Personhood is the “first actuality” of the human being: spiritual substantial being in the body, which underlies all action and all faculties and first makes them possible. It is not a property that is added to the human being, but that which the human being from the ground up is. Classical philosophy expresses this in the principle agere sequitur esse — action follows being, not the reverse.
From the book
“The first dimension is the fundamental spiritual existence as person. It is that which makes the human being a person from the fusion of the germ cells onward — even before he can consciously think, feel, or will.”
— Three Dimensions of Human Personhood, Chapter 4
Personhood is an archphenomenon: a basic givenness not further derivable, which cannot be reduced to anything impersonal. It cannot be broken down into parts like a composite object. Either the uniquely individual being of the Person is recognized in contemplative regard — or it is falsified (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 137—145).
Personhood is fundamentally distinct from person-behavior. Personhood is what someone is. Person-behavior is what someone does. The former ontologically precedes the latter.
Human personhood unfolds in three dimensions that build upon one another: fundamental spiritual existence, conscious free personhood, and moral perfection. Because personhood is grounded in the first dimension, it cannot be lost through the loss of faculties. The sleeping human being, the embryo, and the human being with severe dementia are and remain persons — for personhood does not depend on the unfolding of faculties, but on being itself. Robert Spaemann formulates it thus: “Whoever is someone, always was.”
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood?, Chapter 1: Introduction
Integration of the Person
The integration of the person is the dynamic process in which the Person unites all the strata of its being — body, psyche, spirit — in the personal act. It is complementary to transcendence: whereas transcendence designates self-surpassing in the free act, integration designates the incorporation of all somatic and psychic dynamisms into this act. Integration and transcendence together form the basic structure of personal action.
The integration of the person presupposes self-mastery: only one who is able to govern his bodily and psychic dynamisms can incorporate them into the free personal act. In spousal love the integration shows itself in a special way, because here the whole person — with body, soul, and spirit — is drawn into the self-gift.
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.
Ontological relations:
- mutually exclusive with: Person-Behavior
- ontologically precedes: Person-Behavior
- has value-response: Personalistic Norm
- is presupposed by: Person-Behavior
See also
Person, Person-Behavior, Substance, Dignity, Soul, Body, Body-Soul Unity, First Dimension, Second Dimension, Third Dimension, Act and Potency, Someone, Embryo, Personal Life, Oblivion of the Person, Cognition, Human Person, Nature, Archphenomenon, Personalistic Norm, Agere sequitur esse, Form and Matter, Freedom, Love, Self-Consciousness, Reason, Interiority, Intentionality, Self-Transcendence, Affirmation, Basal Relations, Concept of Person, Substance-Ontological Concept of Person, Metaphysics, Law of Essence, Dementia, Fertilization, Truth, Biological Life, Insight, Entity, Robert Spaemann, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Thomas von Aquin, Boëthius, Martin Heidegger, Karol Wojtyła, Chapter 4: Personhood, Chapter 1: Introduction