3.3 Person -- a Concept with Christian Roots?

3.3 Person — a Concept with Christian Roots?

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: 3.3 Person — ein Begriff mit christlichen Wurzeln?

3.3.1 Why This Question Matters

It is occasionally objected that the concept of person advocated here is a product of Christian theology and therefore not binding on a secularized society. This objection deserves an honest and thorough answer.

It is true: the modern concept of person has its roots in Christian theology. Robert Spaemann writes: What Emmanuel Levinas (1906—1995 — a Jewish philosopher) calls the “epiphany of the face” owes its discovery and theoretical thematization to the Jewish-Christian tradition. In that tradition it bears the name “person.” This concept has central significance and consequence for our civilization; the idea of human rights is such that no human being on earth seems able to evade its evidence.¹

But does it follow that the concept of person is valid only for Christians? That would be a genetic fallacy — the inference from the origin of a cognition to its validity. One can appreciate an insight without sharing the path by which it was gained. The fact that mathematics was largely developed in ancient Greece does not turn the laws of mathematics into “Greek laws” valid only for Greeks.

3.3.2 Where Does the Word “Person” Come From?

What we today call “person” existed — as a reality — long before the word for it was coined. The transfer of the Greek terms prosopon and hypostasis took place within a Christian context: namely, in the theological-conceptual determination of the Trinity, the one God in three persons. The first transfers of the concept of person from Greek into Latin recorded in the literature are those by Tertullian (c. 160—220 AD) in his work “Adversus Praxean,” written around 213 AD.²

The genesis of the concept of person is thus closely bound up with Christian theology. It was the need to determine conceptually the essence of the triune God — a God who is three persons in one substance — that led to the sharpening and deepening of the concept of person.

3.3.3 Boëthius and the Classical Definition

Boëthius (c. 480—525 AD) formulated the best-known and most influential definition of the person: “naturae rationabilis individua substantia” — the indivisible substance of a rational nature.³

This definition arose in a concrete context: in the fifth treatise of the “Opuscula Sacra” — the work “Contra Eutychen et Nestorium” — Boëthius sought to refute the Christian heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius.

Boëthius derives the word “person” from the word for “mask” that was used in the theater. The mask through which the actor spoke was called prosopon in Greek and persona in Latin (from personare: to sound through).

The strength of the Boëthian definition is that it determines the person as the individual substance of a rational nature — that is, as something independent, not derivable, that has a particular nature. Thomas Aquinas, too, adopted and deepened this definition.⁴ The Boëthian definition became the cornerstone of the entire medieval and modern discussion of the person. Yet it also has a weakness, one that only Richard of St. Victor would clearly bring out.

3.3.4 Richard of St. Victor’s Improvement

The Boëthian definition was a milestone, but Richard of St. Victor (1110—1173 AD) recognized a weakness in it.⁵ In his work “De Trinitate” he adopts as his own the fundamental concern of Christian philosophy: to think through and fathom the mysteries of faith, such as that of the Trinity, as far as human reason allows.

Richard raised a justified objection to the Boëthian definition of the person: if Boëthius’ definition were perfect and universal, every undivided substance of a rational nature would have to be a person, and conversely every person an undivided substance of a rational nature. But if the divine substance is to be called undivided, then there is an undivided substance of a rational nature that is not a person. For the Trinity is not one person and cannot be so designated (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 138—143).

Richard of St. Victor emphasizes that of non-personal living beings, such as a horse, one can ask “what” — but not of persons. Persons always possess an incommunicable peculiarity of their own (haecceitas), which can be asked about only with the interrogative “who.” One does not ask “what is this person?” but “who is this person?” This “who” points to a uniqueness that goes beyond mere membership in a species.

Richard then offers the more general formulation: “A person is one existing through himself alone, according to a certain unique mode of rational existence” (existens per se solum iuxta singularem quemdam rationalis existentiae modum).⁶

What makes this contribution so significant is that — starting from Christian revelation — it arrives at a universally valid definition of the person. In contrast to the Boëthian definition, which can be applied without contradiction only to the human person, the Victorine’s definition may be applicable to all possible persons: to human persons, to possible purely spiritual but contingent persons, and also to the absolute divine persons.

3.3.5 Tenable Even Without Religious Presuppositions

The philosophical core claim of the concept of person — that the person is an independent, spiritual being with inalienable dignity — can be seen to be true independently of religious presuppositions. For the states of affairs that concern personhood are of a kind accessible to the natural human intellect, and they do not presuppose Christian revelation.

The concept of person as advocated in this book thus owes its genesis essentially to thinking shaped by Christianity. But its truth does not depend on this genesis, just as the truth that $2+2=4$ does not depend on where and by whom it was first seen. According to the realistic methodology of this book, the question of truth must never be bracketed out.

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Fußnoten

1. Spaemann, Personen (Persons), op. cit., pp. 194ff. Cf. also Levinas, Totalität und Unendlichkeit (Totality and Infinity, 1987), Freiburg/Munich: Alber, 1987. German original: „Was Emmanuel Levinas Epiphanie des Antlitzes nennt, verdankt seine Entdeckung und theoretische Thematisierung der jüdisch-christlichen Tradition. Es trägt hier den Namen Person. Dieser Begriff hat für unsere Zivilisation zentrale Bedeutung und Konsequenz, der Gedanke der Menschenrechte ist von der Art, dass kein Mensch auf Erden sich seiner Evidenz entziehen zu können scheint.“ ↩

2. Tertullian, Adversus Praxean — Against Praxeas (2001), ed. Hermann Josef Sieben, Freiburg/New York: Herder (Fontes Christiani, vol. 34), 2001, chs. 7 and 11—12. ↩

3. Boëthius, Die theologischen Traktate (The Theological Tractates, 1988), Hamburg: Meiner, 1988, ch. 3. ↩

4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (1888), Ia, q. 29, a. 1—4. ↩

5. Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate (1855), Book IV, chs. 22—25. ↩

6. Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate (1855), Book IV, chs. 23—24. ↩