The argument from primordial in-itself being belongs to the core of the substance-ontological position and is bound especially closely to Robert Spaemann. It runs as follows: personhood is not a derived feature that could be inferred from empirical observations or from theoretical constructions. It is a archphenomenon — something that shows itself before it can be conceptually determined.
An archphenomenon, in the sense of Goethe and later of the phenomenological tradition, is an appearance to which all further determinations refer back, but which itself can no longer be reduced to something deeper-lying. For the phenomenological method the rule holds: whoever wants to understand an archphenomenon must see it, not derive it. He must return to the phenomenon itself and grasp it in its own character.
The person is, in this sense, an archphenomenon. We do not come to know the person of the other by first observing a bundle of behaviors and then inferring an underlying subject. We encounter the person immediately as a person. The child recognizes its mother as mother before it has any concept of person at all. In every glance, in every word, in every gesture the person herself stands before us — not as an interpretation of data, but as an original givenness.
The in-itself being of the person means that she does not exist for the sake of something else, does not exist toward an end, is not the function of a whole. She is someone and not something. Kant captured the same thought in the formula that the person may never be treated merely as a means, but must always at the same time be treated as an end in herself. In-itself being is the ontological ground of this ethical norm.
The argument is at the same time directed against reductionist positions that seek to reduce personhood to neuronal processes, to psychic functions, or to social constructs. Whoever derives the person loses her. She can only be seen, not constructed.
In the argument map on the concept of person: Stands as the phenomenological background behind Edith Stein’s argument personal being as an illuminated surface over a dark depth, as well as behind Scheler’s thesis of the absolute name “person”.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Argument; supports: Substance-Ontological Concept of Person
Chapter assignment: Chapter 3: What Is a Person?, Chapter 2: On the Method of Philosophizing
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert (2006): Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Hildebrand, Dietrich von (1977): Ästhetik, Part I. In: Gesammelte Werke, vol. V. Regensburg: Habbel (archphenomena). (German)
- Conrad-Martius, Hedwig (1957): Das Sein. Munich: Kösel. (German)
See also: Substance-Ontological Concept of Person, Archphenomenon, Phenomenological Method, Someone, Nature as Ground, Uniqueness of the Person, Robert Spaemann, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Immanuel Kant, Chapter 3: Concept of Person, Chapter 2: Method