What is a Person?: Realities, Constructs, Illusions

ISBN-13: 9781108478076 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 294 str.

John M. Rist (University of Toronto)

Opis

In this book, John M. Rist offers an account of the concept of 'person' as it has developed in the West, and how it has become alien in a post-Christian culture. He begins by identifying the 'mainline tradition' about persons as it evolved from the time of Plato to the High Middle Ages, then turns to successive attacks on it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then proceeds to the 'five ways' in which the tradition was savaged or distorted in the nineteenth century and beyond. He concludes by considering whether ideas from contemporary philosophical movements, those that combine a closer analysis of human nature with a more traditional metaphysical background, may enable the tradition to be restored. A timely book on a theme of universal significance, Rist ponders whether we persons matter, and how we have reached a position where we are not sure whether we do.

Recenzje

'What is a Person? is the fruit of enormous learning and a mind capable of contextualizing philosophers differing in language, culture, and historical contexts in a clear, memorable style of exposition.' Christopher Kaczor, The Thomist

Spis treści

Part I. Constructing the 'Mainline Tradition': 1. The first foundations: Plato and Aristotle; 2. From Stoic individuals and personae to Christian persons; 3. Mixtures: Plotinus, Porphyry, Nemesius; 4. Augustine's personae: theology, metaphysics, history; 5. The definition: Boethius and Richard of Saint Victor; 6. Toward a synthesis: Thomas Aquinas; 7. Between two worlds: Duns Scotus; Part II. No God, No Soul; What Person?: 8. Virtue, 'virtue', rights; 9. Descartes on soul, self, mind, nature; 10. Personal identity from Hobbes to Locke; 11. After Locke; 12. Sympathy or empathy: Richardson, Hume, Smith; 13. Ambiguous Rousseau's soul and 'moi'; 14. Kant's rational autonomy; Part III. Toward Disabling the Person: 15. Introducing the five ways; 16. Assimilation and homogenization; 17. The way of Prometheus; 18. Whistling in the humanitarian wind; 19. Virtual morality: propaganda as social glue; 20. The way to an absolute nihilism; Part IV. Persons Restored or Final Solution?: 21. Parfit and Heidegger; 22. Strawson and Nagel; 23. Personalism, phenomenology, Edith Stein; 24. God made Adam and Eve.