The third dimension of human personhood is the dimension of authenticity: it asks what a human being makes of what he is. Through his free, conscious, and responsible action, the human being shapes himself in a qualitative respect. The medieval thinkers called this the ens morale — the moral being of the person, the result of her free decisions. The third dimension presupposes the second (and thereby the first).
The moral values — justice, honesty, courage, mercy, fidelity — essentially presuppose the freedom of the person. Coerced justice is no justice at all. As soon as a human being acts consciously and freely, the third dimension is co-actualized. Every human action contributes either to moral perfection or to moral degradation (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 230—250).
When the human being knows and affirms the true, does the good, and loves, he realizes his “ontological truth” — the correspondence between what he is and what he does. When, by contrast, he acts against his essence, he becomes an “ontological lie.”
A key concept of the third dimension is self-transcendence: the surpassing of oneself, the capacity to go beyond oneself — for the sake of truth, for the sake of the good, for the sake of the other person. Its opposite is the curvatio in se ipsum (the curving-in upon oneself), the egoistic circling around oneself.
The decisive point: even if a human being loses all qualitative values, he never loses his ontological value, his inalienable dignity. Only in a qualitative respect can one legitimately speak of a “monster” [Unmensch]. Ontologically, even the worst criminal is still a person. Spaemann emphasizes: “There is no ethics without metaphysics.”
Ontological classification: Superordinate concept: Dimension of the Fundamental Form of Reality
Ontological relations:
- presupposes: Second Dimension
- ontologically follows: Second Dimension
Chapter reference: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (esp. 4.7.5)
Source reference: Bexten 2017, pp. 271–289 (Qualitatively perfected/degraded being).
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Spaemann, Robert (2001): Grenzen. Zur ethischen Dimension des Handelns. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta (“There is no ethics without metaphysics”) (German).