Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Josef Seifert

5 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Josef Seifert

Josef Seifert is a significant representative of phenomenological realism and of personalist philosophy. His contribution to the book lies above all in the determination of the dignity of the person as an ontological value and in the analysis of the person as a spiritual substance in the body.

Key Contribution

Seifert advances the thesis that the dignity of the person is not an ascribed, social, or conventional value, but an ontological value — a value that belongs to the very being of the person. The person has dignity because she is a person, not because she does something or because others recognize her. This dignity is inalienable: it persists regardless of whether the person actually exercises her capacities, whether she is conscious, whether others respect her (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 200 ff.).

Central Ideas in the Book

Spiritual Substance in the Body

Seifert analyzes the human person as a spiritual substance in the body: the soul is not a prisoner in the body (as in Descartes), but the animating, shaping form of the body. The human being is neither pure spirit nor mere body, but a genuine body-soul unity. The spiritual being of the person pervades the whole body and makes it a personal body.

The Dignity of the Person as Ontological Value

Seifert distinguishes different levels of value: the value of things, the value of life, and the value of the person. The dignity of the person is the highest form of ontological value, because the person is the most perfect thing in nature (cf. Thomas Aquinas). This dignity is grounded in the First Dimension of personhood — substantial being as someone — and can be annulled by no person-behavior or non-behavior.

Nature as Ground

Seifert deepens the argument Nature as Ground ontologically: nature is not an empirical feature that one observes, but the essence through which an entity is what it is. A being with a rational nature is a spiritual substance in the body — and it does not come to personhood by unfolding its nature; rather, it unfolds its nature because it already is a person. Act follows being, not the other way around. Seifert’s value ontology thereby connects closely with the argument from primordial in-itself being and the argument from the uniqueness of the person.

Against Functionalism

Seifert resolutely opposes the empirical-functionalist concept of person, which ties the dignity of the person to empirically ascertainable capacities. He shows: whoever makes dignity dependent on functions in effect abolishes it — for then there is no longer any unconditional dignity, but only a conditional one that can be lost. An embryo and a human being with dementia have the same personal dignity as every other human being.

Place in the Book

Seifert is drawn upon above all in the chapters Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood? (German) and Chapter 3: What Is a Person? (German). His value ontology complements the Thomistic substance ontology, the real ontology of Conrad-Martius, and Spaemann’s philosophy of the person into a coherent overall picture.

Sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 200 ff. (Seifert’s determination of the dignity of the person as ontological value and of the person as spiritual substance in the body).

Further sources:

  • Back to ‘Things in Themselves’. A Phenomenological Foundation for Classical Realism (1987). London/New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul (defense of phenomenological realism and of the knowability of necessary essential laws)
  • Das Leib-Seele-Problem und die gegenwärtige philosophische Diskussion (The Body-Soul Problem and the Contemporary Philosophical Discussion, 1989). Darmstadt: WBG (analysis of the person as spiritual substance in the body)
  • Essere e persona (Being and Person, 1989). Milano: Vita e Pensiero (the dignity of the person as ontological value, foundation of personalist ethics)

See also

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