A
person (
plural:
persons or
people; from , meaning "
mask") is a
human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes associated with personhood, for example in a particular moral or legal context. Such capacities or attributes can include
agency,
self-awareness, a notion of the past and future, and the possession of
rights and
duties, among others. However, the concept of a person is difficult to define in a way that is universally accepted, due to its historical and cultural variability and the controversies surrounding its use in some contexts.
The word "person", and the initial concepts to which it referred, were developed during the Trinitarian and Christological debates of the first through sixth centuries. Since then, a number of important changes to the word's meaning and use have taken place, and attempts have been made to redefine the word with varying degrees of adoption and influence. Today, depending on the context, theory or definition, the category of "person" may be taken to include such non-human entities as animals, corporations, artificial intelligences, or extraterrestrial life; and may exclude some human entities in prenatal development or those with extreme mental impairments or injuries.
The concept of a person is closely tied to legal and political concepts such as citizenship, equality, and liberty, and various questions in these areas have turned on the problem of what counts as a person, such as the abolition of slavery in the United States, the fight for women's rights in many countries, debates about abortion (e.g. fetal rights and reproductive rights issues), and debates about corporate personhood (e.g. for campaign spending limits).
History
Prior to the advent of Christianity, the word "persona" (Latin) or "
prosopon" (πρόσωπον: Greek) referred to the masks worn by actors on stage. The various masks represented the various "personae" in the stage play, while the masks themselves helped the actor's voice resonate and easier for the audience to hear. In Roman law, the word "persona" could also refer to a legal entity.
In his work, De Trinitate, Tertullian became the first person recorded by history to use the word in a quite different way: to signify a being that is, at least in principle, complete, autonomous and fully responsible for his own acts. He not only adopted and adapted "person" to theological use, he also was the first to use the words "Trinity" (Latin: trinitas) and "substance" (substantia) in relation to God. He was the first to speak of three persons in one substance (Latin: una substantia et tres personae). Just as modern physicists have given strict technical meaning to a word like "color" in order to explain the inner workings of the quark, Tertullian gave strict technical meaning to the words "person", "substance" and "trinity" to explain the inner workings of the Christian Godhead. His work was meant to combat a Christian heresy called Modalism, which taught God worked in three different modes, or powers, but was not Himself "three" in any important sense.
Tertullian thereby launched the modern understanding of the word "person." The modern meaning originates in the Christian theological explanation for how God exists in Himself - God is three Persons. Because Christians see mankind as being in the "image and likeness of God" (Genesis), thinking of God as three "Persons" meant we could also think of men as "persons" and, for that matter, angels as well.
As can be seen, Tertullian's explanation depends not only on existence of Reason and Word within the Godhead, but also on the relationships between them. This aspect of "person" continued to be emphasized throughout the centuries of subsequent discussion. According to this understanding, a person is (1) that which possesses an intellect and a will, (2) defined in part by relationships. Since there is only one God, every Person of the Godhead is fully God. The only thing which distinguishes the three Persons of the Godhead is the relationships: Father to Son (Begetting to Begotten), Son to Spirit (Begotten to Breathed, or spirated), and Father to Spirit (Begetting to Breathed, or spirated).
Although Tertullian had now introduced the terms and given a basic explanation for how they interacted, a more precise explanation of "person" and "substance" was necessary. In response to various misunderstandings of what constitutes a "person", the first six Catholic Ecumenical Councils attempted to define the boundaries and meaning of the word more completely. Much of the context of these disputes centered around differences in translation and nuance between the various Greek and Latin technical terms used to explain "person" and "substance."
The First Council of Nicaea established that the person of Christ was not just of a similar substance of divinity, but was actually of the same substance of divinity as the Father. This establishes the basis of personhood for the second Person of the Trinity.
The First Council of Constantinople established that the person of the Holy Spirit was, indeed, divine. This establishes the basis of personhood for the third Person of the Trinity.
The Council of Ephesus confirmed that Mary was actually the mother of a person, the second Person of the Trinity, and did not merely conceive and give birth to the divine nature. This establishes how persons come into the world. It also settled the question Nestorianism raised: were there two persons in Christ or only one? The Council decided there could be only one person, but this divine person possessed two full and complete natures, thus helping to settle several issues raised by translation problems at Nicaea.
The Council of Chalcedon established that Christ was a single divine person, yet possessed two complete natures - the complete divine nature composed of the one divine intellect and the one divine will, and a complete human nature composed of the human soul (human intellect and human will) and human body. This solved several additional translation and definition problems concerning personhood raised at Nicaea.
The Second Council of Constantinople settled the question of monophysitism - how nature related to person. It reaffirmed that Christ's person did, indeed, have two full and complete natures; his human nature did not disappear, nor was it mixed with or subsumed by the divine nature. The two natures were completely separate (like two banks of a river), joined only by the person of Christ. It is the person of Christ which joins the two, thus one of Christ's titles is drived precisely from his personhood: he is the Pontifex, or "bridge," between God and man.
The Third Council of Constantinople settled the question of whether it is the person or the human nature which possesses a will. Monothelitism argued that since Christ was a divine person, He possessed only the divine will, and did not need or possess a human will. The Council rejected this notion, pointing out that a complete human nature included both a human intellect and a human will. Since the person of Christ possessed a complete human nature, he therefore possessed a human will. However, in deference to the definition established at Ephesus, which established that he is a divine person and not a human person, Christ is the only person who possesses a complete human nature, yet is not himself a human person. As Tertullian pointed out, personhood is, in part, defined by relationship. Because Christ is already a divine person, he did not need to be a human person in order to be in relationship with God.
As can be seen, the connections between person, nature, intellect and will were quite complex. By the fifth century, Boethius gave the definition of "person" as "an individual substance of a rational nature" ("Naturæ rationalis individua substantia"). By the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas gave a more thorough and precise definition to the various words in Boethius' definition, allowing a much greater degree of precision. Although disagreement about various aspects of "personhood" continued, the Christian understanding of the word was the bedrock foundation to Western legal, philosophical and theological thought through the Enlightenment. Indeed, the idea of "inalienable rights" found in the United States Declaration of Independence is rooted in the idea that God has rights and man is a person in God's image, so man has rights.
Much of late twentieth century philosophy and science has attempted to redefine "person" so as to remove the theological references and create an entirely empirical, secular understanding of the concept. However, notable exceptions exist to this trend, including the work of people like Charles Taylor.
Philosophy
In philosophy, the word "person" may refer to various concepts. According to the "naturalist" epistemological tradition, from Descartes through Locke and Hume, the term may designate any human (or non-human) agent which: (1) possesses continuous consciousness over time; and (2) who is therefore capable of framing representations about the world, formulating plans and acting on them.
Others have proposed different concepts, including Charles Taylor and Harry G. Frankfurt. According to Taylor, the problem with the naturalist view is that it depends solely on a "performance criterion" to determine what is an agent. Thus, other things (e.g. machines or animals) that exhibit "similarly complex adaptive behaviour" could not be distinguished from persons. Instead, Taylor proposes a significance-based view of personhood:
What is crucial about agents is that things matter to them. We thus cannot simply identify agents by a performance criterion, nor assimilate animals to machines... [likewise] there are matters of significance for human beings which are peculiarly human, and have no analogue with animals.
The philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt writes that, "What philosophers have lately come to accept as analysis of the concept of a person in not actually analysis of ''that'' concept at all." He suggests that the concept of a person is intimately connected to free will, and describes the structure of human volition according to first- and second-order desires:
Besides wanting and choosing and being moved ''to do'' this or that, [humans] may also want to have (or not to have) certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires.
According to Nikolas Kompridis, there might also be an intersubjective, or interpersonal, basis to personhood:
What if personal identity is constituted in, and sustained through, our relations with others, such that were we to erase our relations with our significant others we would also erase the conditions of our self-intelligibility? As it turns out, this erasure... is precisely what is experimentally dramatized in the “science fiction” film, ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'', a far more philosophically sophisticated meditation on personal identity than is found in most of the contemporary literature on the topic."
Other philosophers have defined persons in different ways. Boethius gives the definition of "person" as "an individual substance of a rational nature" ("''Naturæ rationalis individua substantia''"). Peter Singer defines a “person” as being a conscious, thinking being, which knows that it is a person (self-awareness).
Philosopher Thomas I. White argues that the criteria for a person are as follows: (1) is alive, (2) is aware, (3) feels positive and negative sensations, (4) has emotions, (5) has a sense of self, (6) controls its own behaviour, (7) recognises other persons and treats them appropriately, and (8) has a variety of sophisticated cognitive abilities. While many of White's criteria are somewhat anthropocentric, some animals such as dolphins would still be considered persons. Some animal rights groups have also championed recognition for animals as "persons".
Various specific philosophical debates focus on questions about the personhood of different classes of entities.
Unborn or unconscious humans
The
beginning of human personhood is a concept long debated by religion and philosophy. In contemporary global thought, once humans are
born, personhood is considered automatic. However, personhood could also extend to late fetuses and neonates, dependent on what level of thought is required. With respect to
abortion, 'personhood' is a term used to describe the status of a human being vis-a-vis his or her individual human rights. The term was used by Justice Blackmun in
Roe v. Wade. However, the distinction in
ethical value between currently existing persons and
potential future persons has been questioned. Subsequently, it has been argued that contraception and even the decision not to procreate at all could be regarded as immoral on a similar basis as abortion.
Susan Bordo has suggested that the overwhelming focus on the issue of personhood in abortion debates has often been an alibi for depriving women of their own rights as persons. She writes that "the legal double standard concerning the bodily integrity of pregnant and nonpregnant bodies, the construction of women as fetal incubators, the bestowal of 'super-subject' status to the fetus, and the emergence of a father's-rights ideology" demonstrate "that the current terms of the abortion debate – as a contest between fetal claims to personhood and women's right to choose – are limited and misleading."
While some tend to be comfortable constraining personhood status within the human species based on basic capacities (e.g. excluding human stem cells, fetuses, and bodies that cannot recover awareness), others often wish to include all these forms of human bodies even if they have never had awareness (which some would call ''pre-people'') or had awareness, but could never have awareness again due to massive and irrecoverable brain damage (some would call these ''post-people''). The Vatican has recently been advancing a human exceptionalist understanding of personhood theory, while other communities, such as Christian Evangelicals in the U.S. have sometimes rejected personhood theory as biased against human exceptionalism. Of course, many religious communities (of many traditions) view the other versions of personhood theory perfectly compatible with their faith, as do the majority of modern Humanists (especially Personists).
Nonhuman animals
Some philosophers and those involved in animal welfare,
ethology,
animal rights and related subjects, consider that certain animals should also be granted personhood. Commonly named species in this context include the
great apes,
cetaceans, and
elephants, because of their apparent intelligence and intricate social rules. The idea of extending personhood to all animals has the support of legal scholars such as
Alan Dershowitz and
Laurence Tribe of
Harvard Law School, and
animal law courses are now taught in 92 out of 180 law schools in the United States. On May 9, 2008,
Columbia University Press published
Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Professor
Gary L. Francione of
Rutgers University School of Law, a collection of writings that summarizes his work to date and makes the case for non-human animals as persons.
On the other hand, some proponents of human exceptionalism (also referred to by its critics as speciesism) have countered that we must institute a strict demarcation of personhood based on species membership in order to avoid the horrors of genocide (based on propaganda dehumanizing one or more ethnicities) or the injustices of forced sterilization (as occurred in many countries to people with low I.Q. scores and prisoners).
Hypothetical beings
Speculatively, there are several other likely categories of beings where personhood might be at issue.
Alien life
If
alien life were found to exist, under what circumstances would they be counted as 'persons'? Do we have to consider any "willing and communicative (capable to register its own will) autonomous body" in the universe, no matter the species, an individual (a person)? Do they deserve equal rights with the human race?
Artificial intelligence or life
If
artificial intelligences, intelligent and self-aware system of hardware and software, are eventually created, what criteria would be used to determine their personhood? Likewise, at what point might human-created biological life be considered to have achieved personhood?
Modified humans
The theoretical landscape of personhood theory has been altered recently by controversy in the bioethics community concerning an emerging community of scholars, researchers, and activists identifying with an explicitly
Transhumanist position, which supports
morphological freedom, even if a person changed so much as to no longer be considered a member of the human
species (by whatever standard is used to determine that). For example, how much of a human can be replaced by
artificial parts before personhood is lost, if ever? if the
brain is the reason people are considered persons, then if the human brain and all its thought patterns, memories and other attributes could also in future be transposed faithfully into some form of artificial device (for example to avoid illness such as
brain cancer) would the patient still be considered a person after the operation?
Law
A person is recognized by law as such, not because he is human, but because rights and duties are ascribed to him. The person is the legal subject or substance of which the rights and duties are attributes. An individual human being considered as having such attributes is what lawyers call a "natural person."
Historically, not even all humans have enjoyed full legal protection as persons (women, children, non-landowners, minorities, slaves, etc.), but from the late 18th through the late 20th century, being born as a member of the human species gradually became secular grounds for the basic rights of liberty, freedom from persecution, and humanitarian care. Today, in statutory and corporate law, certain social constructs are legally considered persons. In many jurisdictions, some corporations and other legal entities are considered legal persons with standing to sue or be sued in court. This is known as legal or corporate personhood.
Psychology
As an application of
social psychology and other disciplines, phenomena such as the ''perception'' and ''attribution'' of personhood have been scientifically studied. Typical questions addressed in social psychology are the accuracy of attribution, processes of perception and the formation of bias. Various other scientific/medical disciplines address the myriad of issues in the development of
personality.
Sociology
In
sociology, "person" is an abstract concept, to study individuals as they exist as functioning or non-functioning components within a society.
Religion
In animistic religion, animals, plants, and other entities may be persons or deities.
Christianity
Christianity is the first philosophical system to use the word "person" in its modern sense. The word "persona" was transformed from its theater use into a term with strict technical theological meaning by
Tertullian in his work, De Trinitas ("On The Trinity"), in order to distinguish the three "persons" of the
Trinity. Subsequently,
Boethius refined the word to mean "an individual substance of a rational nature." This can be re-stated as "that which possesses an intellect and a will." Thus, the word "person" was originally a theological term created and defined by Christians to explain Christian theological concepts.
The notion of the possession of intellect and will is important, since Christians hold that the one divine nature is nothing except the one Divine Intellect and the one Divine Will. The Second Letter to Peter (2 Peter 1:4) indicates that human persons can "share in the divine nature." Though they have the capacity to share in it, human persons cannot possess it. This is one of the major distinctions between the three Persons of the Trinity and all other kinds of persons - each one of the uncreated persons of the Trinity possesses the one Divine Nature entirely unto Himself. He does not share it. Yet there is only one God, one Divine Nature. Other created persons can, at most, share in the Divine Nature, they cannot possess it.
Thus, for Christians, there are three kinds of persons: the three uncreated Persons of the Trinity who each possess the single Divine Intellect/Will, the created persons who are pure spirit and possess angelic intellects/wills, and the created persons who are a combination of spirit and physical body, who possess human intellects/wills. Angels are created persons who are pure spirit. Human persons are a created persons who are combinations of pure spirit and physical body. There are no other kinds of persons.
Every human person exists via the union of human intellect, human will and human body. The human soul is considered to be the human intellect and the human will. The will is said to be nothing more than the "appetite" of the intellect. The human soul is the form of the human body - it keeps the body from disintegrating. In the Catholic tradition, the human soul is infused into the human body at conception and is immortal. Death occurs when the human soul separates from the human body and the body disintegrates into dust.
Since neither the Persons of God nor the persons who are angels have bodies, neither of these kinds of persons can experience death. The restoration of the body at the Last Judgement is the restoration to the human person of an essential aspect of his/her existence as person.
Since the Greek concept of nous is not comparable to the Christian concept of rational intellect, it is not the case that the Greeks had a similar understanding of person. Indeed, it is difficult to find a concept or set of concepts in any non-Christian culture which corresponds to the Christian definition. Modern attempts to redefine "person" and "personhood" are detailed in the article above.
Islam
In
Islam, sentient beings including
Humans,
Jinns and
Angels, are regarded as people, up-to the extent of personalizing animals and inanimate objects as holding a form of
anthropocentrism as it is an ill described theme in the Quran. Genderless figures are typically described by male gender and are referred to as "He" when classical Arabic has no pronoun for "It" . Being Human is more to do with being the best of the creation as the worst of the creations are seen as non-human, reflecting real-life notions who reflect humanity as beings practicing positive (as well as subhuman can mean a being who is seen negatively in a moral aspect rather biological) aspects and is considered highly subjective when defining person-hood to only children of
Adam, as
Human-like beings have existed long before the creation of
Adam and
Eve. According to such a theme, it is then to assume that
Islam is not only for
Humans, but for all that exists as being defined by personification are considered
Muslims except for holders of free-will who are able to become
Kufr.Though it is wise to associate
personhood with humans among humans themselves when on Dunya, as such means of personification is knowledge of the unseen.
In the Quran, Humans themselves directly are referred to as "Mankind".
Christianity and Islam differ on the nature on demons. Christianity sees demons as fallen angels. In Islam, demons are a separate creation, human-like beings but made from fire, and angels in Islam will not become fallen angels.
Jinns
The most human-like creations are referred to as Jinns, a prototype of human beings as they have
free-will and are
sapient and live human-like lives with the ability to create
societies,
socialize, make
families, commit
crimes etc. but have a large lifespan or seen to be immortal until their death with the shaytan. They are able to spy and trick themselves and mankind but they are life based on fire. Some hadiths state their numbers as many, many times more numerous than that human beings.
See also
Anthropocentrism
Anthropology
Beginning of human personhood
Being
''Capitis deminutio''
Character
Citizenship
Consciousness
Corporate personhood
Great Ape personhood
Juridical person
Juristic person
Human
Identity
Individual
Kant
Legal fiction
Nonperson
People
Personality
Personhood Movement
Personoid
Phenomenology
Subject (philosophy)
Surety
Theory of mind
References
Further reading
Cornelia J.de Vogel ''The concept of personality in Greek and Christian thought''. In Studies in philosophy and the history of philosophy. Vol. 2. Edited by J. K. Ryan, Washington: Catholic University of America Press 1963. pp. 20–60
External links
Rights of Non-Human Persons Program (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies)
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Category:Personal life
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