The difference between “Someone” and “Something” is the fundamental mark of personhood. A stone is a Something — it has no interior, no depth, no self. The person, by contrast, is a Someone: a unique, unrepeatable, self-standing being that stands in itself, has a ground of its own, and is not interchangeable. Every human being has a face, a name, a history. He is not representable and not replaceable.
From the book
“The human being is not just some thing among things. He is a Someone, not a Something. This sounds simple, but in this simple statement everything is contained.”
— The Results at a Glance (German), Chapter 6
Robert Spaemann puts it thus: “If someone is someone, this means: he is a person. Whoever is someone always was.” The Someone-character of the human being shows itself in the fact that the human being not only is, but that it is he himself who is there. Already as a tiny embryo — even before he opens his eyes, thinks, or feels — the human being is a Someone, not a Something. This standing-in-itself belongs to the first dimension of personhood and precedes all consciousness and person-behavior (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 137—145).
Max Scheler understood the word “person” as an “absolute name” expressing the for-itself-standing of a being, in contrast to relative designations such as “I” and “You.” The Someone-character grounds the inalienable dignity of the person: because every person is a Someone, respect is owed to her for her own sake — as the Personalistic Norm formulates it. The forgetting of this Someone-character is the core of the oblivion of the person: one sees the human being, but one no longer sees who he is.
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What is human personhood? (German) (esp. 4.2.2, 4.7.3), Chapter 3 (German), Chapter 1 (German)
Ontological assignment: Someone is (according to the ontology) an Essential Characteristic of the person and expresses the fundamental difference between person and thing. The Someone-character belongs to the first dimension and is inalienable.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert, Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan, Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Scheler, Max, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values, transl. Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk, Northwestern University Press, 1973 (person as “absolute name”).