Person-behavior is everything a person actually does or possesses as a capacity and could in principle exercise: thinking, judging, feeling, willing, acting, loving, forgiving. It is the “second actuality” — the actualization of what was already present as disposition in the “first actuality,” namely personhood.
In this regard the classical tradition distinguishes between the actus humanus and the actus hominis. The actus humanus is the conscious, free, personal action. The actus hominis, by contrast, is an activity that the human being performs but that does not proceed from his conscious freedom — such as breathing or the heartbeat.
The decisive point is this: person-behavior does not constitute personhood but presupposes it. Someone must first be present, and only then can he act. A human being does not become a person by thinking — he thinks because he is a person. Person-behavior is the epistemic ground (ratio cognoscendi) of personhood: we recognize that someone is a person, among other things, by the fact that he behaves as a person. But the epistemic ground is not the ground of being (ratio essendi) — just as we recognize a fire by its smoke without the smoke producing the fire (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 143—152).
The confusion of personhood and person-behavior underlies the empirical-functionalist concept of person. From John Locke through Derek Parfit to Peter Singer, person-behavior is taken to be person-constitutive. Whoever thinks in this way must deny personhood to the sleeping human being, to the embryo, and to the human being with severe dementia. Robert Spaemann and Karol Wojtyła reject this consequence as a fundamental error.
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (esp. 4.6.2), Chapter 3
Active Potency for Person-Behavior
The active potency for person-behavior designates the ontologically real disposition of a person to perform personal acts of cognizing, willing, and loving, even when she is not presently exercising them. In contrast to mere passive potency, which requires actualization from without, the active potency strives from within toward its own unfolding (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 155—170).
This distinction belongs to the first dimension of personhood. It is of decisive significance for the ontological status of the embryo, the sleeping person, and the comatose person. They all possess the active disposition toward person-behavior without actually exercising it. The active potency differs from actual person-behavior as ability differs from actual doing. The principle agere sequitur esse shows that the disposition is grounded in the substantial being of the person and is not first conferred by external conditions.
Ontological relations:
- is a subclass of: Person-Behavior
Actual Person-Behavior
Actual person-behavior designates personal behavior as presently exercised, the deutera energeia in the Aristotelian-Thomistic sense. Here and now the person performs acts of cognizing, willing, or loving. This actual activity constitutes the fulfillment of the active potency for person-behavior: what the person can do by disposition is brought into actuality in actual behavior (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 173—178).
The decisive point is that actual person-behavior does not constitute personhood itself but merely manifests it. Even when a person presently performs no personal act — in sleep or in a coma, for instance — she remains a person, because her personhood is grounded in substance, not in actual activity. The principle agere sequitur esse states: action follows being, not the reverse. Actual person-behavior belongs to the second dimension of personhood.
Ontological relations:
- is a subclass of: Person-Behavior
Volitionally Actualizable Person-Behavior
Volitionally actualizable person-behavior designates that personal behavior whose realization presupposes a free act of will. Here the person does not pass into activity merely passively but actualizes her active potency through a free action. This type of person-behavior thus stands in close connection with the second dimension of personhood, in which the person determines and unfolds herself (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 173—178).
Wojtyła emphasizes that in free action the person experiences herself in a special way. In volitional performance, personhood shows itself as self-possession and self-determination. Here the free will is not merely the trigger but the constitutive moment of personal self-realization.
Volitionally actualizable person-behavior thereby differs from personal acts that occur involuntarily (e.g., spontaneous insight). It points to the dignity of the person as a someone who has command over his own doing.
Ontological relations:
- is a subclass of: Person-Behavior
Ontological classification: Subordinate concepts: Active Potency for Person-Behavior, Actual Person-Behavior, Volitionally Actualizable Person-Behavior
Ontological relations:
- presupposes: Personhood
- is essentially distinct from: Personhood
- ontologically follows: Personhood
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Locke, J.: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Book II, Ch. 27. (Personal identity through continuity of consciousness)
- Parfit, D.: Reasons and Persons (1984). Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Reductionist concept of person)
- Singer, P.: Practical Ethics (1979/1993). Cambridge University Press. (Functionalist concept of person)
- Spaemann, R.: Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’ (1996). Trans. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. (Critique of the functionalist concept of person)
- Wojtyła, Karol (1969): Osoba i czyn. Kraków (German: Person und Tat, Freiburg: Herder, 1981) (German). (The person as subject of action)
See also
Personhood, Person, Freedom, Cognition, Second Dimension, Third Dimension, Substance, Act and Potency, Insight, Truth, Love, Dignity, Someone, Embryo, Personalist Norm, Human Person, Nature, Agere sequitur esse, Actus humanus, Self-Consciousness, Reason, Interiority, Intentionality, Self-Transcendence, Affirmation, Forgiveness, Virtue, Responsibility, Oblivion of the Person, Concept of Person, Empirical-Functionalist Concept of Person, Dementia, Soul, Body, First Dimension, Basal Relations, Robert Spaemann, John Locke, Karol Wojtyła, Thomas von Aquin, Chapter 4: Personhood, Chapter 3: Concept of Person, Artificial Intelligence, AI Ethics, Will