The argument “Nature as Ground” is one of the load-bearing arguments for the substance-ontological concept of person. It runs as follows: the ontological ground of personhood lies in the rational nature of the bearer, not in the actual exercise of personal acts. Whoever has the nature is a person — even when the capacities that arise from this nature are not, not yet, or no longer actualized.
Robert Spaemann sharpened this position in the dictum: there are no potential persons. Either a being has a rational nature, in which case it is a person; or it does not have it, in which case it is not a potential person either. Between “not yet a person” and “person” there lies no continuous transition but an ontological leap. The embryo is not a person in the making in the sense of a being that is becoming a person, but a person in development. Its personhood does not depend on whether it already thinks, but on the fact that it is the one who will think.
Josef Seifert deepened the argument ontologically. Nature is not an empirical mark that one observes, but the essence through which a being is what it is. A being with a rational nature is a spiritual substance in the body. It does not come to personhood by unfolding its nature; rather, it unfolds its nature because it already is a person. The act follows being, not the reverse.
From this follows the consequence that carries the entire concept of person of the dissertation: all human beings are persons. There is no human non-person, neither at the beginning nor at the end of life, neither in sleep nor in coma, neither in severe disability nor in advanced dementia. The basal relation bR2 — all human beings are persons — is the direct consequence of the argument.
The argument “Nature as Ground” is at the same time the answer to the exclusion objection. Whoever acknowledges nature as the ground of personhood can exclude no human being from the circle of persons without at the same time losing sight of the human being itself.
In the argument map on the concept of person: appears as the syllogism Nature-as-Ground argument by Robert Spaemann (major, minor, conclusion) and is there linked as a shared premise of several substance-ontological-relational arguments.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Argument; grounds: Substance-ontological concept of person
Chapter assignment: Chapter 3: What Is a Person?, Chapter 4: Human Personhood
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’. Transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, chapter 13 (No Potential Persons).
- Seifert, Josef (1989): Das Leib-Seele-Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion (German). Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, q. 29, a. 1 (on rational nature).
See also
Substance-ontological concept of person, Nature, Agere sequitur esse, Essential characteristic, Basal relations, Primordial in-itself being, Uniqueness of the person, Exclusion objection, Robert Spaemann, Josef Seifert, Thomas Aquinas, Chapter 3: Concept of Person, Chapter 4: Personhood