Morality and the problem of personal identity (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
The present text explores the philosophical context of the conceptual „birth“ of the concept of personality as the primary knowledgeable marker of the unique human being as existential self, different from the common concept of „individual“. We trace the main definitions of the concepts person and later the one of "personalitas", claiming that in the scholastic philosophy of 12th and 13th century one could witness a major development of the definition of "persona", which results in the construction of the perosnalitas concept, inherited later by the early modern and modern philosophical thought as the main term denoting the uniqueness of the human being. For the most part this transformation is to be found in several of the works of the 13th century doctor subtilis John Duns Scotus, whose later influence on the university scholastic and the early modern thinking is considered to be essential by the vast majority of the scholars in history of medieval philosophy. The basis of this conceptual development lies in the new perspective, in which the definition of „person“ is problematized. Scotus uses the tradition of the theological Trinitarian debate very well and introduces the persona concept into the field of anthropology, connecting it to the problem of infinite freedom of will of the finite human being and the possibility of a moral act at all. A fundamental role here plays the concept of incommunicability (incommunicabilitas), used by Scotus to define the intensity of the ontological freedom, which one finite rational being could possess, and to draw the boundaries allowing and defining the true moral action of each human being as its metaphysical power to realize its own unique existence. The conclusion we reach is that according to Scotus the personal identity is inextricably bound up with the moral action, as far as the human being is actualizing its nature as a single person by exercising its will, because its existence is a contingent and not necessary an independent one.
Parts and Wholes: Revisiting the Mystery of Identity in Early Philosophy
The nature of the human person has been a central feature of philosophic and theological discourse. Susan Grove Eastman’s Paul and the Person: Reframing Paul’s Anthropology represents a recent foray into this trans-categorial topic. She explores Paul’s view of the human person by juxtaposing his writing with ancient and contemporary frameworks, using Epictetus, current psychology, and neuroscience as a few of her chief guides. Her research construes the human person chiefly as relational rather than as a Cartesian, self-enclosed individual. Such a construal in some ways echoes the insights of personalist philosophers (Jacque Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, W. Norris Clarke, Josef Pieper, and John Paul II). But Eastman parts ways in significant respects from their methodology and conclusions. Her work differs insofar as our relational nature is construed in almost exclusively modern sociological and psychological categories which downplay classical tensions between body and soul (as well as matter and spirit) and which also deemphasize reason, agency, and individuality. Yet perhaps the most significant shortcoming of such an approach, is in its laying aside or misconstruing historic philosophic and ecclesial contributions to the inquiry. Ancient and medieval philosophy has a long tradition of philosophic anthropology, and the Church has labored in the past to clarify the nature of personhood, particularly in light of the great Christological and Trinitarian controversies. Further, because Eastman is “not giving a comprehensive overview of either ancient or current views of the person,” the selectivity of her historic dialogue lends itself to a distortion of the options open either to Paul or to his interpreters. This is further prejudiced by Eastman’s claim that to compare historic patterns of thought is to contradict an “embodied, socially embedded understanding of persons.” A result is that Epictetus, who stands in her work as an example of the historic anthropology of the Pauline period, implicitly and precipitously limits the potential range of Paul’s thinking about personhood. To address these problems, the body of this paper offers an initial foray into the broader historic perspective of philosophic anthropology. Plato and Aristotle provide the methodological and philosophic context inherited by virtually every major thinker who follows them in the West, including the Stoics and potentially St. Paul. In so far as a person is not an utterly self-enclosed or self-sufficient being, her work promises to challenge insufficiently developed conceptions of identity, agency, and interiority, particularly those which posit too radical a demarcation between the self and the world, or which fail to grasp the intersubjective nature of our existence. Nevertheless, the notion of identity or personhood as relational requires further development in order not to fall into ambiguity or contradiction. This paper provides some of the initial philosophic context for Eastman, via Plato and Aristotle. It explores their use of mereology (the study of parts and wholes), a virtually universal mode of inquiry into the human person. A complete survey would require a thorough analysis of significant aspects of Platonism, Epicurean and Stoic Philosophy, as well as an exploration of Near Eastern and Jewish thought (chiefly in the Hebrew scriptures), the New Testament as a whole, and later developments in Christian anthropology. We would only then be prepared to engage more recent postmodern frameworks of the human person. Such an overview would nevertheless help us adjudicate personhood from a number of necessary angles. Most fundamentally, it would allow for a historical dialogue in the broadest sense: one which would give due measure not only to the whole scope of philosophy, but especially to the Christian tradition and its fundamental influences. The overarching goal is to understand the human person by seeking a coherent metaphysical and anthropological framework, one which is faithful to Paul and all of Scripture.
The Metaphysics of Personal Identity
2016
One of the most debated topics in medieval philosophy was the metaphysics of identity—that is, what accounts for the distinctness (non-identity) of different individuals of the same, specific kind and the persistence (self-identity) of the same individuals over time and in different possible situations, especially with regard to individuals of our specific kind, namely, human persons. The first three papers of this volume investigate the comparative development of positions. One problem, considered by William of Auvergne and Albert the Great, deals with Aristotle’s doctrine of the active intellect and its relation to Christian philosophical conceptions of personhood. A larger set of issues on the nature and post-mortem fate of human beings is highlighted as common inquiry among Muslim philosophers and Thomas Aquinas, as well as Aquinas and the modern thinker John Locke. Finally, the last two papers offer a debate over Aquinas’s exact views regarding whether substances persist identically across metaphysical “gaps” (periods of non-existence), either by nature or divine power.
Aristotle's concept of individuality: A Hartmanian interpretation
The Journal of Value Inquiry, 1980
chief good seems a platitude, and a clear account of what it is is still desired."5 In order to advance his discussion, Aristotle delineates three predominant lifestyles which are enigmatic of man's attempt to achieve eudaimonia. There are, first of all, those who see happiness in terms of pleasure. These are people
Miscellanea Historico-Iuridica, 2019
Any discussion on a person's right to identity ought to start with a study of the content of a person's identity. While ascertaining the essence of a person's identity, the author was inclined to think that the development of a personal identity as a permanent concept was promoted by the genesis of the human dignity, individuality, autonomy and personality of a person. It is human dignity, the manifestation of which, inter alia, is to be found in the person's identity, which forms the basis of its legal protection, transforming the identity of a person into legal value and, accordingly, creating the right of a person to identity. Thus the article provides a legally philosophical insight into the historical circumstances in which the concept of personal identity arose, and that are essential for a comprehensive modern understanding of the concept.
A Synergetic Concept of Autonomy and Personhood: Perspectives in Early Christian Thought.
Identity and Self-Respect, ed. by István Bujalos--Anna Kata Váró (Debrecen University Press), 2015
Perspectives in early Christian thought Around 400 we witness the emergence of concurrent anthropological models in several dimensions. First, Augustine luridly opposes Pelagius' concept of absolute human autonomy and self-constitution and develops a vision of humans completely devoid of any valuable initiative-a model so vividly criticized under the guise of Protestantism by Erich Fromm. None of these extreme positions take into account the traditional model developed by early Christian thinkers, i.e. the synergetic pattern, which excludes either complete selfdetermination or absolute dependence on the Other. Second, in striking contrast to this, in the very same period Augustine appropriates a deeply Plotinian notion of the self, where self-knowledge, self-consciousness and self-love are the highest expressions of the divine element in humans, the reflection of the divine Trinity in a single self. Greek authors of the previous period, however, envisage a Divine Trinity, which can be modelled on the human level exclusively through different interpersonal relations from family through Church community to the entire human society. In my paper I explore the Augustinian option, which was more influential in modern European thought-either positively or negatively-and the Greek alternative that appears to be more promising for a less individualistic anthropology. Why should one respect oneself? A plausible answer since Kant-and in a way since Pico della Mirandola's De hominis dignitate − refers to the fact that she or he is an autonomous agent. Another grounds-or possibly another way of expressing the same grounds − can be that she or he is a person. In the following, I shall examine the intrinsic tension within these two concepts as they appear in Late Antiquity.
Persons : their identity and individuation
1998
This study is about the nature of persons and personal identity. It belongs to a tradition that maintains that in order to understand what it is to be a person we must clarify what personal identity consists in. In this pursuit, I differentiate between the problems (i) How do persons persist? and (ii) What facts, if any, does personal identity consist in? In chapters 2-3,1 discuss matters related to the first question. In chapter 2,1 discuss 'identity' and 'criterion of identity'. I argue that we ought to understand 'identity' as numerical identity. A 'criterion of identity', I argue, should be understood as a specification of the essential conditions for being an object of some sort S. In chapter 3,1 distinguish between two different accounts of how persons persist; the endurance view (persons persist three-dimensionally through time), and the perdurance view (persons persist four-dimensionally in virtue of having numerically distinct temporal parts). I argue that the endurance view of persons is ontologically prior to the perdurance view; on the ground that objects must always be individuated under some substance sortal concept S (the sortal dependency of individuation), and that the concept person entails that objects falling under it are three-dimensional. In chapter 4-8, I discuss the second problem. I differentiate between Criterianists, who maintain that it is possible to specify a non-circular and informative criterion for personal identity, and Non-Criterianists, who deny that such a specification is possible. In chapter 5-7,1 consider in turn Psychological Criterianism, Physical Criterianism and Animalism. I argue that none of these accounts is adequate on the ground that they are either (i) circular, (ii) violate the intrinsicality of identity, or (iii) do not adequately represent what we are essentially. In chapter 8, I discuss Non-Criterianism. I consider in turn Cartesianism, The Subjective view and Psychological Substantialism. Against these accounts I argue that they wrongly assume that 'person' refers to mental entities. In chapter 9,1 formulate a biological Non-Criterianistic approach to personal identity; the Revised Animal Attribute View. Person is a basic sortal concept which picks out a biological sort of enduring persons. A person, then, is an animal whose identity as person is primitive in relation to his identity as an animal. I claim that the real essence of a person is determined by the real essence of the kind of animal he is, without thereby denying that persons have a real essence as persons.
Last Possible Abstraction: The Persona Concept According to Richard of St. Victor
Archiv für mittelalterliche Philosophie und Kultur, 2018
The paper makes a short overview of the first usages of the persona concept in the Western philosophical tradition, starting with Tertullian, the Cappadocian Fathers and Augustine. It is demonstrated that all of these initial usages are lacking the status of clearly defined philosophical concepts. The en is presented the first definition of persona in the Latin thought, which is formulated by Boethius in his famous Treatise Contra Eutychen et Nestorium. The focus of the text falls on the critique of Boethian definition by Richard of St. Victor in his treatise De Trinitate, and on his own definition, given at the same place, which promotes the incommunicability as the essential property of the person. We are especially emphasizing the major importance of the conceptual separation that Richard does between persona and substantia. The latter has a great impact on the development of the personality concept, which is later adopted and unfolded by a number of Western philosophers, including Peter John Olivi, John Duns Scotus and Immanuel Kant. Keywords: person; personality; identity; Self; Boethius; Cappadocian Fathers; Augustine; Duns Scotus; Trinity; Trinitarian debate; substance; incommunicability.
The human person as imago dei: christian and jewish perspectives
2014
This thesis explores the evolution of the biblical concept of imago Dei. Written from the perspective of Christian theology, the thesis engages select Jewish and Christian voices in analysis of the shared theological premise that the human person is created in the image of God The discussion will begin with the scriptural origins of the concept, drawing upon exegetical interpretations as well as the early perspectives of the Rabbinic and Patristic period. It will then offer a comparative account of the contributions of Maimonides and Aquinas, in their intellectualist conceptions of human distinctiveness. From there, the discussion will turn to the Christological appropriation of the concept in work of Karl Barth and then to the covenantal, dialogical interpretation of David Novak. In both of these thinkers, we will observe a rejection of the intellectualism of Aquinas and Maimonides in favour of relational interpretations which are, in their integrative understanding of the person a...