Dialectical thinking denotes a mode of thought that grasps contradiction not as a sign of error but as the motor of reality and of thinking. In the tradition of Hegel, the principle of identity (A = A) and the principle of excluded contradiction (not: A and not-A at the same time) are relativized or sublated: thesis and antithesis are sublated in a higher synthesis, whereby the contradiction is not eliminated but preserved as a moment.
For the question of personhood this mode of thought has far-reaching consequences: if the principle of identity no longer holds, then the substance of the person can no longer be thought as an abiding being identical with itself. The person becomes a process, a becoming, a history — it is not, but continually becomes. With this the ontological ground for the inalienable dignity of the person falls away: if there is no abiding essence, there is also no abiding bearer of dignity.
Dialectical thinking as oblivion of the person
The dissertation shows that alongside the empirical-functionalist concept of person (Locke, Hume, Singer) a second strand of theoretical oblivion of the person exists: the dialectical dissolution of the principle of identity. Whereas the empirical-functionalist strand binds personhood to actual capacities and thereby foreshortens it, the dialectical strand dissolves personhood as an abiding being altogether.
Alma von Stockhausen has traced the intellectual-historical line of this dissolution: from Luther’s separation of reason and faith, through Kant’s restriction of reason to appearances, to Hegel’s sublation of the principle of identity and Rahner’s theological adoption of Hegelian dialectic. At each step, the capacity of thinking to know the being of things — and thereby the being of the person — is further restricted or reinterpreted.
Consequences for the concept of person
Whoever gives up the principle of identity can no longer think the agere sequitur esse: for if the being of the person is not an identical being but a dialectical process, there is no abiding esse that the agere could follow. The first dimension of personhood — the fundamental spiritual existence — presupposes precisely this identity: one and the same person is from conception to death.
Dialectical thinking leads consistently to anti-essentialism: to the denial of immutable essential forms. If there is no abiding essence, the nature of the human being becomes available — it can be reinterpreted, reshaped, or negated. This opens the door to transhumanism and to the technical self-overcoming of the human being.
Thomistic critique
The Thomistic tradition counters: the principle of identity is not a law of thought that one can accept or reject, but the first condition of all thinking whatsoever. Whoever disputes it already presupposes it in the act of disputing — a form of performative contradiction. Thomas Aquinas formulates: the ens and the verum are interchangeable (ens et verum convertuntur) — being is knowable of itself, and knowing reaches being.
Substance ontology presupposes the principle of identity: the substance is that which subsists through itself and as itself. Without the principle of identity there is no substance, without substance no person in the substance-ontological sense, without person no inalienable dignity.
Chapter assignment: Chapter 5: Oblivion of the Person (German), Chapter 2: Method (German)
Ontological classification: Subclass of: theoretical oblivion of the person. Leads to: anti-essentialism. Contradicts: substance ontology, principle of identity.
Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 218—254 (Theoretical oblivion of the person).
Further sources:
- Stockhausen, Alma von (1990): Der Geist im Widerspruch — Von Luther zu Hegel. Weilheim-Bierbronnen: Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie (German).
- Possenti, Vittorio (2013): Il nuovo principio persona. Rome: Armando (Italian).
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.