Persons in Time

Abstract

It can seem implausible that a merely bodily existence could be also a personal existence. Two related lines of thought can mitigate this implausibility. The first, developed in the first part of this paper, is the thought that our bodily existence is better described as an organic, animal existence. Organisms, I argue, are essentially temporal; this essential temporality makes sense of the possibility that some organisms are persons. The second line of thought, addressed in the second part of the paper, considers the relationship between the notion of a person, and temporal existence. Persons need not exist in time, but some do. Consideration of what the temporal existence of a person must be like makes organic existence seem an appropriate way for temporal persons to exist.