Table of Contents

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Inhaltsverzeichnis

About the Project

Where to Begin?

About the Concept Pages

---

Preface

---

Chapter 1: Introduction — What This Book Is About

• 1.1 Why This Question Concerns Everyone
• 1.2 The Danger of the Oblivion of the Person
• 1.3 What This Book Aims to Show — Three Basic Ideas
  • 1.3.1 The First Basic Idea: There Is an Adequate Concept of the Person
  • 1.3.2 The Second Basic Idea: Human Personhood Has a Definite Shape
  • 1.3.3 The Third Basic Idea: Human Life Is Always the Life of a Person
• 1.4 How This Book Proceeds
• 1.5 What This Book Is Not — and What It Aims to Be
• 1.6 An Invitation to Think Along

Key concepts: Person, Personhood, Dignity, Human Person

---

Chapter 2: How Does One Think About Such Questions?

• 2.1 No Fear of the Big Questions
• 2.2 Philosophy Is Not a Matter of Opinion
• 2.3 Setting Prejudices Aside
  • 2.3.1 Blanket Arguments
  • 2.3.2 Tacit Prior Decisions
  • 2.3.3 Reductionisms
• 2.4 Back to the Things Themselves
• 2.5 What It Means to Bring the Things Themselves to Intuition
• 2.6 What “Careful Looking” Means — Three Examples
  • 2.6.1 First Example: Colors
  • 2.6.2 Second Example: Promises
  • 2.6.3 Third Example: Responsibility
• 2.7 Different Kinds of Experience
  • 2.7.1 Sensory Experience
  • 2.7.2 Intellectual Experience — the Knowing of Essences
• 2.8 The Difference Between Opinion and Knowledge
• 2.9 What Knowledge Really Is — and What Happens in It
• 2.10 Archphenomena — the Spiritually Ultimate
• 2.11 What Makes Things What They Are
  • 2.11.1 Necessary So-Being
  • 2.11.2 Meaningful So-Being
  • 2.11.3 Contingent So-Being
• 2.12 Why Some Truths Are Necessary
• 2.13 Two Kinds of Necessary Truths
  • 2.13.1 Formal Necessities
  • 2.13.2 Substantive Necessities
• 2.14 Reality Exists Independently of Our Thinking
• 2.15 What Distinguishes Philosophy from the Natural Sciences
• 2.16 Why This Method for the Question of Personhood
• 2.17 Summary

Key concepts: Archphenomenon, Essential Law, Insight, Cognition, Metaphysics, Truth

Philosophers: Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, Josef Seifert, Hedwig Conrad-Martius

---

Chapter 3: What Is a Person?

• 3.1 What Does the Word “Person” Mean?
• 3.2 What Is a Concept?
  • 3.2.1 Word and Concept Are Not the Same
  • 3.2.2 Thinking and Conceiving
  • 3.2.3 What Is an Apt Concept?
  • 3.2.4 The Concept of Person Is Not the Person Itself
• 3.3 Person — a Concept with Christian Roots?
  • 3.3.1 Why This Question Matters
  • 3.3.2 Where Does the Word “Person” Come From?
  • 3.3.3 Boëthius and the Classical Definition
  • 3.3.4 Richard of St. Victor’s Improvement
  • 3.3.5 Tenable Even Without Religious Presuppositions
• 3.4 Three Fundamental Views of the Person
  • 3.4.1 View 1: “Person Only Through Capacities”
  • 3.4.2 View 2: “The Person as an Independent Being”
  • 3.4.3 View 3: “The Person as an Independent Being in Relation”
  • 3.4.4 Why the Third View Is the Most Accurate
  • 3.4.5 Three Objections and Three Arguments
• 3.5 Examples of the Different Views
  • 3.5.1 Concrete Consequences: Who Counts as a Person?
  • 3.5.2 Concept of Person and Worldview
• 3.6 Human Being and Person — the Same?
  • 3.6.1 An Ambiguous Word
  • 3.6.2 Five Possible Relations
  • 3.6.3 “Person” Is a Dignity Concept
• 3.7 Summary and Outlook

Key concepts: Concept of Person, Substance-Ontological Concept of Person, Empirical-Functionalist Concept of Person, Relational Concept of Person, Substance, Someone, Nature, Person-Behavior, Concept

Philosophers: Boëthius, Thomas Aquinas, Alexander of Hales, John Locke, Robert Spaemann, Peter Singer, Derek Parfit, David Wiggins

---

Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood?

• 4.1 Three Dimensions of Human Personhood
  • 4.1.1 The Basic Idea
  • 4.1.2 Overview of the Three Dimensions
  • 4.1.3 First Dimension: The Fundamental Spiritual Existence
  • 4.1.4 Second Dimension: Conscious, Free Personhood
  • 4.1.5 Third Dimension: Moral Perfection and Self-Transcendence
• 4.2 The Method: Looking at the Thing Itself
• 4.3 What Kind of Being Does the Human Being Have?
  • 4.3.1 Independent Beings and Added Properties
  • 4.3.2 Personhood Is Not a Feature, but Underlying Being
  • 4.3.3 What Kind of Being?
• 4.4 First Questions About Being
  • 4.4.1 What Is an “Entity”?
  • 4.4.2 Person as a Fundamental Given
• 4.5 Form and Matter
  • 4.5.1 Why Matter Alone Is Not Enough
  • 4.5.2 Form and Matter in Living Beings
  • 4.5.3 What Matter of Itself Cannot Accomplish
• 4.6 Actuality and Potentiality
  • 4.6.1 What Does “Potentiality” Mean?
  • 4.6.2 Three Kinds of Potentiality
  • 4.6.3 What This Means for the Embryo
• 4.7 The Human Being as an Independent Being in Relation
  • 4.7.1 The Essential Form of the Human Being
  • 4.7.2 Being-a-Person and Behaving-as-a-Person
  • 4.7.3 Why the Purely Empirical View Falls Short
  • 4.7.4 Rational Life Constitutes Personhood
  • 4.7.5 Biological and Personal Life
  • 4.7.6 What “Nature” Means
• 4.8 Summary: What Is Human Personhood?

Key concepts: First Dimension, Second Dimension, Third Dimension, Body, Soul, Body-Soul Unity, Form and Matter, Act and Potency, Agere sequitur esse, Life (biological), Life (personal), Reason, Freedom, Self-Consciousness, Actus humanus, Interiority, Intentionality, Responsibility, Virtue, Love, Affirmation, Self-Transcendence, Forgiveness, Basal Relations

Philosophers: Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Karol Wojtyła, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Hans-Eduard Hengstenberg, Peter Wust, Blaise Pascal

---

Chapter 5: What Happens When We Forget Who the Human Being Is?

• 5.1 What It Means to Forget the Essence of the Human Being
• 5.2 A Forgetting That Operates Unseen
• 5.3 What Exactly Falls into Oblivion?
  • 5.3.1 The Second Level: The Forgetting of Consciousness
  • 5.3.2 The Third Level: The Forgetting of Unfolding
• 5.4 When a False Theory Misjudges the Human Being
• 5.5 When the Forgetting Shows Itself in Actions
  • 5.5.1 Actions That Are Evil in Themselves
  • 5.5.2 Actions That Become Bad Through Circumstances
  • 5.5.3 What Constitutes Personal Actions
  • 5.5.4 The Personalistic Norm
• 5.6 Why This Concerns Us All

Key concepts: Oblivion of the Person, Empirical-Functionalist Concept of Person, Embryo, Dementia, Fertilization, Personalistic Norm, Dignity

Philosophers: Peter Singer, Derek Parfit, John Locke, Robert Spaemann, René Descartes, Martin Heidegger

---

Chapter 6: Summary and Outlook

• 6.1 The Results at a Glance
  • 6.1.1 First Insight: The Human Being Is a Person
  • 6.1.2 Second Insight: Personhood Is Not Determined by Capacities
  • 6.1.3 Third Insight: Human Life Is Always Personal Life
  • 6.1.4 Fourth Insight: Every Human Person Possesses Inalienable Dignity
  • 6.1.5 Fifth Insight: Oblivion of the Person Is the Root of Many Erroneous Judgments
  • 6.1.6 The Three Dimensions of Personhood
• 6.2 Perspectives — What Follows from This?
  • 6.2.1 The Human Being Is Not an Object
  • 6.2.2 The Beginning and End of Life
  • 6.2.3 The Question of the Image of the Human Being
  • 6.2.4 The Human Being as Mystery
  • 6.2.5 Knowledge Alone Is Not Enough
  • 6.2.6 An Invitation

---

Appendix

• Further Reading — Recommended Literature
• Bibliography

---

Concepts

• About the Concept Pages

• Abortion

• Absolute Being

• Accident

• Act

• Act and Potency

• Act of Conceiving

• Action

• Active Potency

• Active Potency for Person-Behavior

• Actual Person-Behavior

• Actuality

• Actus humanus

• Adequate Concept

• Affectivity

• Affirmation

• Agere sequitur esse

• AI Ethics

• Altruistic Surrogacy

• Animal Substance

• Animal Welfare

• Animate Substance

• Artificial Fertilization

• Artificial Intelligence

• Assisted Suicide

• Atonement

• Basal Relations

• Beauty

• Being

• Bodily Spatiality

• Body

• Body-Soul Unity

• Capacity for Love

• Capacity for Truth

• Captures Essential Characteristics

• Care

• Chastity

• Child’s Role

• Christian Philosophy

• Cognition

• Color

• Commercial Surrogacy

• Commodity

• Common Good

• Communio Personarum

• Competency

• Concept

• Concept of Being

• Concept of Person

• Concept of the Human Being

• Conceptual Content

• Conceptual Extension

• Conceptual Intension

• Concupiscence

• Concupiscent Look

• Conflict

• Conscience

• Consciousness

• Constitutive Nature

• Contingent Essential Unity

• Contraception

• Crime

• Cryopreservation

• Currently Existing Person

• Damages

• Decision

• Dementia

• Deutera Energeia

• Dignity

• Dimension of the Fundamental Form of Reality

• Displacement

• Distributive Justice

• Ecological Responsibility

• Ecosystem

• Embryo

• Empathy

• Empirical-Functionalist Concept of Person

• Employee Role

• Entity

• Essential Characteristic of the Person

• Essential Intuition

• Essential Law

• Essential Unity

• Euthanasia

• Event

• Existentialist Phenomenology

• Experience

• Expresses

• Fertilization

• First Dimension

• First Dimension: Pre-Conscious Personhood

• Forgiveness

• Form

• Form and Matter

• Form of Existence

• Form of Reality

• Fragmented Parenthood

• Fragments

• Free Will

• Freedom

• Fundamental Disposition

• Fundamental Form of Reality

• Future Person

• Gamete Donation

• Gestational Surrogacy

• Ground of Cognition

• Guilt

• Has Anticipatory Responsibility For

• Has Extension

• Has Intrinsic Value

• Holiness

• Homelessness

• Human Person

• Ideal Being

• Informed Consent

• Insight

• Instrumentalization

• Intellectual Cognition

• Intellectual Experience

• Intended Parents

• Intention

• Intentional Feeling

• Intentionality

• Intergenerational Justice

• Interiority

• Interpersonal Relation

• Interpersonality

• Intrinsic Value

• Intrinsically Evil Act

• Is Adequate Concept For

• Is Necessary Condition For

• Judgment

• Just Wage

• Justice

• Lawyer

• Leadership Principle

• Leadership Role

• Lie

• Life

• Life (biological)

• Life (personal)

• Listening

• Logical Meaning

• Love

• Matter

• Meaning

• Meaningful Essential Unity

• Metaphysics

• Mode of Being

• Money

• Moral Ought

• Moral Relevance

• Morally Bad Action

• Morally Good Action

• Motherhood

• Natural Law

• Nature

• Necessary Essential Unity

• Non-Human Person

• Objective Value

• Obligation

• Oblivion of the Person

• Omission

• Ontological Autonomy

• Ontological Dependence

• Ontological Derivedness

• Ontological Heteronomy

• Ontological Independence

• Ontological Non-Self-Sufficiency

• Ontological Originality

• Ontological Self-Sufficiency

• Ontological Truth

• Order of Love

• Owes to Future Persons

• Parental Role

• Passion

• Passive Potency

• Peace

• Person

• Person-Behavior

• Person-Conforming Norm

• Personal Act

• Personal Love

• Personalistic Norm

• Personhood

• Phenomenological Method

• Phenomenology

• Plays Role

• Possible Being

• Potency

• Power

• Practical Oblivion of the Person

• Prayer

• Archphenomenon

• Principle of Justice

• Promise

• Prote Energeia

• Punishment

• Purely Material Substance

• Rational Nature

• Rationality

• Real Being

• Realistic Phenomenology

• Reason

• Relational Concept of Person

• Religious Experience

• Reparation

• Responsibility

• Reverence

• Right to Education

• Right to Freedom of Conscience

• Right to Privacy

• Second Dimension

• Seeks Meaning

• Self-Consciousness

• Self-Gift

• Self-Transcendence

• Sensory Cognition

• Sensory Experience

• Serves

• Social Act

• Social Role

• Someone

• Soul

• Space

• Spatial Extension

• Specialist Role

• Speech Act

• Spiritual Being

• Spiritual Life

• Spiritual Substance

• State of Affairs

• Substance

• Substance-Ontological Concept of Person

• Substance-Ontological-Relational Concept of Person

• Substantiality

• Suicide

• Surrogacy

• Surrogacy Contract

• Technology

• Theoretical Oblivion of the Person

• Thinking

• Third Dimension

• Time

• Traditional Surrogacy

• Transcendental-Idealist Phenomenology

• Transhumanism

• Truth

• Uncovered

• Utensil

• Value-Response

• Values

• Vegetative Substance

• Violence

• Virtue

• Volitionally Actualizable Person-Behavior

• War

• Whistleblowing

• Worldview

---

Thinkers

• Adolf Reinach
• Alexander of Hales
• Aristotle
• Blaise Pascal
• Boëthius
• David Wiggins
• Derek Parfit
• Dietrich von Hildebrand
• Edith Stein
• Edmund Husserl
• Franz Brentano
• Hans-Eduard Hengstenberg
• Hedwig Conrad-Martius
• John Locke
• Josef Seifert
• Karol Wojtyła
• Martin Heidegger
• Max Scheler
• Peter Singer
• Peter Wust
• René Descartes
• Richard of St. Victor
• Robert Spaemann
• Roman Ingarden
• Thomas Aquinas