In this paper I will try to define what a person 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.  I will try to show that the human person must be free and responsible, and in addition to this that he must be the master of his own life and acts.

          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 substance.  In your class lectures you have promoted the idea that "substance" (i.e., that which has existence and essence) is outdated, and — of course — in saying this you are merely promoting something that has been popular in modern times.  It is true that many philosophers over the past few centuries have disparaged the concept of substance as something that is unnecessary, or at least as something that we can know little or nothing about.  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.  Aristotle, in order to solve this problems, asserts that the substance or essence of a thing is the universal as it is abstracted from the particular [see McKeon, 784].  That said, the denial of the concept of 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 of the human mind.

          The answer to the problem raised in your lecture can be found by utilitizing 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 lecture, where you 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.  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.

          The psychological concepts of consciousness, personality, or even the concept of the soul (psyche), are not in themselves the human person, but are only elements of the human person.  I may be conscious, but I am not consciousness itself as Sartre asserts; besides, there are times when I am unconscious, either because I am asleep, or maybe even because I have been injured.  During those times do I cease to be a person?  I may have a vibrant personality, but I am not personality itself; because I could be suffering from a form of schizophrenia, and so I could be exhibiting two or more "personalities."  In such a case do I become many distinct existing persons?  The answer to both of these questions is, yes, that is, if being a person is merely a psychological reality; but the answer is no to both questions, if being a person is an ontological reality.  One final word about the multiple personality problem; Aristotle said, that "things that are thus in complete are two are never in complete reality one" [McKeon, 805-806], or as St. Thomas Aquinas said, "two which are in act are never one in act . . . and this [is so] because act has the power of separating and dividing" [Renard, 27].  Since most psychologists admit that a person can suffer from a type of multiple personality disorder, it follows that what Aristotle said about personality — at least as a psychological characteristic — cannot be a complete reality.  Moreover, St. Thomas would point out that a person is a single being in act, and thus no matter how many psychological personalities an individual might have he would still be only one person ontologically.  So the modern psychological category of "personality" is not a good criterion upon which to base the concept of the human person as an existing being in act.

TRANSCRIPTION IN PROGRESS

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).

The Human Person

by Steven Todd Kaster

San Francisco State University

Philosophy 605-01:  Metaphysics

Term Paper

Professor Helen Heise

8 April 1998

Copyright © 1998-2024 Steven Todd Kaster