The Human Person as the Image of God

Abstract

Those who come to Paris to philosophically examine the human person must surely be mindful of the great philosophers who have taught here and who have sustained an atmosphere of gravitas most conducive to philosophical discourse. In my own case, I must pay respectful tribute to those Parisian philosophers from whose works I have learned so much over the years, such as Thomas Aquinas, Henri Bergson, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, Yves Simon, and the still living Paul Ricoeur, and the recently deceased, Emmanuel Levinas — especially from Levinas. As a sign of my gratitude to Levinas, through whose writings I and others like me have learned what a Jewish philosopher can be, let me begin with a quote from his essay, “The Rights of Man and the Rights of the Other”: These rights are, in a sense, a priori: independent of any power that would be the original share of each human being in the blind distribution of nature’s energy and society’s influence... Prior to all entitlement: to all tradition, all jurisprudence, all granting of privileges... Or is it perhaps the case that it’s a priori may signify an ineluctable authority... the authority that is, perhaps — but before all theology — in the respect of the rights of man itself, God’s original coming to the mind of man (1994: 117–17). KeywordsHuman PersonJewish TraditionPhilosophical AnthropologyConstitution OftheAncient IdeaThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.