Hedwig Conrad-Martius is one of the most important philosophical voices of the book. As a student of Husserl and a close friend of Edith Stein, she joins the phenomenological method with an independent real ontology that is decisive for understanding personhood as substantial, dynamic being.
Key Contribution
Conrad-Martius develops the concept of hypokeimenal pneumatic being — a spiritual being that is at the same time the underlying ground (hypokeimenon) of all properties and capacities. This being is not static, but the most dynamic thing there is: a “capacity-to-be-oneself” (Sich-selber-Können). The spiritual substance of the person is no lifeless thing, but a living being-with-itself that can unfold, communicate, and transcend itself (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 162–175).
Central Ideas in the Book
Real Ontology
Conrad-Martius’ real ontology turns against every idealism that reduces reality to contents of consciousness. Things are real — and the person is what is most real: a being that not only is, but that has and enacts its own being. This real ontology complements and deepens Thomistic substance ontology by exhibiting phenomenologically the dynamism of personal being.
Capacity-to-Be-Oneself
The “capacity-to-be-oneself” means: the person is a being that has the capacity to be herself — not as a rigid identity, but as a living enactment. This capacity-to-be-oneself belongs to the First Dimension of personhood: the substantial being that precedes action. It is the ontological foundation for freedom, cognition, and self-transcendence.
The Person as Living Substance
Conrad-Martius overcomes the misunderstanding that substance is something rigid or dead. The personal substance is the most dynamic precisely because it is spiritual. Only one who is with oneself can go out of oneself. Only one who has interiority can open oneself to the other. The body-soul unity of the human being is the expression of this living substantiality: the soul as the form of the body in-forms the whole human being.
Place in the Book
Conrad-Martius is drawn upon above all in the chapter What Is Human Personhood? (German), in particular in the unfolding of the First Dimension of personhood. Her philosophy forms, together with Thomas Aquinas, Spaemann, and Seifert, the systematic foundation of the substance-ontological concept of person. Her concept of the “capacity-to-be-oneself” is connected with the Thomistic agere sequitur esse and Reinach’s essential lawfulness.
Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 162–175 (Conrad-Martius’ real ontology, hypokeimenal pneumatic being, and the person’s capacity-to-be-oneself).
Further sources:
- Das Sein (Being) (1957). Munich: Kösel (real ontology, hypokeimenal pneumatic being, and living substantiality)
- Die Zeit (Time) (1954). Munich: Kösel (temporality and the form of reality of the entity)
See also
- Edmund Husserl
- Edith Stein
- Adolf Reinach
- Thomas Aquinas
- Robert Spaemann
- Josef Seifert
- Aristotle
- Substance
- Substantiality
- Personhood
- Person
- Human Person
- First Dimension
- Interiority
- Freedom
- Self-Transcendence
- Body-Soul Unity
- Soul
- Body (Leib)
- Form and Matter
- Act and Potency
- Nature
- Someone
- Dignity
- Embryo
- Fertilization
- Agere sequitur esse
- Essential Law
- Archphenomenon
- Phenomenology
- Real Ontology
- Munich-Göttingen School
- Metaphysics
- Substance-Ontological Concept of Person
- Form of Reality
- Mode of Being
- Basal Relations
- Chapter 4: Personhood (German)
- Chapter 2: Method (German)