Persons: The Difference Between `Someone' and `Something'

ISBN-13: 9780199281817 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 272 str.

Spaemann

Opis

An examination and defense of the concept of personality, long central to Western moral culture but now increasingly under attack, by a leading European philosopher. Persons takes issue with major contemporary philosophers, especially in the English-speaking world (such as Parfit and Singer), who have contributed to the eclipse of the idea, and traces the debate back to the foundations of modern philosophy in Descartes and Locke. Robert Spaemann offers extended discussions of the sources of the idea in Christian theology and its development in Western philosophy. He also provides a number of pointed discussions of pressing practical questions--for example, our treatment of the severely disabled human and the moral status of intelligent non-human animals. The book covers a great deal of ground before coming to a focused conclusion: all human beings are persons.

Recenzje

Until recently relatively unknown outside Germany, the owrk of the Christian moral philosopher Robert Spaemann is now commanding the attention of English readers; this elegant translation of his work on personhood will do much to further his reputation as a thinker of uncommon breadth and penetration...It is a work of a remarkably poised and fully realized intelligence, full of passages of breathtaking perception, all the more striking for their calm modest simplicity.

O autorze

Robert Spaemann is Emeritus Professor, University of Munich; Honorary Professor, University of Salzburg. Oliver O'Donovan is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, University of Oxford.