Personalism is an intellectual stance that emphasizes the importance of human persons. Personalism exists in many different versions, and this makes it somewhat difficult to define as a philosophical and theological movement. [1] Friedrich Schleiermacher first used the term personalism (German : Personalismus) in print in 1799. [2] One can trace the concept back to earlier thinkers in various parts of the world. [3]
Writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Thomas D. Williams, L.C. [4] and Jan Olof Bengtsson [5] [6] cite a plurality of "schools" holding to a "personalist" ethic and "Weltanschauung", arguing:
Personalism exists in many different versions, and this makes it somewhat difficult to define as a philosophical and theological movement. Many philosophical schools have at their core one particular thinker or even one central work which serves as a canonical touchstone. Personalism is a more diffused and eclectic movement and has no such common reference point. It is, in point of fact, more proper to speak of many personalisms than one personalism. In 1947 Jacques Maritain could write that there are at least "a dozen personalist doctrines, which at times have nothing more in common than the word 'person.'" Moreover, because of their emphasis on the subjectivity of the person, some of the more important exponents of personalism have not undertaken systematic treatises of their theories.
It is perhaps more proper to speak of personalism as a "current" or a broader "worldview", since it represents more than one school or one doctrine while at the same time the most important forms of personalism do display some central and essential commonalities. Most important of the latter is the general affirmation of the centrality of the person for philosophical thought. Personalism posits ultimate reality and value in personhood – human as well as (at least for most personalists) divine. It emphasizes the significance, uniqueness and inviolability of the person, as well as the person's essentially relational or social dimension. The title "personalism" can therefore legitimately be applied to any school of thought that focuses on the centrality of persons and their unique status among beings in general, and personalists normally acknowledge the indirect contributions of a wide range of thinkers throughout the history of philosophy who did not regard themselves as personalists. Personalists believe that the person should be the ontological and epistemological starting point of philosophical reflection. Many are concerned to investigate the experience, the status, and the dignity of the human being as person, and regard this as the starting-point for all subsequent philosophical analysis. [7] [ excessive quote ]
Thus, according to Williams, one ought to keep in mind that although there may be dozens of theorists and social activists in the West adhering to the rubric "personalism," their particular foci may, in fact, be asymptotic, and even diverge at material junctures.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a Russian religious and political philosopher who emphasized human freedom, subjectivity and creativity. [8]
In France, philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950) was the leading proponent of personalism, around which he founded the review Esprit , which exists to this day. Under Jean-Marie Domenach's direction, it criticized the use of torture during the Algerian War. Personalism was seen as an alternative to both liberalism and Marxism, which respected human rights and the human personality without indulging in excessive collectivism. Mounier's personalism had an important influence in France, including in political movements, such as Marc Sangnier's Ligue de la jeune République (Young Republic League) founded in 1912.
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Following on the writings of Dorothy Day, a distinctively Christian personalism developed in the 20th century. Its main theorist was the Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyła (later Pope John Paul II). In his work, Love and Responsibility , first published in 1960, Wojtyła proposed what he termed 'the personalistic norm':
This norm, in its negative aspect, states that the person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end. In its positive form the personalistic norm confirms this: the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love [9]
This brand of personalism has come to be known as "Thomistic" because of its efforts to square modern notions regarding the person with the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. [10] Wojtyła was influenced by the ethical personalism of German phenomenologist Max Scheler. [11]
A first principle of Christian personalism is that persons are not to be used, but to be respected and loved. In Gaudium et spes , the Second Vatican Council formulated what has come to be considered the key expression of this personalism: "man is the only creature on earth that God willed for its own sake and he cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself". [12]
This formula for self-fulfillment offers a key for overcoming the dichotomy frequently felt between personal "realization" and the needs or demands of social life. Personalism also implies inter-personalism, as Benedict XVI stresses in Caritas in Veritate :
As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal relations. The more authentically he or she lives these relations, the more his or her own personal identity matures. It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God. [13]
Personalism flourished in the early 20th century at Boston University in a movement known as Boston personalism led by theologian Borden Parker Bowne. Bowne emphasized the person as the fundamental category for explaining reality and asserted that only persons are real. He stood in opposition to certain forms of materialism which would describe persons as mere particles of matter. For example, against the argument that persons are insignificant specks of dust in the vast universe, Bowne would say that it is impossible for the entire universe to exist apart from a person to experience it. Ontologically speaking, the person is "larger" than the universe because the universe is but one small aspect of the person who experiences it. Personalism affirms the existence of the soul. Most personalists assert that God is real and that God is a person (or as in Christian trinitarianism, three 'persons', although it is important to note that the nonstandard meaning of the word 'person' in this theological context is significantly different from Bowne's usage).
Bowne also held that persons have value (see axiology, value theory, and ethics). In declaring the absolute value of personhood, he stood firmly against certain forms of philosophical naturalism (including social Darwinism) which sought to reduce the value of persons. He also stood against certain forms of positivism which sought to render ethical and theological discourse meaningless and dismiss talk of God a priori.
Georgia Harkness was a major Boston personalist theologian. [14] [15] [16] [17] Francis John McConnell was a major second-generation advocate of Boston personalism who sought to apply the philosophy to social problems of his time. [18]
George Holmes Howison taught a metaphysical theory called personal idealism [19] or California personalism. Howison maintained that both impersonal, monistic idealism and materialism run contrary to the moral freedom experienced by persons. To deny the freedom to pursue the ideals of truth, beauty, and "benignant love" is to undermine every profound human venture, including science, morality, and philosophy. Thus, even the personalistic idealism of Borden Parker Bowne and Edgar S. Brightman and the realistic personal theism of Thomas Aquinas are inadequate, for they make finite persons dependent for their existence upon an infinite Person and support this view by an unintelligible doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. [20]
The Personal Idealism of Howison was explained in his book The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism. Howison created a radically democratic notion of personal idealism that extended all the way to God, who was no more the ultimate monarch, no longer the only ruler and creator of the universe, but the ultimate democrat in eternal relation to other eternal persons. Howison found few disciples among the religious, for whom his thought was heretical; the non-religious, on the other hand, considered his proposals too religious; only J. M. E. McTaggart's idealist atheism or Thomas Davidson's apeirotheism seem to resemble Howison's personal idealism. [21]
Critical personalism is a German development. Based on humanistic considerations (e.g. Spaemann), African Theories on Personhood (e.g. Wiredu) receptions of communitarian theories (e.g. Taylor) and empirical findings of developmental, social and personality psychology it addresses the issue of the development of personhood in community. Each person does not only reach a certain position within community but also forms an individual personality over his or her life span. In doing so, they determine a relationship to their selves and to other people. The development of personality appears as a way to take responsibility in community. Communities are thought of as by nature are infinitely diverse associations, which are not characterised by fixed values, but rather by the fact that they constantly communicate about values as they constantly arise due to actual praxis. On the basis of discourse ethics (Habermas, Apel) and the methodology of critical mediation, [22] critical personalism in given social contexts reflects on communication practices and the societal conditions for personality development.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant, though not formally considered a personalist, made an important contribution to the personalist cause by declaring that a person is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends of other people, but that he possesses dignity (an absolute inner worth) and is to be valued as an end in himself.
Catholic philosopher and theologian John Henry Newman, has been posited as a main proponent of personalism by John Crosby of Franciscan University in his book Personalist Papers. Crosby notes Newman's personal approach to faith, as outlined in Grammar of Assent as a main source of Newman's personalism. [23]
Martin Luther King Jr. was greatly influenced by personalism in his studies at Boston University. King came to agree with the position that only personality is real. It solidified his understanding of God as a personal god. It also gave him a metaphysical basis for his belief that all human personality has dignity and worth. [24]
Paul Ricœur explicitly sought to support personalist movement by developing its theoretical foundation and expanding it with a new personalist social ethic. [25] : 3 However, he later had significant disagreements with Mounier and criticized other personalist writers for insufficient conceptual clarity. Ricœur also disagreed with the other personalists in asserting the significance of justice as a value in its own right and gave this primary in the public sphere, whereas Mounier characterized all relationships including public and political ones in terms of love and friendship. [25]
Pope John Paul II was also influenced by the personalism advocated by Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Before his election to the Roman papacy, he wrote Person and Act (sometimes mistranslated as The Acting Person), a philosophical work suffused with personalism. [26] Though he remained well within the traditional stream of Catholic social and individual morality, his explanation of the origins of moral norms, as expressed in his encyclicals on economics and on sexual morality, for instance, was largely drawn from a personalist perspective. [27] His writings as Roman pontiff, of course, influenced a generation of Catholic theologians since who have taken up personalist perspectives on the theology of the family and social order.
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"Start your work from where you live, with the small concrete needs right around you. Help ease tension in your workplace. Help feed the person right in front of you. Personalism holds that we each have a deep personal obligation to live simply, to look after the needs of our brothers and sisters, and to share in the happiness and misery they are suffering."
David Brooks, The Road to Character. 2015.
Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality is entirely a mental construct; or that there is some higher "ideal form" of reality. Because there are numerous forms of idealism, it is difficult to define the term.
A person is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts.
Josiah Royce was an American Pragmatist and objective idealist philosopher and the founder of American idealism. His philosophical ideas included his joining of pragmatism and idealism, his philosophy of loyalty, and his defense of absolutism.
New feminism is a form of feminism that emphasizes the integral complementarity of women and men, rather than the superiority of men over women or women over men, and advocates for respecting persons from conception to natural death.
Borden Parker Bowne was an American Christian philosopher, Methodist minister and theologian. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times.
Georgia Elma Harkness (1891–1974) was an American Methodist theologian and philosopher. Harkness has been described as one of the first significant American female theologians and was important in the movement to legalize the ordination of women in American Methodism.
Albert Cornelius Knudson (1873–1953) was a Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and the school of liberal theology known as Boston personalism.
Edgar Sheffield Brightman was an American philosopher and Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and liberal theology, and promulgated the philosophy known as Boston personalism.
Theology of the Body is the topic of a series of 129 lectures given by Pope John Paul II during his Wednesday audiences in St. Peter's Square and the Paul VI Audience Hall between September 5, 1979, and November 28, 1984. It constitutes an analysis on human sexuality. The complete addresses were later compiled and expanded upon in many of John Paul's encyclicals, letters, and exhortations.
Dietrich Richard Alfred von Hildebrand was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and religious writer.
William Sweet is a Canadian philosopher, and a past president of the Canadian Philosophical Association and of the Canadian Theological Society.
Philosophical anthropology, sometimes called anthropological philosophy, is a discipline dealing with questions of metaphysics and phenomenology of the human person.
Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky, also known as N. O. Lossky, was a Russian philosopher, representative of Russian idealism, intuitionist epistemology, personalism, libertarianism, ethics and axiology. He gave his philosophical system the name intuitive-personalism. Born in Latvia, he spent his working life in St. Petersburg, New York, and Paris. He was the father of the influential Christian theologian Vladimir Lossky.
The Personalist Labor Revolutionary Party, often simply called the Cần Lao Party, was a Vietnamese political party, formed in the early 1950s by the President of South Vietnam Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother and adviser Ngô Đình Nhu. Based on mass-organizations and secret networks as effective instruments, the party played a considerable role in creating a political groundwork for Diệm's power and helped him to control all political activities in South Vietnam. The doctrine of the party was ostensibly based on Ngô Đình Nhu's Person Dignity Theory and Emmanuel Mounier's Personalism.
Max Scheler (1874–1928) was an early 20th-century German Continental philosopher in the phenomenological tradition. Scheler's style of phenomenology has been described by some scholars as “applied phenomenology”: an appeal to facts or “things in themselves” as always furnishing a descriptive basis for speculative philosophical concepts. One key source of just such a pattern of facts is expressed in Scheler’s descriptive mapping of human emotional life as articulated in his seminal 1913–1916 work, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values.
The Pope John Paul II bibliography contains a list of works by Pope John Paul II, and works about his life and theology.
Love and Responsibility is a book written by Karol Wojtyła before he became Pope John Paul II and was originally published in Polish in 1960 and in English in 1981. A new translation was published in 2013. Fr. Wojtyła was inspired to write the book when he was a professor at the Catholic University of Lublin, through the experiences he had while teaching young Catholics.
Juan Manuel Burgos Velasco is a Spanish Personalist philosopher. He holds a PhD in physics, and a PhD in philosophy. He is professor at the University San Pablo CEU, Madrid and at the John Paul II Institute, Madrid, a member of the Jacques Maritain International Institute, and distinguished guest professor at Galileo University. In 2007, he became an honorary professor at the Institute of Family Sciences (Guatemala) for his contribution to family sciences through his anthropology studies.
George Holmes Howison was an American philosopher who established the philosophy department at the University of California, Berkeley and held the position there of Mills Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity. He also founded the Philosophical Union, one of the oldest philosophical organizations in the United States.
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both reflecting and shaping collective American identity over the history of the nation". The philosophy of the Founding Fathers of the United States is largely seen as an extension of the European Enlightenment. A small number of philosophies are known as American in origin, namely pragmatism and transcendentalism, with their most prominent proponents being the philosophers William James and Ralph Waldo Emerson respectively.
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