I.  Introduction:  The Ontological vs. Psychological Perspective

          In this paper I will define what a person (i.e., hypostasis) is and then explain where I agree or disagree with some of the philosophers we have examined in class. My paper will not be an attempt to present a complete moral system; instead, I will focus upon the ontological nature of the human person and what is required to make the human person a true moral agent. From this perspective, I will argue that the human person must be free and responsible, and furthermore that he must be the master of his own life and acts. The investigation in this paper will run the gamut from the strengths achieved by the Ancient Fathers of the Christian East, where the concept reached its definitive form, to the Aristotelian foundations later adopted by Boethius and the Medieval Scholastics; it will conclude with the degradation of the notion of person in modern Western thought, focusing on a critique of Bruce Aune and Jean-Paul Sartre, and ending with a brief consideration of Immanuel Kant.

II.  Personhood as Hypostatic Instantiation

          I will begin by providing a definition of what a person must be for objective morality to be possible.  The concept of the human person must be seen from an ontological perspective, and not merely from a psychological perspective that is devoid of any basis in the concept of subsistence.  To put it another way, a human person is a particular hypostatic instantiation of the one human nature common to all men, and because a human person is a unique existent being, he has the ability to personally enact his human nature, and those enactments are his own peculiar actions (i.e., actualizing the energies of his nature) by which he reveals to others who he is ontologically and morally.  Here I am using instantiation to mean a concretely existing being that actualizes human nature in its own specific mode of existence (i.e., tropos hyparxeos), and so I am not using it in a Platonic or Scholastic sense that subordinates the person to the nature.  Although contemporary academic discourse often characterizes the notion of 'subsistence' (i.e., that which has existence and essence) as outdated, the position advocated by the Eastern Church Fathers gives ontological weight to the concept of person, thereby making it something objectively real rather than something subjectively relativistic and vacuous.  In contrast to the realism of the Church Fathers, many philosophers have disparaged the concept of subsistence (hypostasis), along with substance (ousia), as unnecessary or pointless.  But if this view is correct, there would be no objective basis for saying what is or is not a person, or even if there is such a thing at all.

III.  The Realist Foundation:  Aristotle and the Universal

          Aristotle, in order to solve these problems, asserts that the substance or essence of a thing is the universal as it exists in the particular and is then abstracted by the agent intellect [see McKeon, 784].  Consequently, the denial of the concepts of subsistence and substance is in some sense a denial of the reality of the universal.  Following Aristotle one can say that human nature is properly speaking an essence, and that it really exists in the person himself, while it also really exists by abstraction in the mind of the observer.  Now because you denied the idea of substance in your class lectures, it follows that you have been forced to turn to a psychological foundation for the concept of the human person rather than an ontological one.  But the problem with this solution, as I see it, is that the various psychological states are transitory, and in addition to this they are merely predicates inhering in the human mind.

IV.  The Failure of Psychological Reductionism

          The psychological concepts of consciousness, personality (i.e., reduced to a subjective term in psychology), or even the concept of the soul (psyche), are not in themselves the human person, but only elements of the person.  I may be conscious, but I am not consciousness itself; besides, there are times when I am unconscious, either because I am asleep, or maybe even because I have been injured and knocked out.  During those times do I cease to be a person?  No.  Moreover, I may have a vibrant personality, but I am not personality — in the psychological sense of the term — itself.  For example, what if I am suffering from schizophrenia, and I exhibit two or even three so-called personalities, do I thereby become two or three persons?  The answer to this problem would be, yes, if being a person is reduceable to modern psychological categories; but the answer is, no, to both of the questions above if being a person is an ontological and existential reality.  One final word about the multiple personality problem; Aristotle said that "things that are thus in complete reality two are never in complete reality one," [McKeon, 805-806] or as St. Thomas Aquinas put it, "two which are in act are never one in act . . . and this is because act has the power of separating and dividing." [Renard, 27]  Now, since most psychologists assert that a person can have multiple personalities, it follows that what Aristotle said concerning personality and what modern psychologists say about the subject evinces an equivocal use the term personality, and that the two positions are not comparable.  Aristotle is using the term person (or personality) to mean a really existing thing, while modern day psychologists are talking about something subjective that concerns only a state of mind.  In addition to this, St. Thomas would point out that a person is a single being in act, and thus no matter how many "psychological personalities" he might exhibit, he would still be only one existing person.  So, the psychological definition of the term personality, which is devoid of ontological content, is not a good criterion on which to base the concept of the human person, which is not reducible to psychological categories, because it is in fact a real existential being.

V.  The Synthesis:  Boethius and the Patristic Tradition

          The answer to the problems raised in your lectures and in our modern reading materials can be found by utilizing two different philosophical traditions, i.e., the Scholastic philosophical tradition of the high Middle Ages, and the Eastern Christian Patristic tradition of the first millennium.  The Latin Scholastics used Boethius' definition of what a person is, i.e., that a person is "An individual substance of a rational nature," [Tester, 85] in order to avoid the error of reducing the human person to an ephemeral subjective concept as opposed to an objective reality.  Now the Scholastic acceptance of Boethius' statement is a good starting point for beginning the process for working out what the term "person" actually means.  The Scholastics, building upon what Boethius said, described the human person as an individual in the sense that he is an independent agent who possesses his own act of existence.  Therefore, contrary to what you said in your lectures, where you constantly reduced the human person to his actions, the Scholastics (and the Eastern Church Fathers centuries earlier) affirmed that a person is a substance in the sense that he subsists as a unified whole, i.e., that he is a complete integral reality, and that he exists as a distinct being, and so he cannot be a part of another being or entity.  It must also be noted that personhood (i.e., hypostatic existence) has priority over essence or nature.  That said, the human person exists properly speaking, i.e., he is an existent being, and so he cannot be classified simply as an essence or nature, nor can he be reduced — as you asserted in class — to his actions, activities, or other properties.  In fact, when you said in your lecture that a person "does" his existence, you confused a person's actions with his existence (i.e., with his act of being), for he must first exist before he can act.  To put it another way, person (i.e., hypostasis) takes precedence ontologically over both essence and activity (i.e., energy).

VI.  Social Implications:  The Person as the Basis of Society

          This is why society does not create persons; instead, persons create society.  Persons must not be viewed as mere cogs in the great machine of society; rather, society is brought into existence persons in order to assist them in the realization of their full potential.  The final portion of Boethius's definition, which was given in the paragraph above, deals with the fact that a person is a rational being.  Because the human person is rational he can rightly be understood as the master of his own acts.  He is thus a free and responsible agent, who through his intellect and will, can form judgments and choose a course of action based upon the right use of reason in understanding (theoria) the world in which he exists, and then applying that knowledge (phronesis) by choosing how to act or to refrain from acting in a given situation.  It follows from this that he can determine his own future as a person by enacting his nature producing his own proper activities, and so he is a true moral agent.

VII.  The Modern Degradation:  From Subsistence to Subjectivity

          I do not believe that Aune's system can be used to give a solid foundation to the concept of what a human person is, or that his ideas can be used as a basis upon which to build a valid moral system.  I had a hard time even understanding Aune partly because of his nominalist position, but mainly because of the confused way in which he presented his ideas.  He seems to contradict himself at times, and I do not know if this is simply because of his style of writing, or if it is because his system really is nonsensical.  I also had a difficult time with him because he denies the reality of the universals, and at the same time rejects the reality of causal relations (i.e., cause and effect).  In chapter five, which is about the human person, he never clearly or positively states what a person is, and he always tends toward the negative, saying what a person is not, but never in my view satisfactorily describing what a person actually is.  The other area that I find problematic in his thought is his tendency toward determinism.  He undermined his own position in this area by using causal terminology throughout his argument; while simultaneously denying the reality of causal relations.  That said, I think he writes the way he does merely as a linguistic device, and so most of what he says is devoid of any real substantive content.

          Sartre's existentialist system, despite its weaknesses, has some merit because he at least asserts the real freedom of the human person.  As a consequence of this assertion of freedom, he also accepts that the human person is responsible for his actions, and that a person can choose the direction of his life; in fact, according to Sartre he is required to do so.  For as he puts it, "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself." [Sartre, 349]  In this phrase Sartre has recognized the importance of subjectivity, even if he has failed to place it within a strong ontological system, i.e., one capable of creating an objective morality.

          The problem with Sartre's position, as I see it, concerns his rejection of the universal concept of human nature (i.e., essence).  He wants to replace human nature with a form of self-creation through our own actions.  I can agree with him, if by self-creation he actually means self-determination, or even that we create ourselves in a relative moral sense by the enactments of our nature personally, but I cannot accept it if he means it in an absolute way.  To surrender the reality of man's common human nature, which actualized and exists in each individual human person; while also existing through abstraction in the mind of the onlooker, would ultimately lead to the denial of the reality of the universal itself, because it would reduce the universal to a mere mental concept.  Jacques Maritain, critiquing Sartre from a Scholastic perspective, points out that he is ambiguous in this area, for if Sartre means, "that act precedes potency, that my essence owes to my existence its very presence in the world, and that it owes its intelligibility to Existence in pure act," then he is correct.  But if he means to say, "that existence actuates nothing, that I exists but I am nothing, that man exists but there is no human nature," [Maritain, 6-7] then he is mistaken.  The concept that we are a project devoid of objective content, is a rather unsatisfying replacement for the concept of essence particularized in a hypostasis.

          Sartre's view of how human freedom functions is also problematic.  He seems to be asserting that a man's actions must be purely spontaneous, and that he cannot reflect before acting, nor can he seek advice from other, because, "You are free, therefore choose — that is to say, invent.  No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do." [Sartre, 356]  So for Sartre, "freedom, in respect to concrete circumstances, can have no other end and aim but itself." [Sartre, 365-366]  Now as Jacques Maritain points out, Sartre's young man, who could not decide whether he should join the French resistance or stay with his mother, should ". . . let no man give him counsel," because "The least bit of advice comports the risk of causing his liberty to wither . . . for the liberty of these philosophers of liberty is singularly fragile." [Maritain, 60]  It is fragile because Sartre has suppressed reason, in which personal freedom has its existence.

          Finally, I have a problem with Kant's idea that you should act only one the maxim that you can at the same time will to be a universal law applicable to all.  I find this principle of universality problematic because there are some goods which you cannot universalize.  I can best illustrate my view with an example.  I am a Byzantine Catholic, and I tend to see value where Kant using his principle would not.  I will illustrate this divergence by looking at the life of St. Theresa of Calcutta, who during her lifetime had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (i.e., the three evangelical counsels).  She put the whole of her life at the service of the poor.  Now I cannot see anyone calling her actions evil or even morally neutral, for her life's work was obviously good, and in fact actually very good.  The problem with Kant's maxim is that this moral goodness, in the way that St. Theresa practiced it, would be impossible to carry out as a universal law required of all mankind.  Can you imagine everyone taking vows of poverty, and everyone living a life of celibacy?  You cannot universalize these goods, but you cannot call what she did evil or even morally neutral.  For Kant's maxim to work properly you should be able to apply it to this case, but you cannot.  So, his maxim is nothing more than a subjective opinion about the good, and how it must be equally applied in the lived experience of each individual human person.

VIII.  Conclusion: Towards an Objective Moral Agency

          In conclusion, I would simply reiterate that for the human person to be real, priority must be given to existence (hypostasis) over nature and activity. To put it another way, the concept of the human person must be ontological for it to really mean anything.  So, the human person must be a distinct subsisting being in a rational nature, for this is the only way to ensure that the human person can be a real and independent moral agent.  Ultimately, it is only by restoring a proper understanding of the person as a concrete existential being (theoria) with mastery of his actions (phronesis) that one can truly grasp the unrepeatability and the ontological reality that is the human person:  a being whose rights are founded upon his common nature, and whose responsibilities — both to his own development and to his fulfillment in communion with others — are based upon his hypostatic existence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books:

Bruce Aune.  Metaphysics:  The Elements.  (Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

Jacques Maritain.  Existence and the Existent.  (New York:  Pantheon Books, Inc., 1964).

Richard McKeon.  The Basic Works of Aristotle.  (New York:  Random House, 1941).

Henri Renard.  The Philosophy of Being.  (Milwaukee:  The Bruce Publishing Company, 1948).

S. J. Tester.  Boethius:  Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy.  (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1973).  Loeb Classical Library, volume 74.

Class Handout:

Jean-Paul Sartre.  Existentialism is a Humanism.  (Based upon a lecture given on 29 October 1945, and published in 1946).

Works Consulted:

Philip Schaff (Editor).  The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.  (Peabody:  Hendrickson Publishers, 1994).  28 Volumes. 

The Human Person:  Integrating Cappadocian Hypostatic Ontology and Scholastic Hylomorphism Against Modern Dualism

by Steven Todd Kaster

San Francisco State University

Philosophy 605-01:  Metaphysics

Term Paper

Professor Helen Heise

8 April 1998

Reworked and revised:  24 January 2026

Copyright © 1998, 2026 - Steven Todd Kaster