The relational concept of person determines the person essentially through her relations: a person is whoever stands in relation and is constituted through relation. Alongside the substance-ontological and the empirical-functionalist concept of person, it forms the third basal concept of person (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 117 ff.). It captures an essential truth: the human person is not to be understood as an isolated individual but as essentially related to other persons. Love, affirmation, forgiveness, self-transcendence — all of this presupposes relation. The relational concept of person also has a historically theological origin: in the doctrine of the Trinity the divine persons are understood as relations.
The dissertation shows, however, that a purely relational concept of person is inadequate. Relation presupposes someone who stands in relation. Without substance there is no subject of the relation. The person has relations because she first is — in accordance with agere sequitur esse. In the present, Mark Coeckelbergh (social-relational grounding of moral status in robot ethics) and Luciano Floridi (Information Ethics) advance purely relational or information-ontological counter-proposals, which tend to dissolve the substantial bearer of the relation — and thereby expose themselves precisely to the objection that the substance-ontological-relational concept of person formulates.
The dissertation’s solution is integration. The adequate concept of person is substance-ontological-relational (Bexten 2017, p. 129): the person is a spiritual substance in the body in relation. Thomas Aquinas grounds this in the fact that the person always already stands in relation. As a spiritual being she is open toward truth and toward other persons (intentionality). The basal relations (bR1–bR5) show how the concept of person relates to the concept of the human being. Wojtyła, Spaemann, Scheler, and Hengstenberg each emphasize different aspects of the relationality of the person without surrendering the substantial foundation.
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Concept of Person; subordinate concept: Substance-Ontological-Relational Concept of Person
Chapter assignment: Chapter 3: What is a person?
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae I, q. 29, a. 4 (person and relation in the doctrine of the Trinity).
- Wojtyła, Karol (1969): Person and Act (Osoba i czyn). Kraków (relationality and personal action).
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’. Translated by Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Scheler, Max (1913/1916): Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik. Halle: Niemeyer (German).
- Hengstenberg, Hans Eduard (1957): Philosophische Anthropologie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer (German).
See also
Substance-Ontological Concept of Person, Empirical-Functionalist Concept of Person, Basal Relations, Person, Personhood, Substance, Love, Affirmation, Self-Transcendence, Interiority, Intentionality, Dignity, Personalistic Norm, Human Person, Nature, Agere sequitur esse, Someone, Freedom, Reason, Cognition, Truth, Body, Person-Behavior, Third Dimension, Oblivion of the Person, Metaphysics, Forgiveness, Embryo, Soul, Thomas Aquinas, Karol Wojtyła, Robert Spaemann, Max Scheler, Hans Eduard Hengstenberg, Boëthius, Josef Seifert, Edith Stein, Mark Coeckelbergh, Luciano Floridi, Chapter 3: Concept of Person, Chapter 4: Personhood