Personalism

Personalism is a philosophical school of thought searching to describe the uniqueness of a human person in the world of nature, specifically in relation to animals. One of the main points of interest of personalism is human subjectivity or self-consciousness, experienced in a person's own acts and inner happenings - in "everything in the human being that is internal, whereby each human being is an eye witness of its own self".^[1].

Other principles:

1. Persons have unique value, and
2. Only persons have free will

According to Idealism there is one more principle

1. Only persons are real (in the ontological sense).

Personalism as diverse category of thought

Writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,^[2] noted scholar Thomas D. Williams cites 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 universal 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 and their ties to phenomenology and existentialism, some dominant forms of personalism have not lent themselves to systematic treatises.

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 communitarian dimension. The title 'personalism' can therefore legitimately be applied to any school of thought that focuses on the reality 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 human person should be the ontological and epistemological starting point of philosophical reflection. They 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" [Williams, 2009].

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.

Emmanuel Mounier's Personalism

In France, philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) was the leading proponent of Personalism, around which he founded the review L'Esprit, which continues to exist 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.

A famous historian of Fascism, Zeev Sternhell, has identified personalism with fascism in a very controversial manner, claiming that Mounier's personalism movement "shared ideas and political reflexes with fascism". He argued that Mounier's "revolt against individualism and materialism" would have led him to share the ideology of fascism^[3].

Boston Personalism

Personalism flourished in the early 20th century at Boston University in a movement known as Boston Personalism and 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 meaning of the word 'person' in this 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 reduce the importance of God.

California Personalism

George Holmes Howison taught a metaphysical theory called Personal Idealism ^[4] which was also called "California Personalism" by others to distinguish it from another type of Personalism called "Boston Personalism" which was taught by Borden Parker Bowne. 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 Personalistic Idealism Borden Parker Bowne and Edgar S. Brightman and Realistic Personal Theism 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.^[5]

The Personal Idealism of Howison was explained in his book " The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism" and was carried on by Ralph Tyler Flewelling. 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. It is no wonder Howison found no disciples among the religious, for whom his thought was heretical, or the non-religious, who thought his proposals too religious; only J. M. E. McTaggart's idealist atheism or Thomas Davidson's Apeirionism seem to resemble Howisons personal idealism. ^[6]

Antecedents and influence

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.

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. (see his essay “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”)

Pope John Paul II was also influenced by personalism. Before becoming Pope, he wrote Person and Act (sometimes mistranslated as The Acting Person), a philosophical work suffused with Personalism (ISBN 90-277-0985-8). 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^[7]. His writings as Pope, of course, influenced a generation of Catholic theologians since who have taken up Personalist perspectives on the theology of the family and social order.

Notable Personalists

Notes

See also

• Can Lao Party, the Revolutionary Personalist Party, a South Vietnamese party founded and led by Ngo Dinh Nhu for use as an instrument of control for the presidency of his brother Ngo Dinh Diem
• Charles Liebman on Jewish personalism
• Francisco Rolão Preto, leader of the National Syndycalists, an Integralist Personalist group.
• The Personalist - a journal dedicated to personalism from about 1920-1979, now the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.
• Juan Manuel Burgos Velasco

External links

• Emmanuel Mounier and Personalism
• Personalism: A Brief Account. Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, includes link to personalism bibliography
• Personalism Magazine (Lublin, Poland)
• History of Personalism - Acton Institute - also articles on Economic Personalism
• Asociación Española de Personalismo - Spain (in Spanish)
• La Vie Nouvelle (Homepage)