A Book Review . . . The Concept Of Personhood
By JUDE DOUGHERTY
Rist, John M. What Is a Person?: Realities, Constructs, Illusions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2020; vii + 188 pages.
John M. Rist is an emeritus professor of the University of Toronto. Author of more than a dozen books and over one hundred articles on ancient philosophy, patristics, and ethics, he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Aquinas Medalist of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. The immediate origin of this book is a series of lectures he gave to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America.
He tells the reader up front that the book will make no claims about the immortality of the human soul or of the person. What he attempts to answer, he says, is a more elementary question. What does the concept of “person” add to our understanding of what it means to be a human being?
Most contemporary philosophers assume they live in a Godless world. The result, in a soulless and Godless world, is that there is no basis for morality; all norms are deemed mere moral constructs. In such a world it is difficult to defend the concept of “person” and the allied concept of “human dignity.”
Given the absence of a clear understanding of the concept in contemporary academic discourse, Rist examines the concept of “person” as it has been held through the ages, from antiquity to the present. He begins with Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, and then consults the thought of Plotinus, Porphyry, Boethius, Augustine, St. Victor, Aquinas, and Scotus, among others. He finds in these thinkers what he calls the “Mainstream”: a notion of person which prevailed until challenged in the sixteenth century by neo-pagans like Giordano Bruno and subsequently attacked by the British empiricists, to say nothing of Nietzsche and Heidegger centuries later, who chose to revert to pre-Christian notions found in classical antiquity.
It is true that recognition of “dignity” was a feature of ancient Rome, but one that followed an acknowledgment of a hierarchy among human beings, each person due recognition according to status. The Apostle Paul taught differently: “In God’s eyes all human beings possess equal dignity.” This became the common Christian teaching with its implications in the social order.
It was the Gospel’s teaching that motivated Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484-1566) to assume defense of the rights of natives of the West Indies against the Spanish conquistadores, arguing that the Indians were fully human and not natural slaves. In defense of their rights, Las Casas was even prepared to tolerate their barbarous religious practices. They were to be converted, not compelled to worship the Christian God of their conquerors. Freedom of religion he considered to be a basic right.
British empiricism of the eighteenth century following Hume and Locke produced Hobbes and Bentham, both of whom denied freedom of religion. Given a secular view of human nature, the task of defending human dignity was assumed by many. The names of participants flow by: Kant, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Berkeley, and Adam Smith. Each grappled with the issue: How can one hold on to morality in a Godless and anti-metaphysical world.
Sympathy and empathy, promoted by some Renaissance humanists, or the invocation of Rousseau’s “general will” left much to be desired. Kant’s categorical imperative (act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it become a universal law) seemed to offer a resolution.
The gradual shift from talk of “human dignity” (Christian language, Rist points out) to “rights talk” seemed to many to offer the best choice, in a post-Christian world, of preserving human dignity and human rights without explicitly drawing upon religious principles. Kant’s claim that we should show respect for every human being by treating each as an end in himself was a fruitful legacy of his pietist upbringing.
Grotius had long before argued that if the Christian God did not exist, some sort of natural law did, and consequently we would conveniently find some mutually agreeable deontological principles in order that commercial transactions could be profitably concluded. This was the path that Durkheim and his followers promulgated in the nineteenth century.
In our own time, when new lobby groups emerge to claim rights for themselves or their paymasters they go far beyond the “Rights of Man” proclaimed in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Rist observes that a peculiar facet of some rights claimed involves changing the meaning of words. Thus marriage taken to be the union of a man and a woman is thought to imply discrimination against people of the same sex who want an optimally permanent union. The result is that “marriage” now refers to any permanent relationship. Well, in some quarters.
Rist speaks of the danger of limitless human rights claims and the myth of human equalization. For one thing, rights claims both diminish and polarize the political process. As Burke pointed out, equality can only be achieved in defiance of the common understanding of the nature of man and the nature of society.
In the final quarter of the book, the reader will find two disquieting chapters, entitled “Virtual Morality: Propaganda as Social Glue” and “The Way to Absolute Nihilism.” These are followed by chapter-length treatments of a number of twentieth-century philosophers: “Parfit and Heidegger,” “Strawson and Nagel,” and “The Personalism of Edith Stein.” Hardly anyone of note has escaped Rist’s attention.
What Is a Person? does more than define the Mainstream and its modern deviations. Given its comprehension, the book is almost a history of Western civilization. Professor Rist’s lifetime of learning is apparent on nearly every page. The serious reader may find himself drawn to other works he may have missed by this distinguished author.