4.8 Summary: What Is Human Personhood?
🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: 4.8 Zusammenfassung: Was ist menschliches Personsein?
At the end of this chapter we can answer the question with which we began: What is human personhood?
The human being is a spiritual independent being in the body in relation. That is the shortest and, at the same time, the most comprehensive answer. It contains everything we have worked out:
“Spiritual” — the human being has a spiritual principle of life that distinguishes him essentially from all other earthly beings.
“Independent being” — the human being is not a mere bundle of properties, not a collection of functions. He is something underlying, something that stands in itself. He is “what is most perfect in the whole of nature,” as Thomas Aquinas says.1
“In the body” — the human being is not pure spirit. He is embodied spirit, ensouled body.
“In relation” — the human being is not an isolated, solitary being. By his very essence, he is ordered toward others.
This personhood has three dimensions:
The first dimension: the fundamental spiritual existence. Present from the fusion of the germ cells. The foundation of inalienable dignity.
The second dimension: conscious, rationally free personhood. The unfolding of personhood in conscious thinking, willing, feeling, and acting.
The third dimension: moral perfection or degradation. The realization or failure of authenticity through free, responsible action.
All three dimensions belong to one and the same actuality of personhood. But the first dimension is the most fundamental: it is always there, from the very beginning, and it can never be lost.
That is why the human being is a person from the very beginning. That is why he has dignity from the very beginning. That is why he has a right to life from the very beginning. Not because he can think. Not because he can feel. Not because he can act. But because he is what he is: a spiritual independent being in the body — a someone, not a something.
Edith Stein, the great philosopher and martyr of the twentieth century, put it this way: “The whole of conscious life is not equivalent to `my being’ — it is like an illuminated surface above a dark depth that makes itself known through this surface. If we want to understand human personhood, we must try to penetrate into this depth.”2
That is the attempt we have undertaken in this chapter. And the depth that shows itself is unfathomable. The human being is a mystery — but a mystery that does not close itself off from the sincere gaze.
Next chapter → · Back to chapter overview
Fußnoten
-
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (1888), Ia, q. 29, a. 3 co. ↩
-
Stein, Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person (The Structure of the Human Person) (2004), Freiburg: Herder (ESGA), 2004, p. 311. German original: “Das ganze bewußte Leben ist nicht gleichbedeutend mit `meinem Sein’ – es gleicht einer belichteten Oberfläche über einer dunklen Tiefe, die sich durch diese Oberfläche kundgibt. Wenn wir das menschliche Personsein verstehen wollen, müssen wir versuchen, in diese Tiefe einzudringen.” ↩