is that this flexibility comes with an increased risk of food going down the wrong tract and causing choking. 

The Shoulder

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Human shoulders have evolved in such a way that, according to David Green, an anthropologist at George Washington University, "the whole joint angles out horizontally from the neck, like a coat hanger." This is in contrast to the ape shoulder, which is pointed more vertically. The ape shoulder is better suited for hanging from trees, whereas the human shoulder is better for throwing and hunting, giving humans invaluable survival skills. The human shoulder joint has a wide range of motion and is very mobile, affording the potential for great leverage and accuracy in throwing.

The Hand and Opposable Thumbs

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Although other primates also have opposable thumbs, meaning they can be moved around to touch the other fingers, imparting the ability to grasp, the human thumb differs from that of other primates in terms of exact location and size. According to the Center for Academic Research & Training in Anthropogeny, humans have "a relatively longer and more distally placed thumb " and "larger thumb muscles." The human hand has also evolved to be smaller and the fingers straighter. This has given us better fine motor skills and the ability to engage in detailed precision work such as writing with a pencil. 

Naked, Hairless Skin

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Although there are other mammals that are hairless—the whale, elephant, and rhinoceros, to name a few—humans are the only primates to have mostly naked skin . Humans evolved that way because changes in the climate 200,000 years ago that demanded that they travel long distances for food and water. Humans also have an abundance of sweat glands, called eccrine glands. To make these glands more efficient, human bodies had to lose their hair to better dissipate heat. This enabled them to obtain the food they needed to nourish their bodies and brains, while keeping them at the right temperature and allowing them to grow.

Standing Upright and Bipedalism

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One of the most significant traits that make humans unique preceded and possibly led to the development of other notable characteristics: bipedalism —that is, using only two legs for walking. This trait emerged in humans millions of years ago, early in human evolutionary development and gave humans the advantage of being able to hold, carry, pick up, throw, touch, and see from a higher vantage point, with vision as the dominant sense. As human legs evolved to become longer about 1.6 million years ago and humans became more upright, they were able to travel great distances as well, expending relatively little energy in the process.

Blushing Response

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In his book "The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals," Charles Darwin said that " blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of all expressions." It is part of the "fight or flight response" of the sympathetic nervous system that causes the capillaries in human cheeks to dilate involuntarily in response to feeling embarrassment. No other mammal has this trait, and psychologists theorize that it has social benefits as well. Given that it is involuntary, blushing is considered to be an authentic expression of emotion.

The Human Brain

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The human feature that is most extraordinary is the brain. The relative size, scale, and capacity of the human brain are greater than those of any other species. The size of the human brain relative to the total weight of the average human is 1-to-50. Most other mammals have a ratio of only 1-to-180. 

The human brain is three times the size of a gorilla brain. Although it is the same size as a chimpanzee brain at birth, the human brain grows more during the lifespan of a human to become three times the size of the chimpanzee brain. In particular, the prefrontal cortex grows to encompass 33 percent of the human brain compared to 17 percent of the chimpanzee brain. The adult human brain has about 86 billion neurons, of which the cerebral cortex comprises 16 billion. In comparison, the chimpanzee cerebral cortex has 6.2 billion neurons.

It is theorized that childhood is much longer for humans, with offspring remaining with their parents for a longer period of time because it takes longer for the larger, more complex human brain to fully develop. Studies suggest that the brain is not fully developed until the ages of 25 to 30.

The Mind: Imagination, Creativity, and Forethought

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The human brain and the activity of its countless neurons and synaptic possibilities contribute to the human mind. The human mind is different from the brain: The brain is the tangible, visible part of the physical body whereas the mind consists of the intangible realm of thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and consciousness.

In his book "The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us From Other Animals," Thomas Suddendorf suggests:

"Mind is a tricky concept. I think I know what a mind is because I have one—or because I am one. You might feel the same. But the minds of others are not directly observable. We assume that others have minds somewhat like ours—filled with beliefs and desires—but we can only infer those mental states. We cannot see, feel, or touch them. We largely rely on language to inform each other about what is on our minds." (p. 39)

As far as we know, humans have the unique power of forethought: the ability to imagine the future in many possible iterations and then to actually create the future we imagine. Forethought also allows humans generative and creative abilities unlike those of any other species.

Religion and Awareness of Death

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One of the things that forethought also gives humans is the awareness of mortality. Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church (1948-2009) explained his understanding of religion as "our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die. Knowing we are going to die not only places an acknowledged limit upon our lives, it also gives a special intensity and poignancy to the time we are given to live and love."

Regardless of one's religious beliefs and thoughts about what happens after death, the truth is that, unlike other species who live blissfully unaware of their impending demise, most humans are conscious of the fact that someday they will die. Although some species react when one of their own has died, it is unlikely that they actually think about death—that of others or their own. 

The knowledge of mortality also spurs humans on to great achievements, to making the most out of the lives they have. Some social psychologists maintain that without the knowledge of death, the birth of civilization and the accomplishments it has spawned might never have occurred. 

Storytelling Animals

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Humans also have a unique type of memory, which Suddendorf calls "episodic memory." He says, "Episodic memory is probably closest to what we typically mean when we use the word 'remember' rather than 'know.'" Memory allows human beings to make sense of their existence and to prepare for the future, increasing their chances of survival, not only individually but also as a species.  

Memories are passed on through human communication in the form of storytelling, which is also how knowledge is passed from generation to generation, allowing human culture to evolve. Because human beings are highly social animals, they strive to understand one another and to contribute their individual knowledge to a joint pool, which promotes more rapid cultural evolution. In this way, unlike other animals, each human generation is more culturally developed than preceding generations.

Drawing on research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, in his book, "The Storytelling Animal," Jonathon Gottschall delves into what it means to be an animal that relies so uniquely on storytelling. He explains what makes stories so important: They help us to explore and simulate the future and test different outcomes without having to take real physical risks; they help to impart knowledge in a way that is personal and relatable to another person; and they encourage pro-social behavior, since "the urge to produce and consume moralistic stories is hard-wired into us."

Suddendorf writes this about stories: 

"Even our young offspring are driven to understand others' minds, and we are compelled to pass on what we have learned to the next generation. As an infant starts on the journey of life, almost everything is a first. Young children have a ravenous appetite for the stories of their elders, and in play they reenact scenarios and repeat them until they have them down pat. Stories, whether real or fantastical, teach not only specific situations but also the general ways in which narrative works. How parents talk to their children about past and future events influences children's memory and reasoning about the future: the more parents elaborate, the more their children do."

Thanks to their unique memory and ability to acquire language skills and write, humans around the world, from the very young to the very old, have been communicating and transmitting their ideas through stories for thousands of years, and storytelling remains integral to being human and to human culture.

Biochemical Factors

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Defining what makes humans human can be tricky as more is learned about the behavior of other animals and fossils are uncovered that revise the evolutionary timeline, but scientists have discovered certain biochemical markers that are specific to humans. 

One factor that may account for human language acquisition and rapid cultural development is a gene mutation that only humans have on the  FOXP2 gene , a gene we share with Neanderthals and chimpanzees, that is critical for the development of normal speech and language. 

A study by Dr. Ajit Varki of the University of California, San Diego, found another mutation unique to humans in the polysaccharide covering of the human cell surface. Dr. Varki found that the addition of just one oxygen molecule in the polysaccharide that covers the cell surface differentiates humans from all other animals. 

The Future of the Species

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Humans are both unique and paradoxical. While they are the most advanced species intellectually, technologically, and emotionally—extending human lifespans, creating artificial intelligence, traveling to outer space, showing great acts of heroism, altruism and compassion—they also have the capacity to engage in primitive, violent, cruel, and self-destructive behavior. 

• Arain, Mariam, et al. “Maturation of the Adolescent Brain.” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, Dove Medical Press, 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621648/.

• “Brains.” The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program, 16 Jan. 2019, humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/brains.

• Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Mariner Books, 2013.

• Gray, Richard. “Earth - The Real Reasons Why We Walk on Two Legs, and Not Four.” BBC, BBC, 12 Dec. 2016, www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161209-the-real-reasons-why-we-walk-on-two-legs-and-not-four.

• “Introduction to Human Evolution.” The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program, 16 Jan. 2019, humanorigins.si.edu/education/introduction-human-evolution.

• Laberge, Maxine. “Chimps, Humans and Monkeys: What's the Difference?” Jane Goodall's Good for All News, 11 Sept. 2018, news.janegoodall.org/2018/06/27/chimps-humans-monkeys-whats-difference/.

• Masterson, Kathleen. “From Grunting to Gabbing: Why Humans Can Talk.” NPR, NPR, 11 Aug. 2010, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129083762.

• “Mead Project Source Page, A.” Charles Darwin: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals: Chapter 13, brocku.ca/MeadProject/Darwin/Darwin_1872_13.html.

• “Naked Truth, The.” Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-naked-truth/.

• Suddendorf, Thomas. "The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals." Basic Books, 2013.

• “Thumb Opposability.” Thumb Opposability | Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/thumb-opposability.

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• An Introduction to Virtue Ethics
• Arguments Against Relativism
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Locke on Personal Identity

John Locke (1632–1704) added the chapter in which he treats persons and their persistence conditions (Book 2, Chapter 27) to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1694, only after being encouraged to do so by William Molyneux (1692–1693). [ 1 ] Nevertheless, Locke’s treatment of personal identity is one of the most discussed and debated aspects of his corpus. Locke’s discussion of persons received much attention from his contemporaries, ignited a heated debate over personal identity, and continues to influence and inform the debate over persons and their persistence conditions. This entry aims to first get clear on the basics of Locke’s position, when it comes to persons and personal identity, before turning to areas of the text that continue to be debated by historians of philosophy working to make sense of Locke’s picture of persons today. It then canvases how Locke’s discussion of persons was received by his contemporaries, and concludes by briefly addressing how those working in metaphysics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have responded to Locke’s view—giving the reader a glimpse of Locke’s lasting impact and influence on the debate over personal identity.

1. Locke on Persons and Personal Identity: The Basics

2. locke on persons: what’s up for debate, 3. the early modern reception of locke’s picture of persons, 4. locke’s lasting impact on the personal identity debate, primary literature by locke, other historical literature, contemporary literature, other internet resources, related entries.

Locke’s most thorough discussion of the persistence (or diachronic identity) of persons can be found in Book 2, Chapter 27 of the Essay (“Of Identity and Diversity”), though Locke anticipates this discussion as early as Book 1, Chapter 4, Section 5, and Locke refers to persons in other texts, including the Second Treatise of Government . The discussion of persons and their persistence conditions also features prominently in Locke’s lengthy exchange with Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester (1697–1699).

Locke begins “Of Identity and Diversity” by first getting clear on the principle of individuation, and by setting out what some have called the place-time-kind principle—which stipulates that no two things of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time, and no individual can be in two different places at the same time (L-N 2.27.1). [ 2 ] With some of the basics of identity in place, Locke posits that before we can determine the persistence conditions for atoms, masses of matter, plants, animals, men, or persons, we must first know what we mean by these terms. In other words, before we can determine what makes atoms, masses of matter, plants, animals, men, or persons the same over time, we must pin down the nominal essences—or general ideas—for these kinds. Of this Locke says,

’Tis not therefore Unity of Substance that comprehends all sorts of Identity , or will determine it in every Case: But to conceive, and judge of it aright, we must consider what Idea the Word it is applied to stands for…. (L-N 2.27.7)

That we must define a kind term before determining the persistence conditions for that kind is underscored in Locke’s definition of “person”. Locke starts off by saying,

This being premised to find wherein personal Identity consists, we must consider what Person stands for….

He goes on,

which, I think, is a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places…. (L-N 2.27.9)

A person for Locke is thus the kind of entity that can think self reflectively, and think of itself as persisting over time.

Locke additionally asserts that persons are agents. For Locke “person” is a

…Forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery. (L-N 2.27.26)

Persons are therefore not just thinking intelligent beings that can reason and reflect, and consider themselves as the same thinking things in different times and places, but also entities that can be held accountable for their actions. It is because persons can think of themselves as persisting over time that they can, and do, plan ahead, with an eye toward the punishment or reward that may follow.

Just after Locke defines “person”, he begins to elucidate what makes any person the same person over time. He asserts that

…consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ‘tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self . (L-N 2.27.9)

Consciousness is what distinguishes selves, and thus,

…in this alone consists personal Identity, i.e. the sameness of rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person ; it is the same self now it was then; and ‘tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that Action was done. (L-N 2.27.9)

After the initial assertion that the diachronic identity of persons consists in sameness of consciousness, Locke goes on to use various imaginary cases to drive this point home.

The imaginary cases that Locke employs are not dissimilar to ancient cases, such as the Ship of Theseus, reported by Plutarch. In this case, we are asked to imagine a ship that has slowly had its planks replaced with new ones. The intuition Plutarch’s case is intended to test is whether, at the end (when the ship has an entirely new material constitution), we have the same ship as before. Likewise, Locke is using cases to test readers’ intuitions about persistence and identity. But it is arguable that Locke is the first to devise such cases to specifically test readers’ intuitions about persons and the conditions under which they are the same. Locke is thus carving out a new conceptual space through such imaginary cases. A few of these will be outlined and discussed in what follows.

In the “prince and the cobbler” passage, or L-N 2.27.15, Locke asks the reader to imagine the soul of a prince entering and informing the body of a cobbler, taking all of its “princely thoughts” with it. In this scenario, the person called “prince” ends up persisting in the man identified as the “cobbler”, because the prince’s consciousness goes along with the prince’s soul. Just after Locke describes this scenario, he says,

I know that in the ordinary way of speaking, the same Person, and the same Man, stand for one and the same thing. And indeed every one will always have a liberty to speak, as he pleases, and to apply what articulate Sounds to what Ideas he thinks fit, and change them as often as he pleases. But yet when we will enquire, what makes the same Spirit, Man , or Person , in our Minds; and having resolved with our selves what we mean by them, it will not be hard to determine, in either of them, or the like, when it is the same , and when not. (L-N 2.27.15)

Through the “prince and the cobbler” passage it not only becomes clear that a person goes where their consciousness goes, but also that Locke distinguishes between the term “man” (which is synonymous with “human being”) and “person”.

Other scenarios that Locke conjures, such as the “waking and sleeping Socrates” case (L-N 2.27.19), make clear that even if an individual remains the same man, he may not persist as the same person. Here Locke says,

If the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness , Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same Person. And to punish Socrates waking, for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more of Right, than to punish one Twin for what his Brother-Twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like, that they could not be distinguished; for such Twins have been seen. (L-N 2.27.19)

If Socrates has a different consciousness by day than he does by night, then waking Socrates ought not be punished for what sleeping Socrates does. This is because although Socrates is the same man by day as he is by night, he is a different person by day than he is at night (and moral responsibility lies with persons, according to Locke). Thus while the identity of consciousness determines the identity of person, the identity of persons and the identity of men come apart for Locke—or at least they can . [ 3 ]

Locke additionally distinguishes between persons and souls. There is evidence for this in L-N 2.27.13. Here Locke claims,

But yet to return to the Question before us, it must be allowed, That if the same consciousness … can be transferr’d from one thinking Substance to another, it will be possible, that two thinking Substances may make but one Person.

If consciousness can actually be transferred from one soul to another, then a person can persist, despite a change in the soul to which her consciousness is annexed. Thus if a reader’s soul switches out as she progresses from the start of L-N 2.27 to the end, so long as the reader’s consciousness remains the same, she remains the same person, according to Locke.

On top of this, Locke asserts that even if an individual has the same soul, he may fail to be the same person. Locke makes this point in L-N 2.27.14, 23, and 24. In the “day and night-man” passage, or 2.27.23, Locke asks the reader to imagine “…two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting the same Body, the one constantly by Day, the other by Night” (L-N 2.27.23). Locke goes on to suggest that the “… Day and the Night-man ” are “as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato ” (L-N 2.27.23). Locke then makes clear that this is the case even if day and night-man share the same soul:

For granting that the thinking Substance in Man must be necessarily suppos’d immaterial, ‘tis evident, that immaterial thinking thing may sometimes part with its past consciousness, and be restored to it again, as appears in the forgetfulness Men often have of their past Actions, and the Mind many times recovers the memory of a past consciousness, which it had lost for twenty Years together. Make these intervals of Memory and Forgetfulness to take their turns regularly by Day and Night, and you have two Persons with the same immaterial Spirit, as much as in the former instance two Persons with the same Body. So that self is not determined by Identity or Diversity of Substance…but only by identity of consciousness. (L-N 2.27.23)

Just as the “waking and sleeping Socrates” passage, L-N 2.27.23 shows that there can be a change of person due to a change in consciousness, and this is the case even though there is no change in man. But, what Locke also makes clear through L-N 2.27.23 is that there can be a change of person even though there is no change in soul. Thus while many philosophers (including Plato, Rene Descartes, Samuel Clarke, etc.) think that one cannot be a person unless one has an immaterial soul, and the identity of persons rests in the identity of souls, Locke makes the bold move of pulling persons and souls apart.

In addition to this, Locke calls the substantial nature of souls into question. Locke takes thought to be immaterial, and while Locke contends that the immaterial cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, the material, Locke is not committed to substance dualism, when it comes to finite thinkers. This is because Locke thinks substratum—or the substance that underlies and supports any particular substance’s qualities—is impossible for finite minds to penetrate. Additionally there is nothing in the concepts “thought” and “matter” that allows us to deduce that one excludes the other, and God could have superadded the ability to think to formerly inert systems of matter. In Locke’s picture, we cannot know whether the substance (or substratum) that underlies thinking and willing is different from the substance (or substratum) that underlies being solid and white, or yellow and malleable. Locke’s official position on the substantial nature of finite thinkers is therefore one of agnosticism.

This section outlines some of the areas of Locke’s text, and aspects of Locke’s view, that continue to be debated by historians of philosophy working to make sense of Locke’s picture of persons and their persistence conditions today. As will soon become clear, there is disagreement about almost every aspect of Locke’s discussion of persons, and even some of what has been presented thus far betrays a particular interpretive framework.

One of the overarching questions asked about Locke’s Essay is how much it includes metaphysical exploration. Some think that Locke’s project is exclusively epistemological, citing (among other passages) the following as evidence for their view: In the Epistle to the Reader , Locke describes himself as an “underlabourer”. Locke then goes on to say,

This, therefore being my Purpose to enquire into the Original, Certainty, and Extent of humane Knowledge; together, with the Grounds and Degrees of Belief, Opinion, and Assent; I shall not at present meddle with the Physical Consideration of the Mind; or trouble my self to examine, wherein its Essence consists, or by what Motions of our Spirits, or Alterations of our Bodies, we come to have any Sensation by our Organs, or any Ideas in our Understandings; and whether those Ideas do in their Formation, any, or all of them, depend on Matter, or no. These are Speculations, which, however curious and entertaining, I shall decline, as lying out of my Way, in the Design I am now upon. (L-N 1.1.2)

Under this reading, Locke is interested in determining what we can and cannot know by first determining how we come to have ideas, but what this entails is determining which activities give rise to our ideas, rather than investigating the metaphysical nature of the thinking thing wherein these activities—sensation and reflection—take place. Likewise all other explorations within the Essay eschew metaphysics.

Those who read L-N 2.27 as part of a project which is purely epistemological see the claims that Locke makes about the persistence of persons as claims about what we can know about the persistence of persons. As Lex Newman puts it,

Locke’s broader aim is to clarify the conditions under which we judge that we are numerically the same with some earlier person, not the conditions under which we strictly are the same person. (2015: 90)

Under this kind of reading, Locke’s claim that the identity of any person does not rest in the identity of substance (L-N 2.27.10 and 23) amounts to the claim that if any person wants to determine whether they are the same, they do not look to substance to find out. The idea is that because we have such an impoverished notion of substance in general, we do not look to substratum to determine if we are the same person over time in Locke’s view.

Other scholars tend to think that although Locke sets his task in the Essay as an epistemological one, he cannot help but dabble in some metaphysics along the way. What has been presented (regarding the basics of Locke’s picture of persons) in this entry thus far falls within this interpretive camp. This is why the imaginary cases that Locke employs in L-N 2.27 have been described as giving the reader information about what makes it the case that a person is the same at time 2 as at time 1. According to this view, what Locke is giving us in L-N 2.27 are inter alia “the conditions under which we strictly are the same person”.

Nevertheless, within the interpretive camp that takes Locke to dabble in metaphysics, there is widespread debate, both at the macro and the micro level. To start with the macro level: Some who fall into this camp see Locke making metaphysical claims in various passages throughout the text . Such scholars thus see what Locke is doing in L-N 2.27 as very much in keeping with moves that he makes in other parts of the Essay (see Stuart 2013, for example). However, others see L-N 2.27—and the metaphysics Locke is doing therein—as a significant break from the methodology that Locke employs in the rest of the Essay . This is because just after Locke claims that his project in the Essay is an epistemological one (1.1.2), he makes clear that in this project, he is using the historical plain method, or roughly, the Baconian method of induction (see Nuovo forthcoming). Of this, Locke says,

…I shall imagine I have not wholly misimploy’d my self in the Thoughts I shall have on this Occasion, if, in this Historical, plain Method, I can give any Account of the Ways , whereby our Understandings come to attain those Notions of Things we have, and can set down any Measures of the Certainty of our Knowledge, or the Grounds of those perswasions, which are to be found amongst Men, so various, different, and wholly contradictory…. (L-N 1.1.2)

Those who see a tension between Locke’s discussion of personal identity and the rest of the Essay contend that the way in which Locke proceeds in L-N 2.27 not only includes metaphysics, but also a reliance on thought experiments for data. Thus, rather than surveying a number of instances, and drawing inferences from there—or utilizing the historical, plain method—as he claims to be doing throughout the Essay , Locke is doing something quite different in 2.27: He is employing imaginary cases instead (see Antonia LoLordo 2012, for example).

However, what the historical plain method amounts to for Locke, and whether Locke’s use of thought experiments in L-N 2.27 is in tension with this method is also the subject of debate. So too is whether Locke uses thought experiments in 2.27 alone . Additionally, some have questioned whether the exercises that Locke walks readers through in 2.27 count as thought experiments at all (see Kathryn Tabb 2018, for more on this). There are thus wide-ranging debates about how to best describe 2.27 and the methodologies Locke employs therein. There is also much disagreement regarding how to square these methodologies with the general description Locke gives of his project in the Essay . Moreover, this is the case even amongst those who are in agreement that Locke is doing metaphysics in 2.27.

On top of this, there are deep and long-standing micro-level debates amongst those who think Locke is giving us some metaphysics in L-N 2.27. One such debate regards the implications of Locke’s assertion that the identity of any person does not rest in the identity of substance (2.27.10 and 23). Some scholars take Locke’s assertion that the identity of any person does not rest in the identity of substance, and other similar claims, to be evidence that Locke is a relativist about identity (see Stuart 2013, for example). To get a sense of what this entails, it is helpful to consider the contrast case: strict identity. If a philosopher holds a strict identity theory, then she takes it that we can ask, “Is y at time 2 the same as x at time 1?” and arrive at a determinate answer. On the other hand, if a philosopher is a relativist about identity, then she asserts that in response to the former question, we have to ask “Same what?” So if we ask, “Is Socrates the same?” a relativist about identity thinks we have to specify under which sortal term we are considering Socrates. Are we thinking about Socrates as a human being, or a body, or a soul (or something else altogether)?

On top of this, the relativist about identity thinks that an entity who is of two sorts can persist according to one, while failing to persist according to the other. We might say that from one day to the next, Socrates persists as the same human being, but not as the same body. Thus when Locke says that a person can persist despite a change in substance, or a person can persist despite a change in soul, some scholars take Locke to be showing that he is a relativist about identity. Relative identity readings were rather unpopular for some time, but have experienced a resurgence as of late (see Stuart 2013).

Still, some think that attributing this kind of reading to Locke is anachronistic. Others take issue with the fact that under a relative identity reading, there is, properly speaking, just one entity described under different sorts. (What we call “Socrates” does not pick out a human being, and person, with a body and soul, but rather one thing, described in these different ways.) This is appealing for some, especially those who think that this is the only way to save Locke from violating the place-time-kind principle, which stipulates that no two things of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time. But it lacks appeal for those who take Locke to be claiming that persons and the human beings who house them (for instance) are distinct. [ 4 ]

Some scholars take Locke’s assertion that the identity of substance is neither required nor enough for the persistence of any person to be evidence that persons are modes (or attributes), rather than substances (or things themselves). Such scholars then turn to Locke’s place-time-kind principle, for further evidence for their view. They take Locke’s assertion that no two things of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time to mean that no two substances of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time. Souls are thinking substances for Locke, and if persons are substances, they would count as such. Thus, persons cannot be substances, for otherwise wherever there is a person and her soul there are two thinking substances in the same place at the same time. Those who offer mode readings additionally turn to Locke’s claim that person is a “forensic term” and Locke’s bold assertion that a demonstrative science of morality is possible as evidence that the term “person” must be a mode term, rather than a substance term. This line of interpretation is popular today (see LoLordo 2012, Mattern 1980, Uzgalis 1990), but dates back to Edmund Law (1769).

Other Locke scholars defend substance readings of Locke on persons. They turn to Locke’s claims about substance, power, and agency, to conclude that if an entity has any power whatsoever it has to be a substance. Persons have powers. Thus, persons have to be substances for Locke (for arguments along these lines, see Gordon-Roth 2015, Rickless 2015, Chappell 1990). They then have to explain what Locke means when he asserts that the identity of any person does not rest in the identity of substance. Those who do not take the relative identity path usually end up working to get clear on what Locke could mean by “substance” when he makes this claim. Many conclude that what Locke means is that the identity of any person does not depend upon the identity of the simple substances that compose or constitute her. There are numerous defenders of this position today (see Alston and Bennett 1988, Bolton 1994, Chappell 1990, and Uzgalis 1990). Thus questions about two of the most basic features of Locke’s picture of personal identity—What is Locke’s (general) view on identity?; and, What kind of entity is a person, exactly?—are the subject of ongoing debate. [ 5 ]

So too are the most clearly stated aspects of Locke’s view: the claim that persons have consciousnesses, and the accompanying assertion that sameness of person rests in sameness of consciousness. What is consciousness for Locke? What does Locke mean by “sameness of consciousness”? Answering these questions turns out to be difficult, since Locke does not say much about what he takes consciousness to be (and we only know the persistence conditions of any entity, once we get clear on the nominal essence of that entity’s kind, according to Locke). Nevertheless, answering these questions is crucial to understanding Locke’s theory of personal identity since it is consciousness centered.

Some scholars take Locke to be a strict memory theorist. In other words, consciousness just is memory for Locke. As will become clear below, this reading dates back at least as far as Thomas Reid. Of course, it is the case that the way a person extends their consciousness backward is via memory. It thus may seem as if the identity of consciousness consists in memory, or that to have the same consciousness as she who did x , one has to have a memory of doing x , under Locke’s view. Nevertheless, as Margaret Atherton points out, Locke talks at length about forgetfulness, and if consciousness just is memory, then we cannot make sense of consciousness at any given moment where a person is not invoking memory (1983: 277–278). Atherton then goes on to develop an account of consciousness that is analogous with Locke’s conception of animal “life”.

The identity of consciousness is what allows for the persistence of any person, just as the identity of life is what allows for the persistence of any animal. “If we look at Locke in this fashion”, Atherton argues,

then what he is saying is that what makes me different at this moment from any other person is that my thoughts are identical with my consciousness of them. No one else can have my consciousness any more than any organism can have my life. (Atherton 1983: 283)

A person, in Atherton’s reading of Locke, is a single center of consciousness, and so long as that single center of consciousness persists, the person persists.

Other scholars hold what is called an “appropriation reading” (see Winkler 1991, Thiel 2011, LoLordo 2012). Under this reading, what Locke means when he says that sameness of person consists in sameness of consciousness, is that any person extends back only to those mental events or acts which they take to be their own . In other words, the persistence of any person or self is best seen in terms of the “subjective constitution of the self” (Winkler 1991: 204). There might be a worry that under this kind of reading, Locke gives persons too much authority. That is, a person could deny that she is the one who committed the crime, just because she doesn’t see that act as her own. But, although the “self has a certain authority over its own constitution”, Kenneth Winkler makes clear that

it is important to realize that this authority is not consciously exerted. I do not willfully disown one act and appropriate another; instead I accept what my consciousness reveals to me. There is also a severe limit on that authority, imposed by the transitivity of identity,

which comes through, as Winkler notes, in Reid’s objection—an objection which Winkler thinks sympathetic readers of Locke can answer and which is discussed in section 3 below (Winkler 1991: 206).

From these treatments it is still difficult to discern what consciousness is for Locke, however. Shelley Weinberg works to give a robust picture of Locke’s conception of consciousness in her recent book (2016). According to Weinberg, Locke uses the term “consciousness” in two different ways:

…Locke seems to see consciousness as (1) a mental state inseparable from an act of perception by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving , and (2) the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states . (Weinberg 2016: 153)

The former is a momentary psychological state that allows for what Weinberg calls

a momentary subjective experience that the self presently perceiving is the same as the self that remembers having once had a past thought or action

and captures the first-person experience of persisting over time (Weinberg 2016: 153). The latter is an “objective fact of an ongoing consciousness” (Weinberg 2016: 153). This sense of consciousness is available from a third personal point of view, and fills in the gaps that any person’s subjective experience might entail.

Thus, Weinberg contends that the identity, or continued existence, of consciousness consists in a metaphysical fact, rather than appropriation. Nevertheless, Weinberg additionally argues that the first personal (conscious) experience of our own mental states, whether those states are occurrent sensations, reflections, or via remembering is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of personal identity. In other words, to have the awareness (or knowledge) of an ongoing self—or (2)—we must have (1). Although there is a range of interpretations of Locke on consciousness on the table, Weinberg’s book, Consciousness in Locke , marks the first large-scale treatment of Locke’s views on consciousness. [ 6 ]

In addition to the debate over what consciousness is, and what Locke means when he says that the identity of any person consists in the identity of consciousness, there is ongoing debate about what Locke’s stance is when it comes to what can give rise to consciousness. That is, there is ongoing discussion of what Locke means when he says that God could have superadded thinking to formerly inert systems of matter, and what Locke’s actual position is on the substantial nature of finite thinkers. There are those who take Locke to be truly agnostic. Those who take this line of interpretation remind readers of Locke’s stated aims at the start of the Essay (as quoted earlier), and the epistemic modesty that Locke maintains throughout the text. But, there are others who think that Locke overstates the probability that souls are immaterial substances, so as not to ruffle the feathers of Stillingfleet and other religious authorities. Some in the latter group think that Locke leans toward materialism. This raises questions about how far Anthony Collins (discussed below) departs from the Lockean picture, or the degree to which Locke anticipates later materialist pictures of persons. [ 7 ] At the very least, it can be said that Locke challenges the importance that many philosophers place on the immaterial soul to personhood and personal identity. [ 8 ] As might be expected, this was met with mixed reviews.

This section addresses how Locke’s view was received by his contemporaries and by those writing in the remainder of the early modern period (16 th -18 th centuries). A good number of philosophers vehemently objected to Locke’s treatment of persons, though some defended it, and many others used it as an inspiration, or springboard, for their own views.

Many who objected to Locke’s treatment of persons did so because they objected to the decreased importance Locke places on the soul for personhood and personal persistence (see Joseph Butler, Thomas Reid, and Samuel Clarke, for example). Many such philosophers argue that numerical identity consists in no change at all , and the only kind of entity that allows for identity in this strict sense is an immaterial substance.

Along the way, some charged Locke’s theory of personal identity with circularity. As Joseph Butler puts it,

…[O]ne should really think it self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes. (1736 [1842: 298])

Butler then asserts that Locke’s misstep stems from his methodology. He says,

This wonderful mistake may possibly have arisen from hence; that to be endued with consciousness is inseparable from the idea of a person, or intelligent being. For this might be expressed inaccurately thus, that consciousness makes personality: and from hence it might be concluded to make personal identity. (1736 [1842: 298])

One of the points that Locke emphasizes—that persistence conditions are determined via defining kind terms—is what, according to Butler, leads Locke astray.

Butler additionally makes the point that memory is not required for personal persistence. He says,

But though present consciousness of what we at present do and feel is necessary to our being the persons we now are; yet present consciousness of past actions or feelings is not necessary to our being the same persons who performed those actions, or had those feelings. (1736 [1842: 298])

This is a point that others develop when they assert that Locke’s view results in contradiction.

The most popular, or well known, version of this line of objection comes from Thomas Reid (1785). In the “brave officer” objection, Reid poses the following challenge to Locke’s theory of personal identity. He says:

Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced life; suppose, also, which must be admitted to be possible, that, when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that, when made a general, he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging. These things being supposed, it follows, from Mr. Locke’s doctrine, that he who was flogged at school is the same person who took the standard, and that he who took the standard is the same person who was made a general. Whence it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the general is the same person with him who was flogged at school. But the general’s consciousness does not reach so far back as his flogging; therefore, according to Mr. Locke’s doctrine, he is not the person who was flogged. Therefore, the general is, and at the same time is not, the same person with him who was flogged at school. (Reid 1785 [1851: 248–249])

In this exercise (and other similar versions of it) we are supposed to assume Locke’s theory of personal identity, and maintain that sameness of person consists in sameness of consciousness. When we do, Reid expects we will conclude that the general (C) is the same person as he who took the standard from the enemy (B) because the general (C) remembers doing so. Additionally he who took the standard from the enemy (B) is the same person as he who was flogged at school for robbing the orchard (A) because he (B) remembers that past traumatic experience. Thus C (he who is was made general) is identical to B (he who took the standard) and B (he who took the standard) is identical to A (he who was flogged at school).

Given the law of transitivity (which says that if C is identical to B and B is identical to A, then C is identical to A), we should conclude that C (the general) is identical to A (the flogged school boy). But, since we are assuming Locke’s theory of personal identity, Reid thinks we cannot come to this conclusion. If we assume Locke’s view, Reid contends that we have to conclude that C (the general) is not identical to A (the school boy). This is because C (the general) has no consciousness or memory of having been flogged at school (A).

This and other similar objections are meant to show that if we place the identity of persons in the identity of consciousness, as Locke suggests, then we run into a problem—namely one of contradiction—for we get the result that C and A both are, and are not, identical. Nevertheless, as is made clear above, there is debate about whether Locke’s claims about identity of consciousness should be read in terms of memory, and whether Reid is correct to take “memory” and “consciousness” as synonymous terms for Locke.

Circularity and contradiction are just two of the major objections launched at Locke’s theory of personal identity shortly after it is published. Importantly, these are objections to which sympathetic readers of Locke are still responding (see Atherton 1983, Weinberg 2016, LoLordo 2012, Thiel 2011, Garrett 2003, Schechtman 2014, etc). This gives the reader a glimpse of some of the lines of attack that were launched against Locke’s discussion of persons during the early modern period. Nevertheless, not all of Locke’s peers attacked his picture of persons, and numerous philosophers worked to defend his view.

One such philosopher is Catharine Trotter Cockburn. Cockburn pens her Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding in 1702. [ 9 ] In this text, Cockburn is responding to three pamphlets directed at Locke’s Essay . [ 10 ] These pamphlets take aim at Locke’s Essay rather broadly, and Cockburn’s Defence reflects this, but much is said about Locke on persons and their persistence conditions therein. Specifically, these pamphlets charge Locke with not proving that the soul is immortal, or threatening proofs of the immortality of the soul. They additionally charge that Locke’s view leaves us with the strange consequence that our souls are in constant flux, making it the case that we “awake with new souls each morning”. Given the importance of the soul, its persistence, and its immortality, to many traditional theories of personal identity, these objections are arguably intended to be objections to Locke’s picture of persons. Cockburn is quick to defend Locke, but proceeds carefully and thoroughly as she does so.

Cockburn points out that Locke never sets out to prove the soul immortal, and Locke actually claims that it is more probable that the soul is immaterial, than material. Moreover, even if Locke is not committed to the soul being immaterial, this ought not threaten proofs of the immortality of the soul. This is because what allows Locke to speculate that God could have superadded thinking to formerly inert systems of matter is that God is omnipotent, and surely an omnipotent being could make souls immortal even if they are material. Moreover, proofs for the immortality of the soul that rely on the immateriality of the soul are not likely to convince laymen of the soul’s immortality, and may actually leave them sceptical about whether the soul is indeed immortal (even if it is immaterial).

Cockburn additionally attacks the assertion that Locke’s claim that “men think not always” threatens proofs of the immortality of the soul. Of this she says,

But let it be granted, that it is ever so clearly proved, that thinking is necessary to the soul’s existence, that can no more prove, that it shall always exist, than it proves, that it has always existed; it being as possible for that omnipotence, which from nothing gave the soul a being , to deprive it of that being in the midst of its most vigorous reflections, as in an utter suspension of all thought. If then this proposition, that the soul always thinks , does not prove, that it is immortal, the contrary supposition takes not away any proof of it; for it is no less easy to conceive, that a being, which has the power of thinking with some intervals of cessation from thought, that has existed here for some time in a capacity of happiness or misery, may be continued in, or restored to the same state, in a future life, than that a Being which always thinks, may be continued in the same state. (Cockburn, in Sheridan (ed) 2006: 53)

As Cockburn points out, the notion that the soul is always thinking is not used as evidence for the soul’s immortality. Locke’s claim to the contrary thus ought not count as evidence against it, and we ought to have faith that an omnipotent God will ensure the soul’s immortality (whether it always thinks or not). Additionally, there is ample evidence that Locke thinks the soul is immortal, and that persons will go on to receive divine punishment and reward in the next life for their deeds in this life. This comes through not just in L-N 2.27 of the Essay , but also in Locke’s correspondence with Stillingfleet, and many of Locke’s religious writings, including the posthumously published “ Resurrectio et quae secuuntur ” (though Cockburn would not have had access to the latter while drafting her Defence ). [ 11 ]

Finally, Cockburn argues that the assumption that Locke’s view entails that we “awake with new souls each morning” rests on a misunderstanding. Just as a body that was in motion and comes to rest does not become a new body once it starts moving again, a soul that was thinking and ceases to think does not become a new soul once thought is restored to it. Thus, Locke’s claim that we do not always think—and indeed may have dreamless sleep—does not have the absurd consequences for the persistence of persons that the pamphlets charge. To this it might also be added that even if we awake with new souls each morning, it need not mean that we are new persons each morning, according to Locke.

Through the Defence , Cockburn additionally makes clear that although Locke’s theory of personal identity allows for sci-fi switches such as those described in the “prince and the cobbler” passage (L-N 2.27.15), the “waking and sleeping Socrates” passage (2.27.19), and the “day and night-man” passage (2.27.23), Locke does not think that this is the way things ordinarily go. In other words, in Locke’s view it is not that persons are switching bodies and swapping souls on a regular basis. Rather, Locke is making clear that we should distinguish between the concepts “man”, “body”, “soul”, and “person”. Moreover, the persistence of any person does not always align with the persistence of a human being or soul, as many assume. Making this point is the purpose of those imaginary cases.

Sixty-seven years after Cockburn’s Defence , and twenty-one years after the correspondence between Cockburn and Edmund Law ends, Law drafts a Defence of his own. Law’s Defence of Mr. Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity (1769) is later included in the 1823 version of Locke’s Works , and in it Law offers a particular reading of the ontological status of persons. Law defends a consciousness-based view, and makes much of Locke’s claim that person is a “forensic term”. Law moves from this point to the conclusion that Locke thinks persons are modes (or attributes) rather than substances (or things in themselves). He says,

Now the word Person , as is well observed by Mr. Locke …is properly a forensick term, and here to be used in the strickt forensick sense, denoting some such quality or modification in man as denominates him a moral agent, or an accountable creature; renders him the proper subject of Laws , and a true object of Rewards or Punishments. (1823: 1–2)

This is significant since whether Lockean persons are best thought of as substances, modes, or relations is something that is still debated amongst Locke scholars today.

While some philosophers were happy to defend Locke, as Cockburn and Law did, numerous philosophers writing in the eighteenth century utilized Locke’s theory of personal identity as a stepping stone to establish their own even more provocative views on persons. The ways in which these theorists go beyond Locke varies. Some of these are outlined below. [ 12 ]

In Anthony Collins’s correspondence with Samuel Clarke (1707–1708), it can often look as if Collins is a mere defender of Locke’s view. Collins holds a consciousness-based view of personal identity, and Collins invokes Locke’s discussion of persons and their persistence conditions throughout this lengthy exchange. Nevertheless, Collins takes Locke’s assertion that for all we know God could have superadded the ability to think to formerly inert systems of matter, and runs with it. As Larry Jorgensen puts it,

A significant difference between Collins and Locke…is that Collins thought that material systems provided a better explanatory basis for consciousness, which changes the probability calculus. Collins provides evidence that casts doubt on Locke’s claim that “it is in the highest degree probable” that humans have immaterial souls. Although he is building from a Lockean starting point, namely the possibility that God might superadd thinking to matter, he ends up with a naturalized version: thinking “follows from the composition or modification of a material system” (Clarke and Collins 2011: 48). (Jorgensen forthcoming)

Collins’s view on personal identity is a consciousness-based view, but what gives rise to consciousness, according to Collins, is likely a material system. Thus some take Locke’s purported agnosticism about the substantial nature of finite thinkers, and proceed more forcefully in the direction of materialism. In other words, Locke’s views on the substantial nature of finite thinkers opens the door to materialist views of persons and their persistence conditions.

Others take criticisms launched at Locke’s theory of personal identity, including the criticism that the self (or persisting self) is a fiction, and appear to embrace such consequences. [ 13 ] This can be seen rather readily in David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1738). In the Treatise , Hume asserts that it is not clear how we can even have an idea of the self. This is because most take selves to be persisting entities, and all of our ideas come from corresponding impressions. But since our impressions constantly change, there is no one impression that can give rise to the idea we call “self”. Of this Hume says,

It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos’d to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv’d; and consequently there is no such idea. (1738 Book I, Part IV, Section VI [1896: 251–252])

Moreover, whenever Hume looks for himself, all he finds are impressions. He says,

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. (1738 [1896: 252])

This leads Hume to claim that we are just bundles of perceptions, in constant flux (1738 [1896: 252]).

Thus it is not only the case that we fail to have an idea of the self, according to Hume, but also the case that, properly speaking, no subsisting self persists from one moment to the next. It is the imagination that leads us astray when we think of ourselves, and other entities, as persisting over time (1738 [1896: 254]). As Hume puts it,

The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bodies. (1738 [1896: 259])

It cannot, therefore, have a different origin, but must proceed from a like operation of the imagination upon like objects. (1738 [1896: 259])

In moving away from a more traditional substance-based view of personal identity (where the identity of person lies in the identity of soul), Locke opens the door to more fragmentary treatments of selves and persons. [ 14 ]

Along similar lines, some take Locke’s claim that the identity of persons lies in the identity of consciousness as fuel for the assertion that, properly speaking, there is no special relation between person x and any other future person. That is, personal identity only exists between present and past selves, not present and future selves. For this reason, we ought not have prudential concern, or concern for a future self that is distinct from our concern for others. This is the argumentative move that William Hazlitt makes, and in An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805), he explicitly sets as his task showing

…that the human mind is naturally disinterested, or that it is naturally interested in the welfare of others in the same way, and from the same motives, by which we are impelled to the pursuit of our own interests. (1805: 1)

This line of argumentation is replicated and expanded almost one hundred and eighty years later by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (1984), though it does not appear that Parfit is aware of Hazlitt’s view when he drafts his own. [ 15 ]

This section briefly outlines the lasting impact that Locke has had on the debate over persons and their persistence conditions by exploring how Locke’s theory of personal identity gets taken up in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Most metaphysicians contributing to the debate over personal identity refer to Locke’s treatment of persons in their texts. Many even directly respond to Locke’s view as they flesh out their own.

Most who hold psychological continuity theories of personal identity take their views to be descendants of Locke’s. This is true of John Perry (1975), David Lewis (1976), Sydney Shoemaker (1984), and Derek Parfit (1984), for instance (Schechtman “Memory, Identity, and Sameness of Consciousness”, forthcoming in The Lockean Mind ). In fact, Parfit defends what he calls a “Lockean view” as recently as 2016 (34). What makes each of these views Lockean (at least according to their authors) is that, as Locke does, they take personal identity to consist in the continuity of psychological life, and they take this to mean that personal identity is relational. Moreover, like Locke, they emphasize the forensic nature of personhood.

Marya Schechtman offers a rival interpretation to those held by Perry, Lewis, Shoemaker, and Parfit, but Locke is very much in the foreground of Schechtman’s narrative account as well. In The Constitution of Selves (1996: 15), Schechtman claims,

The argument that personal identity must be defined in psychological terms is first systematically presented and defended by Locke in his Essay concerning Human Understanding

Schechtman then goes on to show that the project of psychological continuity theorists is “incoherent” because

[t]he goal of offering reidentification criterion is fundamentally at odds with the goal of defining personal identity in terms of psychological continuity…. (1996: 24)

Importantly, Schechtman does this not just by making a passing reference to Locke and then treating Parfit, Perry, and the like, but via a thorough examination of Locke’s theory, and the objections raised to it by Butler, Reid, and others.

Moreover, this is the case not only in Schechtman’s earlier work, but in her most recent work as well. Schechtman includes a thirty-two page chapter titled, “Locke and the Psychological Continuity Theorists” at the start of Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life (2014), and in “Memory, Identity, and Sameness of Consciousness”, Schechtman turns to recent developments in the psychological study of memory to update Locke’s view to “…capture some of the crucial insights of Locke’s account, and show why it remains relevant and influential” (in The Lockean Mind , forthcoming).

Those who defend animalism—or the view that persons just are human organisms—hold a position that is quite different from psychological continuity theories or narrative based views. Still, most animalists respond to Locke. Some even invoke Locke’s view as they develop their own. For example, Eric Olson’s animalist view relies very heavily both on Locke’s conception of “life”, and the persistence conditions Locke gives for organisms (1997: 137–138, etc.). This is why Olson describes his view as “Lockean”.

At the same time, some animalists blame Locke for separating the discussion of persons and personal identity from the discussion of human beings or human animals. In Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals & Identity , Stephen Blatti and Paul Snowdon ask, “Why was the idea of an animal conspicuously absent…” in the personal identity debate for so long (2016: 3)? They go on,

To answer this question, we need to return to Locke’s famous discussion of personal identity, in which the notion of an animal was central…Locke exercised great care in specifying the different ideas for which the words ‘animal’ and ‘person’ stood. A reasonable conjecture, or proposal, we suggest, is that Locke’s treatment of these two terms and notions was so effective that it generated in people engaging with the problem the conviction that the notion of a person is the central one fixing the type of thing the problem is about, with the consequence that the notion of an animal was lost to sight. (2016: 3)

Locke does much to distinguish between human beings (or men)—which are animals—and persons, and Blatti and Snowdon assert that this sets the stage for how the personal identity debate plays out for the next several hundred years. In other words, Locke is the reason that animalist views do not emerge until later in the twentieth century. [ 16 ]

Finally, even those working to carve out an entirely new space for the discussion of persons and their persistence conditions say something about Locke as they proceed. Leke Adeofe outlines and develops a tripartite picture of persons according to what he calls the “African thought system”. As he does, Adeofe aligns his approach with Locke’s. He says,

My approach, partly descriptive and partly imaginative, ought to be familiar; it has been borrowed from a tradition that dates back at least to John Locke. (2004: 69)

Moreover, this is the case even though Adeofe uses the African, or Yoruba, conception of “person” to challenge Western philosophy’s treatment of persons and their persistence conditions.

In Real People: Personal Identity Without Thought Experiments (1988), Kathleen Wilkes takes aim at the proliferation of thought experiments in the personal identity literature. It is clear that Wilkes has the elaborate thought experiments that Parfit employs (including teletransportation, split brain cases, etc.) in mind throughout her critique. But, it is also clear that Wilkes traces this methodology back to Locke. Of this she says,

The subject of personal identity…has probably exploited the method [of thought experiments] more than any other problem area in philosophy. Many of the examples are familiar:…Locke testing ‘what we would say if’ the soul of a cobbler migrated into the body of a prince, or if the Mayor of Queinborough awoke one day with all of Socrates’ memories. (Wilkes 1988: 6)

The “prince and the cobbler” passage, or L-N 2.27.15, proceeds in the opposite direction, with Locke asking us what we would conclude about the soul of a prince entering and informing the body of a cobbler, but, regardless, Wilkes takes Locke and the tradition that follows, as her target as she works to move the discussion of personal identity away from fantasy cases and toward real-life ones.

Locke’s discussion of personal identity is central to the current debate over persons and their persistence conditions. Nevertheless, there are many different versions of Locke’s view that contemporary metaphysicians take themselves to be embracing or rejecting. Even those who describe their respective views as “Lockean”—Parfit and Olson, for instance—can end up defending very different pictures of persons. This highlights just how difficult it is to determine what Locke’s view on persons and their persistence conditions amounts to, despite how clear its importance is.

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• 1689, A Letter Concerning Toleration , reprinted and edited by John Tully, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1989
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• Drafts for the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Other Philosophical Writings: In Three Volumes, Vol. 1: Drafts A and B , (The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke), Peter H. Nidditch and G. A. J. Rogers (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245452.book.1
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Author Meets Critics on “Locke’s Moral Man” , July 2013 discussion of LoLordo’s book at The Mod Squad (Modern Philosophy Group Blog).
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animalism | Clarke, Samuel | Cockburn, Catharine Trotter | consciousness: seventeenth-century theories of | Descartes, René | Hume, David | Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm | Locke, John | Locke, John: moral philosophy | personal identity

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Chicago Early Modern Round Table for helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this entry, Shelley Weinberg and an anonymous referee from SEP for insightful comments on later drafts. I’m also deeply indebted to Margaret Atherton, John Whipple, Marya Schechtman, and the many audiences I’ve gotten feedback from when I was just starting to think about Locke on personhood and personal identity.

Copyright © 2019 by Jessica Gordon-Roth < gordo216 @ umn . edu >

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• v.80(1); 2013 Feb

Personhood: An Essential Characteristic of the Human Species

Frederick j. white.

Institutional Ethics Committee, Willis-Knighton Health System, Shreveport, LA, USA

This essay postulates that human social order recognizes the personhood of human beings within two competing constructs—an existential construct that personhood is a state of being inherent and essential to the human species, and a relational construct that personhood is a conditional state of value defined by society. These competing constructs establish personhood in both individual and interpersonal contexts. Within the individual context existential personhood may be posited as a distinctly human state within the natural order, intrinsic to human life, and independent of the status of the human being. In the interpersonal context the existential construct holds that personhood is not a creation of the society, is not a right, and may not be altered or removed by human fiat. Relational theory presents contra assertions in these two contexts. The Christian view is taken as a particular case of existential personhood. Arguments concerning the nature of human personhood are metaphysical and consist of philosophical beliefs which may be properly asserted in either construct. The interpersonal context of personhood lends itself to comparative analysis of the empirical results associated with both the existential and the relational constructs. This essay provides an overview analysis of the existential and relational constructs of personhood in the interpersonal context and finds a broad range of results that are manifestly superior under existential theory. Such empiricism supports a normative conclusion that the good rests in the existential construction of human personhood, and gives credence to a claim of truth that personhood is an essential characteristic of the human species and is not a conditional state dependent upon circumstance, perception, cognition, or societal dictum.

“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” 1 With these words, the Psalmist poses a transcendent question. It is a question raising wonder that God gives of the Divine mind to humanity, and a question recognizing in humanity a wondrous essential nature. What is it of a human being that could draw the mind of God? And what is it of human nature that could reflect the Divine? For the Christian, the answer has always been the imago Dei —that which Augustine defined as “that principle within us by which we are like God, and which is rightly said in Scripture to be made ‘after God's image’” (Augustine ca. 397/2002). And yet it is not just the Christian who recognizes the transcendent nature of humanity. The secular mind has also found in humanity that which extends beyond the physical. Plato argued that “when the person has died, his soul exists” (Plato ca. 380 B.C./1999), and in that argument found man as “having a share of the divine attributes” (Plato ca. 387 B.C./2005).

For the Christian, the notion that something reflective of the divine exists in all of humanity is foundational to human personhood. Personhood manifests the unity of the spiritual and the corporeal in human existence, and thereby is an essential characteristic of the human species. Personhood gives to the human individual a universal worth and an exceptional standing. And in the transcendent nature of personhood we find the inalienable substance of human rights and the genesis of society and law.

But the Christian view of human personhood has been increasingly questioned in our time, as has been the notion that any theory of personhood may be superior to others. This essay postulates that human social order recognizes the personhood of human beings within two competing constructs—an existential construct that personhood is a state of being inherent and essential to the human species, and a relational construct that personhood is a conditional state of value defined by the society. These competing constructs establish personhood in both the individual and interpersonal contexts. Within the individual context existential personhood may be posited as a distinctly human state within the natural order, intrinsic to human life, and independent of the status of the human being. In the interpersonal context the existential construct holds that personhood is not a creation of the society, is not a right, and may not be altered or removed by human fiat. The relational construct presents contra assertions in these two contexts. The Christian view is taken as a particular case of existential personhood.

Arguments concerning the nature of human personhood are metaphysical and consist of philosophical beliefs which may be properly asserted in either construct. 2 The interpersonal context of personhood lends itself to comparative analysis of the empirical results of both the existential and the relational constructs. This essay provides an overview analysis of the existential and relational constructs of personhood in the interpersonal context and finds a broad range of results that are manifestly superior under existential theory. Such empiricism supports a normative conclusion that the good rests in the existential construction of human personhood, and gives credence to a claim of truth that personhood is an essential characteristic of the human species and is not a conditional state dependent upon circumstance, perception, cognition, or societal dictum.

An Examination of Personhood in the Individual Context

What is it that makes a human being human ? And what is it that defines a human being as a person ? These questions, and the corollary interplay between qualities of humanity and qualities of personhood, challenge us to reflect on the most basic aspects of our existence.

Personhood as a Distinctly Human State within the Natural Order

The postulate that personhood is a distinctly human state within the natural order is basically an assertion of human exceptionalism. However, for many in our time, the controlling dogma of human existence rests upon the notion that humanity is nothing more than a highly developed animal state. The idea of the human species as relatively indistinct from other animals predates modern thought by millennia. In an early expression of naturalistic thought, Pliny the Elder described man as animal in being, though he viewed man as “the animal destined to rule all others.” 3 Pliny spoke of man comparatively, being the least of the animals in the frailties of birth and early development, though perhaps superior by virtue of self-awareness. 4 Even so, Pliny believed that both man and other animals were the result of some creative force. 5

The concept of man solely as an animal form derived by indifferent acts of the laws of nature reached a later expression in the nineteenth century thought of Charles Darwin. Citing trans-species similarities in embryologic development, in anatomic structure and function, and in the geologic record, Darwin (1874, 694) concluded that ‘man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor’. Adopting an expressly naturalistic explanation for human existence as a part of the animal world, Darwin (1874, 693–694, 695) stated that

the great principle of evolution stands up clear and firm, when these groups of facts are considered in connection with others…. He who is not content to look like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation…. Through the means just specified, aided perhaps by others as yet undiscovered, man has been raised to his present state.

However, Darwin (1874, 696) went further than classical naturalism. Of mankind he held that ‘the high standard of our intellectual powers and moral disposition’ also reflected evolutionary advancement. The former, Darwin (1874, 696–697) stated, could easily be explained as a natural refinement of the mental powers of higher animals. The latter, moral, nature of man Darwin (1874, 697) admitted as “a more interesting problem.” 6 Nonetheless, he construed the moral nature of man to be founded in a combination of the expression of social instincts common to lower animals, such as an enjoyment of the company of other individuals, and an expression of higher intellectual powers, such as the ability to recall past experiences with the ability to generalize them to future events, all refined by the naturally selective processes of evolution (Darwin 1874, 697–700). Finally, Darwin held that the nearly universal conviction of mankind in the existence of a powerful Deity was merely a further development in the evolution of morally relevant social and cognitive behaviors. The construct of a Deity allowed man to transform those behaviors into customs extending beyond the confines of a given social context, thus becoming ‘habitual convictions controlled by reason’ (Darwin 1874, 700). The construct of the Divine as a manifestation of social evolution minimized the relevance of an immortal soul and dismissed as invalid the observation that ‘the belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest but the most complete of all distinctions between man and the lower animals’ Darwin (1874). 7 For Darwin, humanity, as characterized by morality and personhood, required no divine principle, nor imago Dei , but only the relentless force of natural selection. 8

So, then, do we humans exist only as an exalted mammalian phenomenon, driven to our current state by the invisible power of natural selection? Certainly many think not. Plato found intelligence to be the obvious distinctive between man and animal. As Grube (1958) noted, Plato found intelligence as “the most divine thing in man, the most essentially human because [it is] the only part of himself which he does not share with the animal kingdom….” 9

Aristotle also found man, though animal in nature, still distinct from other animals. Randall (1960, 68) noted that Aristotle held physiology to be common to all living things, and sensing and responding to stimuli as common to man and animals. 10 However, Aristotle held the nous as distinctive to man, being “the power of responding to universals and meanings, the power of acting with deliberation, with conscious forethought, or acting rationally” Randall (1960, 68). 11 In the Metaphysics , Aristotle (ca. 350 B.C./2008) held that among animals “endowed with sense” humans were distinct in that “the human race exists by means of art also and the powers of reasoning”. St. Thomas Aquinas combined these three functions—nutritive, sensory, and rational— into his unitary construct of humanity, with rationality forming the distinctive nature of the human person (Kretzmann and Stump 1998). And it was here that St. Thomas found company with St. Augustine in holding this distinctive rationality as the central virtue of the imago Dei (O'Callaghan 2007 12 ).

And yet it is that rationality per se is not sufficient to establish the essence of personhood, or for the Christian, the imago Dei . In his exploration of human identity, Kavanaugh (2001) has written that ‘if nonhuman animals…are discovered to have reflexive consciousness, and thereby embodied self-consciousness, they would be persons—even if not of the human variety…’. The members of the Great Ape Project have advocated for the personhood of certain species of apes, maintaining that the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and the orangutan “have mental capacities and an emotional life sufficient to justify inclusion within the community of equals” (Cavalieri et al. 1994). Admitting the controversial nature of animal language studies, nonetheless language and rational thought may be more reflective of the natural order than supposed in prior eras. And if animals have some form of rational thought, then a conception of human exceptionalism and of human personhood based in solely in rationality would need re-examination.

But it is what follows from rationality that makes humans distinctive in the natural order. St. Thomas was careful to construe the capacities of animals to the sensitive soul, with no per se operation of its own and no subsistence (Aquinas ca. 1274/1952). 13 As for man, the International Theological Commission has written that for St. Thomas ‘the image of God is realized principally in an act of contemplation in the intellect’ (International Theological Commission 2009). Lee and George (2008) note that it is the free choice and moral agency that flow from human rationality that are distinctive of humans. 14 Pope Benedict XVI has said that the specific distinction between human beings and animals is that God has made humans “capable of thinking and praying.” 15 Here then we find something divinely distinctive. Human beings, unlike even the most highly developed animals, have the capacity to relate to God, to understand a moral code, and to choose to live by it.

As Berry (2007) points out, the divine image distinguishing humans from other animals transcends naturalism, and “is not a genetic or anatomical trait.” As Berry writes, it is as if at some point God in a specific act of creation transformed Homo sapiens to Homo divinus , “biologically unchanged but spiritually distinct.”

Even Darwin in later years felt that the existence of the world as a function of natural processes was not incompatible with the transcendental, and that the rationality of humans implied the possibility of a higher entity subsuming the natural order. As Darwin observed,

Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist…. I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic (Darwin 1887/2005).

Here Darwin not only recognized a central limitation of his theory, but also the constraint placed on its extrapolation by the Kantian distinction between the a priori judgments of conceptual philosophy and the a posteriori conclusions of empirical science. 16 And herein we find a final point concerning the human state—that a broad application of the divide between the work of conceptual philosophy and empiric science places the naturalistic arguments of the Darwinians in proper perspective. The Darwinian arguments are relevant as to the origin of species, but are simply not determinative as to whether there is or was an Originator. Although empiric evidence may be relevant to species development, such evidence has no bearing on the non-testable concept of a First Cause. Naturalism does not have standing to conclusively refute the doctrine of imago Dei , nor to defeat the assertion, founded in human exceptionalism, that personhood is a distinctly human state within the natural order.

Personhood as Intrinsic to Human Life

A more recent argument against a distinctive nature of human personhood in general and the imago Dei in particular holds that personhood is solely a behavioral characteristic based on physiologic processes and is in no way intrinsic to human life. As a biologic iteration of the philosophic principles of reductionism, the belief that we are merely complex physiologic machines—both in our existence and in our actions—is now gaining as a cultural norm. The human being is held to be a strictly physical entity in the totality of its existence—an expression of its genome and a product of its ongoing biochemistry. Here, there is nothing intrinsic or transcendent to human personhood, and nothing distinctive about a human being. Human existence has no true metaphysical basis, and cannot survive physical death.

Venturing beyond the older propositions that humanity may be reduced to a naturalistically derived higher animal form, these modern arguments seek to strip away any metaphysical residual of personhood. Building on the classic atomistic tradition of Democritus and modifying the teachings of Cartesian dualism, 17 these modern thinkers dismiss the concept of the person as a unity of body and soul as espoused by St. Thomas Aquinas, and propose that all of human existence, both the physical and the metaphysical, may be reduced to the actions of the physical substrate of the body at various levels of function. Arguing to ‘put consciousness back in the brain’, Searle (2007) has maintained that conscious phenomena are concrete, non-abstract, and exist within the brain in space and time as a function of neuronal activity.

Sir Francis Crick (1995) has explicitly taken the argument beyond consciousness to a frank rejection of the concept of an innate soul. He began his recent examination of the human soul with what he termed as “the Astonishing Hypothesis,” stating that

“You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules (p. 3).

He goes on to say that “a modern neurobiologist sees no need for the religious concept of a soul to explain the behavior of humans and other animals” (p. 6). Modern neurobiological reductionists simply dismiss the soul as archaic, irrelevant, and unnecessary. Personhood is for the neurobiologist a purely material and natural phenomenon.

Is personhood, then, a dependent expression of the biologic state of human life, and not an intrinsic foundation of that life? Are we simply maintained by the sprightly contortions of atoms within the cohabitations of our genes? Again, many think not.

Platonic and Christian teachings assert that the human person is a unity of the separable entities of body and soul, and that that the soul is intrinsic to human life. For Plato it was clear that the essence of a human being transcends its physical substrate, both in physical life and after death. When Socrates was asked how he should be buried, Plato reported his reply as, “However you wish, provided you catch me.” 18 Socrates went on to say, “When I drink the poison, I shall no longer remain with you, but shall go off and depart for some happy state of the blessed….” 19 Grube (1958, 149) held that for Plato the function of the soul is “the fusion of the intelligible with the physical.” Grube (1958) described this Platonic construct of the soul further:

It alone can apprehend the universal, it alone can initiate the harmonious and rhythmical motions that are life. The Forms do not depend, it is true, upon it for their existence, but without it they can be neither apprehended nor realized to any extent at all. Without soul the physical world on the other hand could not even exist.

St. Thomas Aquinas succinctly stated that “it belongs to the notion of man to be composed of soul, flesh, and bones.” 20 St. Thomas found the soul to be “the first principle of life of those things which live.” 21 He held that the soul has progressive expression, such that in man “the sensitive soul, the intellectual soul, and the nutritive soul are numerically one soul.” 22 While “the body is necessary for the action of the intellect,” he also held it as true that “the intellectual principle which we call the mind or the intellect has an operation per se apart from the body.” 23 And of the qualities of the intellect, he found it to be both “incorporeal and subsistent.” 24

Swinburne (1998) notes that “in more modern times, the view that humans have souls has always been understood as the view that humans have an essential part, separable from the body as depicted by Plato and Aquinas.” Finding human intellectual capacity inseparable from the life force, associated with but divisible from the body, and persisting after death, Plato and Aquinas recognized in the human individual a distinctive nature. In that distinction the personhood of the human individual is intrinsic to human life and is uniquely transcendent within the natural order. Plato and Aquinas would find the Astonishing Hypothesis to be just that—and would reject it as a clear inversion of truth and reality.

Bennett and Hacker (2003, 399–408) have recently argued that the application of a modified Cartesian dualism, and subsequently of reductionism, to the physiologic studies of neuroscience marks the beginning of a mistaken intrusion of philosophy into the field. They maintain that neuroscience should properly be confined to that which it can empirically measure and study. 25 Echoing Kant (and Darwin), they argue that, “ No neuroscientific discoveries can solve any of the conceptual problems that are the proper province of philosophy, any more than the empirical discoveries of physicists can prove mathematical theorems” (Bennett and Hacker, 2003, 407). Understanding this, any deterministic assault of biologic reductionism upon the assertion that personhood is intrinsic to human life, or upon the doctrine of the imago Dei , is simply inconclusive.

So, that which makes a human being human , and that which defines an individual human being as a person , remains subject to competing arguments of philosophy and belief. It is thus proper to assert that nature evidences human personhood as not only distinct within the natural order, but also intrinsic to human life.

Personhood as Independent of the Status of a Human Being

Even among those who accept personhood as a distinctly human state within the natural order, and intrinsic to human life, there is argument as to whether personhood remains a conditional expression of human existence. Does a human being exist as a person sui generis , by the simple virtue of being human? Or does personhood follow after the human condition, existing as a disparate state among humans—more fully expressed in some than others, and perhaps not existing in others at all?

John Locke accepted the concept of soul, but viewed personhood of the individual as a distinct state, closely tied to consciousness—“Socrates asleep, and Socrates awake, is not the same person…. For if we take wholly away all consciousness of our actions and sensations, especially of pleasure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it will be hard to know wherein to place personal identity” (Locke, 1849). In our time, Swinburne (1986, 161, 177) has addressed this question, finding that “conscious persons consist of body and soul”, that personal identity is “constituted by sameness of soul”, and that “persons continue to exist while asleep” because the sleeping body “will again by normal processes give rise to a conscious life, or can be caused to give rise to a conscious life….” Swinburne (1986, 179) noted that under certain circumstances, such as those of a comatose patient, this construction could allow a person and his soul to cease to exist and then come to exist again.

Dennett (1981, 268–269) has proposed that personhood, though “an intuitively invulnerable notion,” is a state consisting of both a metaphysical and a moral element, and is subject to several necessary conditions. Among the conditions he applies to personhood are rationality, consciousness, the attitude or stance taken by society, capacity for reciprocity, capability for verbal communication, and a self-consciousness (Dennett 1981, 269–271). 26 Dennett observes that, in application of necessary conditions to personhood,

we recognize conditions that exempt human beings from personhood, or at least some very important elements of personhood. For instance, infant human beings, mentally defective human beings, and human beings declared insane by licensed psychiatrists are denied personhood, or at any rate crucial elements of personhood (Dennett 1981, 267).

This conditional concept of personhood, defined by society, allows a relativistic application of human rights which reverberates through human life from beginning to end. Absent an absolute and inviolable attachment of personhood to the human condition, the status of many humans becomes questionable.

Discussing conditional personhood as pertaining to end-of-life issues, the Honorable Barry Schaller (2008), an Associate Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, noted that such questions were central to the recent case of Terri Schiavo.

The case of Terri Schiavo…raised a virtual cascade of questions that concern the state of American society and culture. What is the nature of personhood and when does it end? What level of respect and, with it, autonomy accompanies an individual into old age or incapacity?

As the human body deteriorates, does personhood devolve? Is an ill or dying human being accorded less status as a person than others? Such propositions directly question whether personhood is a conditional state rather than an innate characteristic of human beings. If personhood can end before life ends, then human nature becomes a fragile expression of self-awareness, and is not a robust and inalienable foundation of human rights and culture.

The Apostle Paul directly addressed the transcendence of human personhood by teaching that personal identity survives physical death, stating that “we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” 27 Speaking of the end of life, Tertullian held that human personhood was not removed in impending death but rather limited in its fullest expression. Tertullian (ca. 209/1903) held that

when death is a lingering one, the soul abandons its position in the way in which itself is abandoned. And yet it is not by this process severed in fractions: it is slowly drawn out; and whilst thus extracted, it causes the last remnant to seem to be but a part of itself. No portion, however, must be deemed separable because it is the last; nor, because it is a small one, must it be regarded as susceptible of dissolution.

Lee and George (2008) have come to a similar conclusion. They note that “if the moral status-conferring attribute varies in degrees,” then “it will follow that some humans will possess the attribute in question in a higher degree than other humans, with the result that not all humans will be equal in fundamental moral worth, that is, dignity ” (p. 85).

Conditional personhood is flawed in its argument that a lesser expression alters the very state of personhood. It is as if one argued that the dim light of a candle is a different light (or is not light at all) due to the existence of the light of the sun. Light is light suapte natura in whatever expression it is found, and so is human personhood in its expression.

Similar questions at the beginning of life have been highly controversial in our culture, but date to antiquity. The Pythagoreans expressly believed that the embryo was a living being, ensouled from the moment of conception, and that ensouled human life, as divine in part, was to be inherently respected and protected until natural death. 28 Similar teachings regarding the beginning of life were proffered in the early Christian church by Tertullian and Gregory of Nyssa, finding in the embryo human dignity not only by virtue of ensoulment but also by virtue of respect for the more fully developed human being yet to come. 29

Levine (1988) recently reflected on similar points as they pertain to the social implications of the beginning of life:

As we consider how we ought to treat the human fetus or embryo, the most constructive questions are: When does a developing human begin to acquire the entitlements of membership in the moral (human) community? When does it begin to count as one of us? When should it become enfranchised by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution? These are metaphysical questions, and, thus, are not susceptible to resolution using the devices of ethics. Practical answers, if any, will issue from the political process (p. 300).

It is of profound importance to recognize that the relation of personhood to the status of the individual human being at any stage of life is essentially a metaphysical concern. For thereby, just as the prior questions of personhood as a distinctly human state within the natural order and personhood as intrinsic to human life, so also questions relating personhood to the status of the individual human are subject to competing philosophies, beliefs, and assertions.

In our time, Pope John Paul II preached to the world of the innate value and dignity of human life at all times and in all states. As Coughlin (2003) has noted, “The belief that each human being possesses a metaphysical value simply in the fact of his or her existence remains at the root of John Paul II's indefatigueable defense of human dignity.” John Paul II (1995) stated in Evangelium Vitae that “Man has been given a sublime dignity , based on the intimate bond which unites him to his Creator: in man there shines forth a reflection of God himself.” And John Paul II (1998) held firmly that this dignity was unconditionally innate and essential to the human existence, teaching that “the sacredness of the human person cannot be obliterated, no matter how often it is devalued and violated, because it has its unshakeable foundation in God as Creator and Father.”

So, the assertion of personhood as independent of the status of the human being is a rational and metaphysical argument, and an entirely proper proposal, even for those who cannot ground their approach in the Christian tradition. Any attempt to dismiss the imago Dei as inconsistent with personhood is simply founded in differences in belief and is not subject to any support in empiricism.

The assertion that personhood is independent of the status of the human being thereby forms a third principle for understanding personhood in the individual context. Along with personhood as a distinctly human state within the natural order, and personhood as intrinsic to human life, these three conceptual foundations proffer an understanding of personhood as an essential of the existence of the human individual. For the Christian, these principles rest on and evidence the imago Dei , and for the greater society they form a basis for understanding personhood in the interpersonal context.

An Examination of Personhood in the Interpersonal Context

How do human beings recognize others as individuals? And how does a human community relate to individuals as humans and as persons? These questions are rooted in the metaphysical concepts of the human as an individual, but have profound practical importance in all aspects of human life. From such primary applications as the recognition of human rights to such practical applications as daily decisions in health care, personhood forms the fundamental basis of the human community. And, unlike personhood in the individual context, the application of concepts of personhood in the interpersonal, or social, context is subject to empiric observation. Competing metaphysical concepts of the personhood of individuals will have differing concrete practical applications and associated results, and will lend themselves to comparative analysis. This analysis begins with two fundamental assertions: that personhood is a distinctly human state within the natural order, intrinsic to human life, and independent of the status of the human being—an assertion of existential personhood —and the antithetical position that personhood is a conditional state dependent upon circumstance, perception, cognition, or societal dictum—an assertion of relational personhood . In existential thought, characteristics of human personhood are innate and are to be discovered. For relational theorists, the characteristics of human personhood are to be defined by the society.

Personhood is Not a Creation of the Society

Existential personhood places certain demands upon a society. It calls upon a society to recognize the dignity and worth of the individual by reason of the life of the individual. It places the dignity and worth of the individual above the collective power of the society, as a superior virtue and it demands prima facie a societal rejection of the relational construct of personhood.

Certainly many have argued against such demands of the existential construction. Lindsay (1935/1992) maintained that Plato would assert ‘the distinction between what man is in himself and what he is in society’ as “invalid and unreal”. Cooley (1902/2009, 37) similarly spoke, holding that ‘“society” and “individuals” do not denote separable phenomena, but are simply collective and distributive aspects of the same thing’. Others more expressly believe that society maintains a “super organic” role, holding power to actually determine what constitutes a valid person. 30 Mauss (1985) proposed that the concept of self had “slowly evolved” through a succession of forms in different societies. Mauss (1985, 20) said of the notion of the person that “far from existing as the primordial innate idea, clearly engraved since Adam in the innermost depths of our being, it continues here slowly, and almost right up to our own time, to be built upon….” Karl Marx (1875, 1998) used a relational construct of personhood as foundational to his thought, stating that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each separate individual. In its reality it is the ensemble (aggregate) of social relations.”

The construct that the individual is indistinct from the greater society and that personhood is a relational state within society—being granted by society on terms agreed upon by the group—has observable and measurable associated results. This construct allows the person to be respected and valued by society in a subjective and variable ethic. It allows political structures, even those founded in democratic principles, to produce decidedly anti-democratic results—establishing distinctions among persons by fiat and validating arbitrary class hierarchies. And in so doing, the relational construct undermines justice and corrupts its application.

The relational construct found an early expression in Aristotle's views on slavery. Aristotle held that some persons possess certain natural characteristics—a childlike demeanor, for example—that make them slaves by nature (Rist 1982). And he held that other individuals are masters by virtue of being a certain type of person by nature, and not by virtue of knowledge or skill (Schofield 1999). The society is, in Aristotelian thought, acting properly and intuitively in establishing slavery based upon these differences. A more recent expression of this application of relational personhood was found in the nineteenth century United States Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford , explicitly affirming the ability of a “dominant race” to grant rights to “a subordinate and inferior class of beings.” 31

The concept that the powerful members of a society may declare a class of individuals to be an “inferior class of beings” bereft of constitutional rights and privileges demonstrates a relational construct of personhood in political application. Here, an ostensibly democratic society turns to its fundamental conception of persons as the explicit basis for political subjugation of individuals.

Socialism and communism both rest on a similar subjugation of the individual, but subjugated to the state as opposed to some superior class of persons. In Marxist social structures, there is no conception of existential personhood. There is no recognition of the existence and authority of God, nor of the imago Dei of persons. As Marx said, a “higher phase of Communist society” would exist “after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and…after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want…” (Marx 1875/2008). In Warning to the West , Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn struck directly at the ends derived from the relativistic origins of communism and its arbitrary class structures when he noted that ‘Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending on circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or bad. It all depends upon class ideology’ (Solzhenitsyn 1976). 32

Genocide finds origin in relational personhood, seizing class ideology and turning it upon entire populations. Hitler (1925/2010) held that “in this world everything that is not of sound racial stock is like chaff.” Nazi genocide found its nascent expression in the sterilization law of 1933, directed toward the mentally and physically disabled as a population considered to be inferior and excluded from German society (Friedlander 1995). 33 Once the walls of personhood were breached, the Final Solution quickly followed. In evaluating the Nazi program to eliminate the Jews, Goldhagen (1997) has noted that at the essence of the German policies was the objective to “turn the Jews into ‘socially dead’ beings…and, once they were, to treat them as such.”

Analyzing the roots of genocide under the Khmer Rouge, Alexander Laban Hinton noted that dehumanization was a central strategy:

Genocidal regimes manufacture difference in a number of important and interrelated ways…. First, genocidal regimes construct, essentialize, and propagate sociopolitical categories, crystallizing what are normally more complex, fluid, and contextually variable forms of identity. …Genocidal perpetrators often manufacture difference by transforming their victims into caricatures of these dehumanizing images (Hinton 2005).

It is important to note that this dehumanization permissively builds upon a foundation of relational personhood, here expressed as a social norm of “contextually variable forms of identity” (Hinton 2005).

Compare these results with those of existential personhood. That portion of the concept of existential personhood which is manifested by an immortal soul was held as a virtue of the individual at the conclusion of the Republic :

But if you will listen to me, and believe that the soul is immortal and able to endure all evil and all good, we shall always hold to the upper road, and in every way follow justice and wisdom (Plato ca. 380 B.C./1992). 34

Though viewing personhood of the individual as tied to consciousness, John Locke nonetheless held that “all men by nature are equal” (Locke 1821). From this assertion, and its corollary concept of natural freedom, he developed arguments regarding the derivation of government from the consent of the governed and regarding the limitation of slavery. 35

But the fullest expression of existential personhood is in the teachings of the Christian church. Here, in profoundly absolute declarations, we find that “being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone” 36 and that “social justice can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him.” 37

Herein we find powerful applications of the imago Dei. In A.D. 1435 Pope Eugene IV unequivocally condemned the slavery of “persons” taken by “advantage of their simplicity” with penalty of excommunication. 38 In our time Pope John Paul II criticized the minimization of the human person by socialism. He held that “socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism.” 39 He then exposed the relativistic underpinnings of socialism, holding that ‘the denial of God deprives the person of his foundation, and consequently leads to a reorganization of the social order without reference to the person's dignity and responsibility’. 40 And as to the relativistic evils of genocide, John Paul II, citing “fraternal sentiments, rooted in faith” from the teachings of St. Paul, stated that “the church firmly condemns all forms of genocide as well as the racist theories that have inspired and claimed to justify them.” 41

So, a comparative analysis finds that an existential construct of personhood places demands upon the society, requiring it to respect the essential dignity of the human individual as a person, to recognize the equality of individuals in creation, and to thereby promote the causes of justice and freedom. A relational construct of personhood allows supremacy of the society, the subjection of individuals to unjustly promoted relativistic societal definitions and demands, and arbitrary imperilment of the worth and well-being of persons. This empirical analysis, at least in the context of the practical rationality of natural law theory, finds manifestly superior results associated with the application of an existential construct of personhood, and supports the conclusion that the good rests in the existential assertion that personhood is not a creation of society. 42

Personhood is Not a Right

Existential personhood exalts human rights, but it does not exalt them in the highest. A close corollary to the prior conclusion that personhood is not a creation of society is the understanding that personhood is not defined by or dependent upon the conceptualization of rights. Existential personhood views rights as possessions of the individual and not as properties which define the individual. Some rights are intrinsic to the human condition, such as the right to maintain and defend life, and others are created and dispensed by the society, such as the political right to speak freely. But none, either singly or in combination, are constitutive of personhood.

Relational theory allows for an individual right to personhood, and thereby rejects the existential proposition of the person, though probably with good intentions. In discussing human rights in the context of the European Social Charter, Heringa (1998), Dean of the Maastricht Faculty of Law, referred to “the right to personhood and the equality principle” as “mixed rights: liberty as well as social right.” Others have construed a right to personhood in Articles 1 and 2 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Heldrich and Rehm 2001).

In the United States, the concept of a right to personhood has not been well propounded. Even in Roe v. Wade , the issue for all concerned was whether the fetus is a person, not whether the fetus has a right to personhood.

The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. 43

Justice Blackmun explicitly noted that “the Constitution does not define “person” in so many words.” 44 Roe finally turned on fetal development and not on personhood. Justice Blackmun held that the State

has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a “compelling” point at various stages of the woman's approach to term. 45

In Roe , the fetus gained no recognition of personhood, and the rights of the fetus were not recognized or established. Its interests were held to grow with fetal development, such that those interests progressively express in rough concert with the ability of the fetus to survive. The political rights of personhood seem to vest with viability. While avoiding confusion over a right to personhood, the closest that Justice Blackmun came to an identity for the fetus was ‘the potentiality of human life’. 46

By contrast, the argument for existential personhood and against a specific right to personhood is probably most clearly and expressly made in distinctions drawn in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… (United States 1776/1911).

Herein we find an existential testament that ‘all men are created equal’ and an acknowledgment that all individuals possess by endowment inalienable rights by virtue of the fact of human existence. Existential personhood is clearly manifested in this testament by the expression of its demand for equality. And personhood is distinguished in concept in the text by its separation from the subsequent delineation and discussion of rights.

To be ‘created equal’ is a state of being. This state of equality in creation transcends the concept of rights and cannot be constrained as a right belonging to a human being. Acknowledgement of this in forms of government is a political recognition of one of the principles of the imago Dei . And the recognition that inalienable rights of humans endow due to equality in creation is further support to the conclusion that the good rests in the existential construct of personhood.

Personhood is Inviolable

A final expression of existential personhood is the observation that personhood is inviolable. That personhood is not a creation of the society, but rather an expression of the imago Dei , demands that personhood be held as sacred by individuals, the society, and the state. Persons created in equality, whose human rights vest not on societal distinctions but in existence as individuals, may not have their rights arbitrarily violated. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that human rights are possessed by ‘all human beings’ by virtue of birth, and that no distinction among human beings may remove those rights. 47

The cause of justice demands that the weak and the strong, the greatest and the least, the healthy and the dying, all enjoy the same benefit of the respect and dignity of persons. As Pope John XXIII taught:

Any well-regulated and productive association of men in society demands the acceptance of one fundamental principle: that each individual man is truly a person. His is a nature, that is, endowed with intelligence and free will. As such he has rights and duties, which together flow as a direct consequence from his nature. These rights and duties are universal and inviolable, and therefore altogether inalienable. 48

This, perhaps more than any other concept discussed thus far, has daily practical importance. John XXIII asserted that personhood, by virtue of its attendant inviolable rights, placed both fundamental and derivative demands upon society:

But first We must speak of man's rights. Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of illhealth; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood. 49 It is generally accepted today that the common good is best safeguarded when personal rights and duties are guaranteed. The chief concern of civil authorities must therefore be to ensure that these rights are recognized, respected, co-ordinated, defended, and promoted, and that each individual is enabled to perform his duties more easily. For “to safeguard the inviolable rights of the human person, and to facilitate the performance of his duties, is the principal duty of every public authority”. 50

Those who deny these truths have in our time advocated for abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, as well as an economically utilitarian basis for the provision of health care. These arguments all share a rational basis in the relational construct of personhood. Peter Singer has endorsed a relational construction of human personhood. Singer (1994, 180) notes that

we often use “person” as if it meant the same as “human being.” In recent discussions in bioethics, however, “person” is now often used to mean a being with certain characteristics, such as rationality and self-awareness.

Here we see human society choosing which among the many characteristics common to human beings will define “persons.” Though the characteristics themselves may be quite fundamental, the very distinction drawn by their variability among human individuals, and the social valuation of that variation, founds a relational ethic.

Singer (1994, 182) builds upon this relational foundation, expanding it to practical social utility. Here Singer finds common ground with existential theorists in recognizing the importance of the construction of personhood adopted by a society. Singer notes that “the term ‘person’ is no mere descriptive label. It carries with it a certain moral standing.” Singer recognizes that such a moral standing may empower the society with actionable authority. He bluntly states that

the fact that a being is a human being, in the sense of a member of the species Homo sapiens , is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather, characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings (Singer 1993).

At the end of life, Singer and Helga Kuhse have reached similar conclusions. Kuhse (1987) writes, “there is a strong connection between the value of life and the interests of the being whose life it is. Life may be in a being's interests, or it may not—depending what the life is like.” Singer and Kuhse argue that “human life has no intrinsic value but gives rise to two values: well-being and the value of liberty or self-determining action…. [D]octors should, whenever possible, maximize these values. This may include active euthanasia…” (Kuhse and Singer 2002).

Paterson (2008) examined these concepts as a justification for suicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Paterson noted that these concepts allow that

life is regarded as a positive value as long as it can “hold its own” against other competing considerations like the disvalue of human suffering. The value of human life, in the face of competing considerations, is said to diminish or wane in quality to the point that intending death becomes a rational-choice worthy option. 51

He then interprets the teachings of Kuhse as justifying the killing of some individuals in a quality-of-life ethic. 52

Relational constructs of personhood also figure prominently in justifying decisions to ration and allocate health care. Discussing the cost-utility concept of the quality adjusted life year (QALY), Michael Lockwood placed personhood in a subjectively variable utilitarian ethic, noting that

The concept of a QALY is…in one sense only a framework, requiring to be fleshed out by some substantive conception of what contributes to or detracts from the intrinsic value or worthwhileness of a life, and to what degree—a conception, that is, of what it is about a life that determines of how much benefit it is to the person whose life it is. To this extent, the concept is highly permissive: one can, as it were, plug in whatever conception of value one personally favours. (Lockwood 1988)

Here society asserts the power to variably define the “intrinsic value” of an individual life, imposing societal constraints as to when life may be beneficial to the person. Such a relational construction appropriates sweeping powers to the State and sets the stage for arbitrary allocation of life sustaining resources. Such a construction is inherently dangerous in a time of plenty, and could easily become malevolent in times of scarcity. 53

These applications of relational personhood all share a common theme—decisions regarding the lives, the welfare, and the treatment of persons are made in a variable ethic, subject to the dictum of the greater society. A result of this ethic is that persons of advantage or authority may take actions toward vulnerable persons which do not depend upon the consent of those individuals and may not reflect their best interests. And in this way, these practical applications of relational personhood in health care share a commonality with the broader political applications of relational personhood in slavery, communism and genocide. 54

Compare these results with those associated with the application of existential personhood to these questions. Here we find clear and unwavering principles. Catholic social teaching clearly states that, “It is necessary to state firmly once more that nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying.” 55 Pope John Paul II explicitly condemned euthanasia in encyclical doctrine “based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God,” stating that “euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person.” 56 The World Medical Association has also unequivocally condemned euthanasia, holding that, “Euthanasia, that is the act of deliberately ending the life of a patient, even at the patient's own request or at the request of close relatives, is unethical.” 57

And as to medical care for the weak and the vulnerable, the World Medical Association Declaration on the Rights of the Patient sets forth principles regarding certain rights of all patients, implicitly including individuals in conditions of debility and infirmity, establishing in relevant part:

1. Right to medical care of good quality a. Every person is entitled without discrimination to appropriate medical care. b. Every patient has the right to be cared for by a physician whom he/she knows to be free to make clinical and ethical judgements without any outside interference. c. The patient shall always be treated in accordance with his/her best interests. The treatment applied shall be in accordance with generally approved medical principles…. 10. Right to dignity a. The patient's dignity and right to privacy shall be respected at all times in medical care and teaching, as shall his/her culture and values. b. The patient is entitled to relief of his/her suffering according to the current state of knowledge. c. The patient is entitled to humane terminal care and to be provided with all available assistance in making dying as dignified and comfortable as possible…. 58

Here personhood forms the basis for a nondiscriminatory ethic for medicine, protecting individual dignity in primacy and providing humane care on a best interests standard. However, it is important to note that even this construction must be carefully framed on an existential basis. For otherwise, the best interests standard supplies little protection from discrimination in the determination of what constitutes “appropriate medical care.” 59 Absent a commitment to an existential personhood of humanity, the right of “every person” to be free of discrimination is quite distinct from a right protecting all human beings.

The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops more directly rejects the utilitarian approach to medical care, holding that

In accord with its mission, Catholic health care should distinguish itself by service to an advocacy for those people whose social condition puts them at the margins of our society and makes them particularly vulnerable to discrimination; the poor, the uninsured and the underinsured; children and the unborn; single parents; the elderly; those with incurable diseases and chemical dependencies; racial minorities; immigrants and refugees. In particular, the person with mental or physical disabilities, regardless of the cause or severity, must be treated as a unique person of incomparable worth with the same right to life and to adequate health care as all other persons (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 2009).

And in the encyclical Evangelium Vitae John Paul II explicitly condemned the ‘moral uncertainty’ of relativism and utilitarianism as a ‘culture of death’, stating that:

This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war of the powerful against the weak : a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another. A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style or those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. 60

Common to these teachings and declarations is a direct and express application of existential personhood. Here persons are held in highest regard without relation to their condition or status. Here all persons hold equality in rights to care and dignity, forming a beneficent foundation for determination of best interests. And here a society finds that by respecting personhood as an existential manifestation of the imago Dei , the cause of justice is established and furthered. In this result the inviolability of personhood is further support for the conclusion that the good rests in the existential construct of personhood.

Conclusions

The personhood of a human being is a foundational concept for all that we are and all that we do. Throughout history, personhood has been a topic of human inquiry, a subject of philosophy, and basis of political power. Each society finds in its accepted construct of personhood the font of its government and laws. Application of the construct of personhood finds social expression in multitudes of daily decisions affecting the lives and welfare of all individuals.

The existential construct of personhood as a distinctly human state within the natural order, intrinsic to human life, and independent of the status of the human being, forms a competing metaphysical construct to the relational construct of personhood. Analysis of the existential construct in the interpersonal context finds a broad range of associated results that are manifestly superior to those of the antithetical relational construct. Such empiricism supports the normative conclusion that the good rests in the existential construction of human personhood, and gives credence to a claim of truth that personhood is an essential characteristic of the human species, and is not a conditional state dependent upon circumstance, perception, cognition, or societal dictum.

Biographical Note

Frederick J. White III, M.D, Chair, Institutional Ethics Committee, Willis-Knighton Health System, Shreveport, Louisiana. His email address is: [email protected] . The views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Willis-Knighton Health System.

2 Personhood, of course, has been the subject of broad ranging inquiry and many would not confine it to the two constructions analyzed in this essay. In his recent anthology of thought on personal identity, Lizza (2009) grouped the ideas into eight categories—persons as immaterial souls, persons as ensouled bodies, persons as human organisms, persons as psychological qualities or functions, persons as psychological substances, persons as constituted by bodies, persons as relational beings, and persons as self-conscious beings.

3 The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal, Natural History, Book 7 . Mary Beagon (trans). New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 59.

4 Pliny described the frailties of man by stating, “All other animals are instinctively aware of their own natures, one exercising fleetness of foot, another swiftness of flight, others their ability to swim. Man, however, can do nothing unless he is taught, neither speaking nor walking nor eating. In short, he can do nothing by natural instinct except weep!” The Elder Pliny , 59. Pliny held that self-awareness was both benefit and burden, stating that “to man alone in the animal kingdom is granted the capacity for sorrow, for self-indulgence of every kind and in every part of his body, for ambition, avarice, unbounded appetite for life and superstition; for anxiety over burial and even over what will happen after he is dead. To no animal is assigned a more precarious life, more all-consuming passions, more disruptive fear, or more violent anger” (ibid., 60).

5 Pliny held that “the first place will rightly be assigned to man, for whose benefit great nature seems to have created everything else.” The Elder Pliny , 59. The concept of a creator forms one basis from which to approach human exceptionalism and the distinctive nature of human personhood.

6 Darwin noted that “the moral faculties are generally and justly esteemed as of higher value than the intellectual powers” (Darwin 1874: 699).

7 Darwin closed the argument by noting that “the conclusions arrived at in this work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious” (Darwin 1874: 701).

8 Wilson (2004) continues this line of thought, proposing that “innate censors and motivators exist in the brain that deeply and unconsciously affect our ethical premises; from these roots, morality evolved as an instinct.”

9 In Timaeus , Plato (ca. 355 B.C./1961) held the intelligence of man as like unto that of the Gods: “God invented and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them….”

10 Aristotle held all living things to have a “nutritive soul”, but animals to also have “perception.” In De Anima Aristotle (ca. 350 B.C/1986) writes, “The nutritive soul, then, must be present in all those things that grow and decay…. The animal, however, must have perception.”

11 The nous subsumes the nutritive and perceptive functions Randall (1960). “With the things that have soul, the earlier member of the series always being present in the later….” Aristotle De Anima 2.3.414b.

12 O'Callaghan concludes his analysis by finding that for St. Thomas, as for St. Augustine, “it is indeed in the substance or essence of a human being that the image of God is to be found” (p. 144).

13 St. Thomas held that the souls of man and animals were quite distinct, as “the souls of brutes are produced by some power of the body, whereas the human soul is produced by God.” Summa Theologica , I, Q. 75, Art. 6, ad. 1.

14 These authors affirm that “the most important capacity made possible by rationality, and the one that without doubt most profoundly determines how human beings should be treated, is free choice” (Lee and George 2008).

15 Pope Benedict XVI, “In the Beginning…:” A Catholic Understanding of the Creation and the Fall , trans. Boniface Ramsey (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 1990; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1995), p. 48. Citation is to the Eerdmans edition.

16 Noting this distinction in Kant's thought, Allison (1983) writes that, “A priori judgments are grounded independently of experience, while a posteriori judgments are grounded by means of an appeal to experience. Following Leibniz, Kant regards necessity and universality as the criteria for the a priori . His fundamental assumption is that the truth value of judgments which lay claim to universality and necessity cannot be grounded empirically.” Kant defined philosophy, in part, as an antithesis of empirical science, generating conceptual knowledge through reason as opposed to the gathering of data; see “Kant's Terminology”, in Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology , ed. James Mark Baldwin (New York: Macmillan Co., 1901), 591.

17 Democritus held the perceptions of reality as “conventions.” “By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour; but in reality, atoms and void” (Taylor 1999). “Descartes ascribed all psychological functions to the mind” (Bennett and Hacker 2003). The mind, as an entity distinct from the body, allowed a severability of the human condition. Modern neuroscientists often substitute the brain for the mind in attacking this construction, but as Bennett and Hacker (2003: 110–114) note, they commit a mereologcial error in maintaining a dualistic form. Bennett and Hacker term this construction “Brain-body dualism.”

18 Phaedo , 115c.

19 Ibid., 115d.

20 Summa theologica , I, q. 75, a. 4.

21 Ibid., I, q. 75, a. 1.

22 Ibid., I, q. 76, a. 3.

24 Summa Theologica , I, Q. 75, Art. 2.

25 The authors note that contemporary cognitive neuroscience has “in effect replaced the Cartesian dualism of mind and body with an analogous dualism of brain and body” (Bennett and Hacker 2003: 111). As to reductionism, the authors state that “there is no hope for any form of reduction that will allow one to derive laws governing phenomena at the higher level of psychology from the laws governing phenomena at the neural level” (Bennett and Hacker 2003: 362).

26 While explicitly rejecting personhood as intrinsic to humanity, Dennett does seem to accept the converse, finding humanity “as the deciding mark of personhood” Dennett (1981: 267).

27 2 Cor. 5:8. The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture notes that in this verse Paul “expresses his desire to leave the body and go home to the Lord” (Stegman 2009).

28 For a brief discussion of the Pythagoreans on these points, see Carrick (2001) and Veatch (2000).

29 For a brief summary of the teachings of Tertullian and Gregory on the soul and the embryo, see Jones (2004). Aquinas, by contrast, held to a progressive ensoulment of the embryo—first vegetative, then sensitive, then rational. For a brief discussion of Thomistic thought on ensoulment, see Eberl (2006: 24–26). Eberl also presents a supposition that Aquinas’ progressive ensoulment reflected an understanding of embryology of his day, and that a modern Aquinas would arguably assign the rational soul to the zygote (Eberl 2006: 23–42). Swinburne (1986: 179) has approached this question from a more physiologic and deterministic viewpoint, saying that “there exist normal bodily processes by which the fertilized egg develops into a foetus with a brain after twenty weeks which gives rise to a functioning soul. If the soul exists just because normal bodily processes will bring it one day to function, it surely therefore exists, once the egg is fertilized, at conception.”

30 For a discussion of this view, see Popp (2007).

31 Dred Scott v. Sanford , 60 U.S. 393 (1856). The ruling held that, “The words “people of the United States” and “citizens” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the “sovereign people,” and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.” Dred Scott v. Sanford , 60 U.S. 393, 404–405 (1856). Dred Scott v. Sanford was overruled by the adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States (Vile 1994).

32 Solzhenitsyn (1976: 59) went on to say that “The primary, the eternal concept is humanity, and Communism is anti-humanity.”

33 This statute, the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases (14 July 1933), provided for Eugenics Courts to authorize the sterilization of those with specified mental or physical debilities “against the will of the person to be sterilized.” German History in Documents and Images, vol. 7, Nazi Germany, 1933–1945; http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English30.pdf .

34 Although there has been discussion as to whether the application of this thought, coming at the end of the Myth of Er in Book X, is confined only to a clarification of the powers of forgetfulness and recollection of the moral lessons of lives past, others have found its message more transcendent. For example, Richard Lewis Nettleship found this conclusion to “give us the key-note of the whole passage; the one thing to study on earth is how to make oneself better and wiser, not for this life alone, but for another….” Lectures on the Republic of Plato, ed. G. R. Benson (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1906), 359.

35 For a discussion of these arguments, see Wootton (2003).

36 Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 2002), n. 357.

37 Catechism 1929.

38 Eugene IV, Sicut Dudum , 13 January 1435; http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Eugene04/eugene04sicut.htm .

39 John Paul II, ‘Centesimus Annus’ (Vatican City, 1 May 1991); http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html .

41 John Paul II, “Address of his Holiness Pope John Paul II to a Symposium on The Roots of Anti-Judaism” (Vatican City, October 31, 1997); http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1997/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19971031_com-teologica_en.html .

42 Here I hold that the dignity of the human individual, the equality of individuals in creation, and the causes of justice and freedom are man's good naturally apprehended by what St. Thomas Aquinas termed “the practical reason.” See Summa Theologica Ia-IIæ, Q. 94, Art. 2, for Aquinas’ discussion of practical rationality in the natural law. Therein Aquinas notes that “this is the first precept of law, that good is to be pursued and done, and evil is to be avoided. All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this, so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided” (ibid.).

43 Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113, 156–7 (1973). The text of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America holds, in part, that, ‘… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ Constitution of the United States, Amendment XIV.

44 Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113, 157 (1973). However, it is important to note that Roe v. Wade does contain within its text a concept of personhood—the personhood of the fetus is a “suggestion” to be “established.” It is also important to note that, after analysis of the arguments in Roe v. Wade , the United States Supreme Court clearly found a right to life in the Fourteenth Amendment, and clearly related the right to life to personhood.

45 Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113, 162 (1973) (citation omitted).

46 Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

47 Article 1 provides that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Article 2 provides that “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind….” United Nations General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights , 10 December 1948, 217 A (III); http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

48 John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (11 April 1963), n. 9; http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html .

49 Ibid., n. 11.

50 Ibid. n. 60, quoting Pius XII's broadcast message, Pentecost, June 1, 1941, AAS 33 (1941) 200.

51 Note the stark contrast between this view and the teachings of Tertullian in A Treatise on the Soul.

52 As Paterson (2008: 20) notes, “For non-competent patients, Kuhse appeals to a “minimum personhood” standard. A life falling below this minimum quality threshold is not considered to be worth living and can be intentionally ended via non-voluntary euthanasia.”

53 It is not my position that allocation of scarce resources is unethical. Rather, I maintain that allocation decisions should not be made based upon an ethic of contextually variable valuation of persons, or upon a social declaration that some human beings are not persons. This position is consistent with the policies of the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA holds that “the patient has a basic right to have available adequate health care” (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs 2012a: 382). As to allocation of scarce resources, the AMA holds that “nonmedical criteria, such as ability to pay, age, social worth, perceived obstacles to treatment, patient contribution to illness, or past use of resources should not be considered.” (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, 2012b: 12) The AMA does not endorse a specific method for allocation of scarce medical resources (Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, 2012b).

54 It is of note that holding all of these outcomes as evil , wrong , or inferior remains a normative judgment, though based in a natural law conception (see note 42). The use of these outcomes as empiric evidence of the inferiority of a relational theory of personhood rests upon that normative conclusion.

55 Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Euthanasia , 5 May 1980; http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19800505_euthanasia_en.html .

56 John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae) , n. 65.

57 World Medical Association, Declaration on Euthanasia , adopted by the 38th World Medical Assembly, Madrid, Spain, October 1987; http://www.wma.net/e/policy/e13b.htm .

58 World Medical Association, Declaration on the Rights of the Patient , Adopted by the 34th World Medical Assembly, Lisbon, Portugal, September/October 1981, and amended by the 47th WMA General Assembly, Bali, Indonesia, September 1995, and editorially revised at the 171st Council Session, Santiago, Chile, October 2005; http://www.wma.net/e/policy/l4.htm .

59 The World Medical Association has not adopted a definition of personhood.

60 John Paul II, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae ), n. 12.

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What Is a Human Person? An Exploration & Critique of Contemporary Perspectives

Emmanuel Cumplido Follow

Zeyl, Donald, J.

Advisor Department

mind; soul; brain; knowledge; identity; bioethics

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What is a Human Person? An Exploration and Critique of Physicalist Perspectives

Emmanuel Cumplido

Faculty Sponsor: Donald Zeyl, Philosophy

Answers to the question “What is a human person?” that have garnered the allegiance of people throughout millennia fall under two broad categories: “physicalism” and “dualism”. One of the earliest renditions of physicalism was the philosophy of the ancient Greek atomists. In their view, all of reality could be explained through two principles: atoms and empty space. As a consequence, people were thought to be nothing but assemblages of atoms in space. Plato’s Phaedo presents one of the earliest philosophical endorsements of dualism by arguing for the existence of an immaterial mind, or soul, that is the grounds for a human person's identity. The idea that a human person is, fundamentally, an immaterial mind or soul that can survive bodily death has also been a long-standing position for many of the world’s major religions in both Western and Eastern traditions. With a recent revival of academic interest in studying consciousness, the debate on human nature has been receiving some special treatment in academia. In my project I aim to critique the dominant physicalist perspective by drawing out its implications for several other areas of human life. Specifically, the troubling consequences physicalism has in relation to epistemology, personal identity, and ethics. Along the way, I will give a brief apologia for dualism as a serious intellectual position that resolves the problems which physicalism presents

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Three Perspectives on the Human Person

If we can get the three views of man in their proper orders and give them their proper weights, we can see that the three views are meant to be complementary and of service to one another. A recovery of an authentic understanding of the true nature of the human person is vital. In fact, the survival of Western Civilization depends upon it.

Lost in the devolution of human learning and knowing are the questions, “Who am I?” “What does it mean to be a human person?” The mind molders are likely to tell you that we are at liberty to create ourselves and you will get a different answer from everyone you ask. But if we can recover the universal truths about being, we will see that there are really only three possible perspectives on the human person in terms of his place in the cosmos: from the materialist standpoint, from the outlook of the human mind, and finally from the vantage point of the human heart. We inevitably incorporate all three at least to some degree because these three perspectives connote the three universal aspects of the human person: the belly, head, and heart. We try in vain to eliminate the head and the heart, but our only real choices concerning them is what weight we give to each one.

The Scientific View of Man

It is a most evident fact that we are physical/material beings. With our five senses we confirm by every second of our existence that we operate materially in this world, hemmed in by the limits of time and space. The scientific view of man considers the human condition in all its purely material phenomena. It reductively assumes that the inductive method of reasoning, aided by the scientific method and interpreted by the five senses, constitutes the “best” way of knowing “real” things. Aristotle pointed out that “all learning begins in the senses,” and there is nothing wrong with beginning with the scientific perspective; it is problematic, however, if we end with it.

There is a madness in this age of progressive thought that would have us believe that, as a result of the rapid technological advancement, we will eventually be able explain all reality by empirical means. The scientific view of man is a usurper in this scientistic age. Notions of God and creation are increasingly considered superstitious. Philosophy has been reduced to material terms, and now even morality is becoming secularized.

Many elements in the scientific view of man are factually correct, but this view comprises a most base understanding of man. Taken by itself, it becomes a deadly reduction of the reality of human existence. It must necessarily see humans as means to be used, not as ends to be loved. It can allow for humans to be manipulated, used, and eliminated if deemed necessary. We are rational creatures, so the scientific view subordinates reason to serve science, not the other way around. We must go beyond the merely material to examine how the gift of our intellect provides insight into the human condition not afforded by the material sciences.

The Philosophical View of Man

To understand man in a philosophical way necessitates a discussion of the proper meanings of the words “person” and “nature.” When talking about human beings, we cannot mention a “nature” without mentioning a “person” connected to it. The first important thing to notice is that it is the person who possesses the nature and not the other way around. Though the pop psychologists would beg to differ, a nature does not possess a person. Nature answers the question of what we are, and person answers the question of who we are. All beings have natures, and when we ask what a being is, we are asking about its nature. However, not every being is a person, but only rational beings are persons. Let us define the person as a being possessed of consciousness, self-awareness, an intellect, and a will. These facts allude to a wide range of intellectual and moral implications nonexistent in beings which are not persons.

Frank Sheed explains in Theology and Sanity that by our natures we discover what we are. “It follows that by our nature we do what we do for every being acts according to what it is.” By these facts we discover another distinction between nature and person. By our natures we do many things: speak, love, sing, and breathe. A dog, by his nature, can do only one of those, and a stone by its nature can do none. So nature is not only what we are, but the source of what we can do. Even though it is by our natures that we see what kinds of things we are capable of doing, it is not our natures that decide to do them; it is the person that decides to do them. As Frank Sheed summarizes “the person is that which does the actions, the nature is that by virtue of which the actions are done, or better, that from which the actions are drawn.”

The philosophical view of man implies that we are moral as well as intellectual beings. It provides the framework to discover the nature of human excellence embodied by the perennial virtues towards which all men of good will tend. The philosophical view of man ought to subsume and guide the scientific view of man for it can anchor the material notions of man in the universal truths about the nature of being. This in turn allows for the discovery of the objective standard concerning virtue and vice available to all human souls who earnestly seek. There is much truth goodness and beauty in this view of man, but it is not the complete view. One may come up short if he stops with a philosophical view of man and ignores the role of the Author of Life.

The Theological View of Man

The fullest and most comprehensive view of man is the theological view. The theological view considers the substance, origin, and end of the human person. It is revealed truth that man is made in the image and likeness of God and at the same time of material. In Genesis 2:7 we learn that “the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” We are made of material but infused with immaterial life and the gifted image of God Himself by way of the intellect and will.

The theological view of man explains his origin in a way opposite that of the scientific view of man–which considers that man evolved by accident,  as a kind of sophisticated ape. The theological view asserts that God created man on purpose with divine intentionality as an ineffable act of love. Man is a creature created by God in His created universe. Every single thing in existence is created by God except God Himself; He is the uncreated Creator.

In learning what we are and about our divine origins, we are compelled to discover the ends of man intended by our Creator. Man, like every other created thing, tends towards its natural end. Since all that God created is good, and man is created good, all created things properly end in giving glory to God. Man’s specific end is intended to be in eternal beatitude. As St. Thomas Aquinas succinctly put it, “to possess God in full in the beatific vision is to have our powers fully realized, fully perfected, and to find them at rest, in perfect happiness for all eternity face to face with God.”

The Three Perspectives Combined

Being made in the image and likeness of God takes into account the fullness of the human person by considering the relationship between the immaterial faculties of the soul and the material realities of physical being. In learning of our substance, origin, and final end, we encounter the empirical realities at the lowest level and the philosophical realities on the ascent to the highest view of man, the Theological. We can discover the truth about these three aspects of the human person and gain invaluable assistance from the philosophical view of man in a support role for understanding the theological view of man. In a similar way, the scientific view of man has the potential to be of service to both the philosophical and the theological view of man if it is properly understood as the servant, not the master.

We desperately need to recover a proper understanding of the human person. As John Henry Cardinal Newman would recommend to us, we ought to “rebuild the Jewish Temple and to plant anew the groves of Academus.” This is to say that we ought to see man in his supernatural glory by the fountainhead of theological truth in Jerusalem and to embrace the heights of natural man emanating from the fountainhead of philosophical truth in Athens. Newman goes on to explain that sacred and profane learning are “dependent on each other, correlative and mutually complementary, how faith operates by means of reason, and reason is directed and corrected by faith.” All this can be confirmed by certain elements of empirical science, but never led by it. If we can get the three views of man in their proper orders and give them their proper weights, we can see that the three views are meant to be complementary and of service to one another. A recovery of an authentic understanding of the true nature of the human person is vital. In fact, the survival of Western Civilization depends upon it.

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The Enlightenment, I believe, will one day be viewed as man’s adolescence. Just as a twenty-something eventually learns that as a teen he had reached a stage where he was able to understand much about the world and arrogantly and embarrassingly concluded that he was wiser than all who had come before him, mankind will one day realize that while the rise of science and industry did enable us to accomplish some great things, it also empowered us to commit some staggeringly idiotic things as well.

When we learn to live like the reformed Scrooge, and live each day in the past, present, and future, we will have reclaimed the wisdom and humility and respect that underlie true humanity.

Beings metaphysically they are the same,, as long as they exist but they are differentiated by the nature of man such as rationality and others.

The Enlightenment, I believe, will one day be viewed as man’s adolescence. Just as a twenty-something eventually learns that as a teen he had reached a stage where he was able to understand much about the world and arrogantly and embarrassingly concluded that he was wiser than all who had come before him, mankind will one day realize that while the rise of science and industry did enable us to accomplish some great things, it also empowered us to commit some staggeringly idiotic things as well.

Jamison, I cannot but agree with you. I believe in the hand of Providence in human history. The salvific work of Christ can never have been in vain. No wonder He tells Sr. Maria Faustina that this is the age of Mercy.

This was a very good essay. It is rare that you see someone able to layout an entire and cultivated “system of thought” about the nature of humanity. Seldom is anything of this nature ever seen. Absolutely brilliant.

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PHILO-notes

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Hi there, PHILO-notes compiled its notes on Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person. Please see below the list of topics including their transcript and Youtube links. All the best in your studies!

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/philosophy-meaning-origin-and-major-branches Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRG-rV8hhpU&t=127s

ORIGIN OF PHILOSOPHY Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/origin-of-philosophy-a-brief-sketch Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR-QETBbnB0

HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (PART 1) Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/history-of-ancient-greek-philosophy Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk1fA5nDP88&t=24s

HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (PART 2) Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/history-of-ancient-greek-philosophy Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYHdfuJOKHs&t=7s

HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (PART 3) Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/history-of-ancient-greek-philosophy Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxZmDwRin_U&t=143s

HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY (PART 4) Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/history-of-ancient-greek-philosophy Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fo8Q4vjrHw

DOING PHILOSOPHY Transcript Link: Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBTnhWEWf38

SOCRATIC METHOD OF PHILOSOPHIZING Transcript Link: Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiIn_oQQRJk&t=17s

HUSSERL’S PHENOMENOLOGY: METHODS OF PHILOSOPHIZING Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/edmund-husserls-phenomenology-key-concepts Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePQIagmcCXc&t=1s

THE HUMAN PERSON AS AN EMBODIED SPIRIT Transcript Link: https://philonotes.com/2022/05/the-human-person-as-an-embodied-spirit Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENFOjMRzDJk

Human Freedom in Relation to Society Essay

Introduction.

The nature of human freedom entails the totality of man’s whole life. Human freedom has to do with the freedom of one’s will, which is the freedom of man to choose and act by following his path through life freely by exercising his ‘freedom’) (Morrison, 1997). But this perspective has not been without much debate and controversy by both philosophers and theologians.

The purpose of this paper intends to look at the concept of human freedom in relation to the society. In this regard, this paper seeks to investigate how society defines human freedom? What other social categories are affected (directly or indirectly) by human freedom? How society has evolved in regard to human freedom? And what can be done to improve human freedom?

Human freedom has largely been defined in terms of the absence of external factors that may limit a person’s free will such as deportations and dictatorships by rulers among other factors.

But it is also thought that human freedom does not necessarily rely on external constraints, for instance some philosophers have argued against the concept of ‘free will’, by saying that man is only a victim of ‘his own being’ (Morrison, 1997)). In other words, that the very nature of man, his instincts, for instance, limits his ‘freedom’; that every now and then he has to answer to his nature.

But Rousseau refutes the argument that man unreservedly answers to his instincts as he argues that unlike animals, man can override his instincts (Morrison, 1997). For example, one may forgo a meal while playing a video game in spite of being hungry. This is an appendage of a philosophical debate as to whether individual ‘freedom’ really exist pe se.

The argument is that one’s choices affect the people in the world in which he lives as much as the behaviors of those around him affect him/her. Thus, no person can claim ‘freedom’ that is free of the society in which they live given that the society defines and influences to an extent man’s freedom and the scope of that freedom.

How society defines human freedom

The term ‘society’ already implies a group of people, in this case, it refers to people including organizations living under mutual agreement: explicit (such as legal law) or implicit (such as ethical & moral law) (Fermi, 2004). Each of these members of society is obliged to live by the components of that mutual agreement.

Society, therefore, is bigger than the individual as it overrides the instinctual response of the individual, who is then expected to practice a certain degree of reservation in meeting his/her needs in such a way that one is able to abide by the acceptable standards of the society.

So far the United Nations has attempted to create a set of laws that can be used to govern the whole human society although the micro-societies (states, for instance) play the main role in defining the scope of human freedom. The definition of human freedom varies depending on the defining culture and political ideology such as Nazism, Socialism, fascism, Communism and Conservatism (Fermi, 2004).

Unfortunately, it is not possible to say which one of these variants of human freedom is the right one (Fermi, 2004) as they all work in their own respective ways to define the concept of freedom.

But this is not to say that, in a society, the individual ceases to exist. The individual is still protected under the natural law, which champions the individual’s basic human rights and liberty; this in fact, forms the core of democracy in the world today.

Limitless freedom, it is argued, is untenable in a society that is peaceful and orderly, still when it comes to the law, some of the democratic rights are limited. Liberty, in its entirety (civil, natural, personal, and political liberties) when defined under the law carries with it certain limits.

That as much as an individual has these rights and liberties, one can only go as far as the law permits, and since the law is defined by the political nature of a specific society, it can be argued that the law while it champions human freedom, equally restricts it as well.

The other social categories that may be affected by human freedom

Human freedom seems to be the central social issue and the other social aspects are either a reflection or an extension of human freedom. As we have seen so far, human freedom is defined by the prevailing political circumstances which further define the legal framework that is adopted.

Depending on the relationship between state and religion (for instance, the unification of religion and the state as in Iran and separation of the two as was the case in Ibrahim’s Tunisia) individual’s freedom is affected in one way or another.

Hinduism, for instance through its belief in the caste system, would seek to justify poverty for certain people and thereby hinder social mobility. Additionally, societies in which women are seen as nothing more than caretakers of families would hinder their access to formal education which impacts on their freedom.

How society has changed in regard to human freedom

Like any other social aspect, how human freedom is regarded in any society has evolved. It can largely be argued that struggle for human freedom has changed from an individual’s materialistic wishes to a more global approach to freedom for minority groups.

For example, feminism is fighting for women’s rights of choice, formal education, job opportunities, from domestic violence and female genital mutilation among other rights. Currently, there is an increasing recognition and empowerment of disabled people; these, among other activities are a reflection of the global call for democracy which requires the acknowledgement and respect of all humans and their fundamental rights.

This is attributed to technological changes, group behavior, social conflict, social trade-offs and global interdependence among others. All these have contributed to the globalization of the world which has increased the call for a certain degree of homogeneity in social behavior as the culture of nations has come to mean transformation of other nations as well in regard to human freedom.

Conclusion; how society can improve human freedom

There is need for further research on how to improve human freedom; in this regard motivational psychologists can help by diagnosing problems, setting moderate goals and applying the relevant behavioral technology to promote and research the concept of human freedom further.

This has worked in certain places for instance, there’s evidence that motivational technology has helped control certain serious diseases, facilitate compensatory education, provide channels for assessing the benefits of higher education, facilitates effective management of complex initiatives and has contributed in raising the living standards of the poor (McClelland, 1978). Besides these, there are also other means of improving human freedom which can be implemented.

Fermi, F. (2004). Freedom and the Human Being . Web.

McClelland, D., (1978). Managing Motivation to Expand Human Freedom. American Psychologist , 33 (3), pp. 201-210.

Morrison, J., (1997). What is Human Freedom . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 29). Human Freedom in Relation to Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/human-freedom-in-relation-to-society/

"Human Freedom in Relation to Society." IvyPanda , 29 Oct. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/human-freedom-in-relation-to-society/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Human Freedom in Relation to Society'. 29 October.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Human Freedom in Relation to Society." October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/human-freedom-in-relation-to-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "Human Freedom in Relation to Society." October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/human-freedom-in-relation-to-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Human Freedom in Relation to Society." October 29, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/human-freedom-in-relation-to-society/.

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• Dec 9, 2023

Essay writing is an integral part of the school curriculum and various academic and competitive exams like IELTS , TOEFL , SAT , UPSC , etc. It is designed to test your command of the English language and how well you can gather your thoughts and present them in a structure with a flow. To master your ability to write an essay, you must read as much as possible and practise on any given topic. This blog brings you a detailed guide on how to write an essay on Human Rights , with useful essay samples on Human rights.

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What are Human Rights

Human rights mark everyone as free and equal, irrespective of age, gender, caste, creed, religion and nationality. The United Nations adopted human rights in light of the atrocities people faced during the Second World War. On the 10th of December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Its adoption led to the recognition of human rights as the foundation for freedom, justice and peace for every individual. Although it’s not legally binding, most nations have incorporated these human rights into their constitutions and domestic legal frameworks. Human rights safeguard us from discrimination and guarantee that our most basic needs are protected.

Did you know that the 10th of December is celebrated as Human Rights Day ?

The Basic Human Rights

Before we move on to the essays on human rights, let’s check out the basics of what they are.

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200 Words Essay on Human Rights

Here is a 200-word short sample essay on basic Human Rights.

Human rights are a set of rights given to every human being regardless of their gender, caste, creed, religion, nation, location or economic status. These are said to be moral principles that illustrate certain standards of human behaviour. Protected by law , these rights are applicable everywhere and at any time. Basic human rights include the right to life, right to a fair trial, right to remedy by a competent tribunal, right to liberty and personal security, right to own property, right to education, right of peaceful assembly and association, right to marriage and family, right to nationality and freedom to change it, freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination, freedom from slavery, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of movement, right of opinion and information, right to adequate living standard and freedom from interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence.

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500 Words Essay on Human Rights

Check out this 500-word long essay on Human Rights.

Every person has dignity and value. One of the ways that we recognise the fundamental worth of every person is by acknowledging and respecting their human rights. Human rights are a set of principles concerned with equality and fairness. They recognise our freedom to make choices about our lives and develop our potential as human beings. They are about living a life free from fear, harassment or discrimination.

Human rights can broadly be defined as the basic rights that people worldwide have agreed are essential. These include the right to life, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to health, education and an adequate standard of living. These human rights are the same for all people everywhere – men and women, young and old, rich and poor, regardless of our background, where we live, what we think or believe. This basic property is what makes human rights’ universal’.

Human rights connect us all through a shared set of rights and responsibilities. People’s ability to enjoy their human rights depends on other people respecting those rights. This means that human rights involve responsibility and duties towards other people and the community. Individuals have a responsibility to ensure that they exercise their rights with consideration for the rights of others. For example, when someone uses their right to freedom of speech, they should do so without interfering with someone else’s right to privacy.

Governments have a particular responsibility to ensure that people can enjoy their rights. They must establish and maintain laws and services that enable people to enjoy a life in which their rights are respected and protected. For example, the right to education says that everyone is entitled to a good education. Therefore, governments must provide good quality education facilities and services to their people. If the government fails to respect or protect their basic human rights, people can take it into account.

Values of tolerance, equality and respect can help reduce friction within society. Putting human rights ideas into practice can help us create the kind of society we want to live in. There has been tremendous growth in how we think about and apply human rights ideas in recent decades. This growth has had many positive results – knowledge about human rights can empower individuals and offer solutions for specific problems.

Human rights are an important part of how people interact with others at all levels of society – in the family, the community, school, workplace, politics and international relations. Therefore, people everywhere must strive to understand what human rights are. When people better understand human rights, it is easier for them to promote justice and the well-being of society. 

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500+ Words Essay on Human Rights in India

Here is a human rights essay focused on India.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. It has been rightly proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Created with certain unalienable rights….” Similarly, the Indian Constitution has ensured and enshrined Fundamental rights for all citizens irrespective of caste, creed, religion, colour, sex or nationality. These basic rights, commonly known as human rights, are recognised the world over as basic rights with which every individual is born.

In recognition of human rights, “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was made on the 10th of December, 1948. This declaration is the basic instrument of human rights. Even though this declaration has no legal bindings and authority, it forms the basis of all laws on human rights. The necessity of formulating laws to protect human rights is now being felt all over the world. According to social thinkers, the issue of human rights became very important after World War II concluded. It is important for social stability both at the national and international levels. Wherever there is a breach of human rights, there is conflict at one level or the other.

Given the increasing importance of the subject, it becomes necessary that educational institutions recognise the subject of human rights as an independent discipline. The course contents and curriculum of the discipline of human rights may vary according to the nature and circumstances of a particular institution. Still, generally, it should include the rights of a child, rights of minorities, rights of the needy and the disabled, right to live, convention on women, trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation etc.

Since the formation of the United Nations , the promotion and protection of human rights have been its main focus. The United Nations has created a wide range of mechanisms for monitoring human rights violations. The conventional mechanisms include treaties and organisations, U.N. special reporters, representatives and experts and working groups. Asian countries like China argue in favour of collective rights. According to Chinese thinkers, European countries lay stress upon individual rights and values while Asian countries esteem collective rights and obligations to the family and society as a whole.

With the freedom movement the world over after World War II, the end of colonisation also ended the policy of apartheid and thereby the most aggressive violation of human rights. With the spread of education, women are asserting their rights. Women’s movements play an important role in spreading the message of human rights. They are fighting for their rights and supporting the struggle for human rights of other weaker and deprived sections like bonded labour, child labour, landless labour, unemployed persons, Dalits and elderly people.

Unfortunately, violation of human rights continues in most parts of the world. Ethnic cleansing and genocide can still be seen in several parts of the world. Large sections of the world population are deprived of the necessities of life i.e. food, shelter and security of life. Right to minimum basic needs viz. Work, health care, education and shelter are denied to them. These deprivations amount to the negation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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1500 Words Essay on Human Rights

Check out this detailed 1500-word essay on human rights.

The human right to live and exist, the right to equality, including equality before the law, non-discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, and equality of opportunity in matters of employment, the right to freedom of speech and expression, assembly, association, movement, residence, the right to practice any profession or occupation, the right against exploitation, prohibiting all forms of forced labour, child labour and trafficking in human beings, the right to freedom of conscience, practice and propagation of religion and the right to legal remedies for enforcement of the above are basic human rights. These rights and freedoms are the very foundations of democracy.

Obviously, in a democracy, the people enjoy the maximum number of freedoms and rights. Besides these are political rights, which include the right to contest an election and vote freely for a candidate of one’s choice. Human rights are a benchmark of a developed and civilised society. But rights cannot exist in a vacuum. They have their corresponding duties. Rights and duties are the two aspects of the same coin.

Liberty never means license. Rights presuppose the rule of law, where everyone in the society follows a code of conduct and behaviour for the good of all. It is the sense of duty and tolerance that gives meaning to rights. Rights have their basis in the ‘live and let live’ principle. For example, my right to speech and expression involves my duty to allow others to enjoy the same freedom of speech and expression. Rights and duties are inextricably interlinked and interdependent. A perfect balance is to be maintained between the two. Whenever there is an imbalance, there is chaos.

A sense of tolerance, propriety and adjustment is a must to enjoy rights and freedom. Human life sans basic freedom and rights is meaningless. Freedom is the most precious possession without which life would become intolerable, a mere abject and slavish existence. In this context, Milton’s famous and oft-quoted lines from his Paradise Lost come to mind: “To reign is worth ambition though in hell/Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”

However, liberty cannot survive without its corresponding obligations and duties. An individual is a part of society in which he enjoys certain rights and freedom only because of the fulfilment of certain duties and obligations towards others. Thus, freedom is based on mutual respect’s rights. A fine balance must be maintained between the two, or there will be anarchy and bloodshed. Therefore, human rights can best be preserved and protected in a society steeped in morality, discipline and social order.

Violation of human rights is most common in totalitarian and despotic states. In the theocratic states, there is much persecution, and violation in the name of religion and the minorities suffer the most. Even in democracies, there is widespread violation and infringement of human rights and freedom. The women, children and the weaker sections of society are victims of these transgressions and violence.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights’ main concern is to protect and promote human rights and freedom in the world’s nations. In its various sessions held from time to time in Geneva, it adopts various measures to encourage worldwide observations of these basic human rights and freedom. It calls on its member states to furnish information regarding measures that comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights whenever there is a complaint of a violation of these rights. In addition, it reviews human rights situations in various countries and initiates remedial measures when required.

The U.N. Commission was much concerned and dismayed at the apartheid being practised in South Africa till recently. The Secretary-General then declared, “The United Nations cannot tolerate apartheid. It is a legalised system of racial discrimination, violating the most basic human rights in South Africa. It contradicts the letter and spirit of the United Nations Charter. That is why over the last forty years, my predecessors and I have urged the Government of South Africa to dismantle it.”

Now, although apartheid is no longer practised in that country, other forms of apartheid are being blatantly practised worldwide. For example, sex apartheid is most rampant. Women are subject to abuse and exploitation. They are not treated equally and get less pay than their male counterparts for the same jobs. In employment, promotions, possession of property etc., they are most discriminated against. Similarly, the rights of children are not observed properly. They are forced to work hard in very dangerous situations, sexually assaulted and exploited, sold and bonded for labour.

The Commission found that religious persecution, torture, summary executions without judicial trials, intolerance, slavery-like practices, kidnapping, political disappearance, etc., are being practised even in the so-called advanced countries and societies. The continued acts of extreme violence, terrorism and extremism in various parts of the world like Pakistan, India, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Somalia, Algeria, Lebanon, Chile, China, and Myanmar, etc., by the governments, terrorists, religious fundamentalists, and mafia outfits, etc., is a matter of grave concern for the entire human race.

Violation of freedom and rights by terrorist groups backed by states is one of the most difficult problems society faces. For example, Pakistan has been openly collaborating with various terrorist groups, indulging in extreme violence in India and other countries. In this regard the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva adopted a significant resolution, which was co-sponsored by India, focusing on gross violation of human rights perpetrated by state-backed terrorist groups.

The resolution expressed its solidarity with the victims of terrorism and proposed that a U.N. Fund for victims of terrorism be established soon. The Indian delegation recalled that according to the Vienna Declaration, terrorism is nothing but the destruction of human rights. It shows total disregard for the lives of innocent men, women and children. The delegation further argued that terrorism cannot be treated as a mere crime because it is systematic and widespread in its killing of civilians.

Violation of human rights, whether by states, terrorists, separatist groups, armed fundamentalists or extremists, is condemnable. Regardless of the motivation, such acts should be condemned categorically in all forms and manifestations, wherever and by whomever they are committed, as acts of aggression aimed at destroying human rights, fundamental freedom and democracy. The Indian delegation also underlined concerns about the growing connection between terrorist groups and the consequent commission of serious crimes. These include rape, torture, arson, looting, murder, kidnappings, blasts, and extortion, etc.

Violation of human rights and freedom gives rise to alienation, dissatisfaction, frustration and acts of terrorism. Governments run by ambitious and self-seeking people often use repressive measures and find violence and terror an effective means of control. However, state terrorism, violence, and human freedom transgressions are very dangerous strategies. This has been the background of all revolutions in the world. Whenever there is systematic and widespread state persecution and violation of human rights, rebellion and revolution have taken place. The French, American, Russian and Chinese Revolutions are glowing examples of human history.

The first war of India’s Independence in 1857 resulted from long and systematic oppression of the Indian masses. The rapidly increasing discontent, frustration and alienation with British rule gave rise to strong national feelings and demand for political privileges and rights. Ultimately the Indian people, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, made the British leave India, setting the country free and independent.

Human rights and freedom ought to be preserved at all costs. Their curtailment degrades human life. The political needs of a country may reshape Human rights, but they should not be completely distorted. Tyranny, regimentation, etc., are inimical of humanity and should be resisted effectively and united. The sanctity of human values, freedom and rights must be preserved and protected. Human Rights Commissions should be established in all countries to take care of human freedom and rights. In cases of violation of human rights, affected individuals should be properly compensated, and it should be ensured that these do not take place in future.

These commissions can become effective instruments in percolating the sensitivity to human rights down to the lowest levels of governments and administrations. The formation of the National Human Rights Commission in October 1993 in India is commendable and should be followed by other countries.

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Importance of Human Rights

Human rights are of utmost importance to seek basic equality and human dignity. Human rights ensure that the basic needs of every human are met. They protect vulnerable groups from discrimination and abuse, allow people to stand up for themselves, and follow any religion without fear and give them the freedom to express their thoughts freely. In addition, they grant people access to basic education and equal work opportunities. Thus implementing these rights is crucial to ensure freedom, peace and safety.

Essay on Human Rights PDF

Human Rights Day is annually celebrated on the 10th of December.

Human Rights Day is celebrated to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UNGA in 1948.

Some of the common Human Rights are the right to life and liberty, freedom of opinion and expression, freedom from slavery and torture and the right to work and education.

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We hope our sample essays on Human Rights have given you some great ideas. For more information on such interesting blogs, visit our essay writing page and follow Leverage Edu .

Sonal is a creative, enthusiastic writer and editor who has worked extensively for the Study Abroad domain. She splits her time between shooting fun insta reels and learning new tools for content marketing. If she is missing from her desk, you can find her with a group of people cracking silly jokes or petting neighbourhood dogs.

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