4.4 First Questions About Being
Before we think about the human being, we must think about being. What does it mean that something is? And what does it mean that something is in a particular way?
These questions sound very abstract. But only at first glance. In truth they are what lies closest at hand. For everything we perceive, experience, and know, is. And it is in a particular way. A stone is. A tree is. A dog is. A human being is. But they are not in the same way.
4.4.1 What Is an “Entity”?
Everything that is — everything that really exists or has standing in any form — we call an entity. This is the broadest concept there is. It encompasses everything: from a pebble on the beach to the human being who picks it up. From the hue of a sunset to the law of nature that brings the sunset about. From the chair one sits on to the joy one feels.
But already here a decisive difference shows itself: not everything that is, is in the same way. The pebble is simply there. It does not grow, it does not feel, it does not think. The plant beside it grows, strives toward the light, responds to its environment — but it feels nothing. The dog running along the beach feels, sees, hears, experiences pain and joy. And the human being? He can do all that — and infinitely more. He can reflect, plan, doubt, forgive, love, ask about the meaning of life.
These differences are not merely differences of degree, the way a large stone differs from a small one only in size. They are differences of essence. The leap from stone to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to human being — each of these is a leap into an entirely different kind of being.
4.4.2 Person as a Fundamental Given
There are some concepts in philosophy that cannot be traced back to anything simpler. They are so fundamental that every attempt to “explain” them already presupposes what one wants to explain. So it is with personhood.
One cannot explain the person by reducing it to something non-personal. Whoever says, “A person is nothing but a complex nervous system,” or “A person is nothing but a particular arrangement of atoms,” has not explained the person, but explained it away.
Personhood is what philosophy calls a archphenomenon: a fundamental given that cannot be derived from anything else and can only be grasped directly. Just as one cannot explain color to someone who has never seen a color, so one cannot reduce personhood to the impersonal.
This does not mean that nothing can be said about personhood. On the contrary: a great deal can be said, and said very precisely. One can describe its essential features, distinguish its dimensions, point out its consequences. But all of this always takes place in the light of the fundamental insight: there is someone there, not merely something.