The Human Person in Contemporary Philosophy

Abstract

I. In the early part of the sixth century a.d. Boethius defined the person as “an individual substance of rational nature” (rationalis naturae individua substantia). This definition, which became classical and was adopted by, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, obviously implies that every human being is a person, since every human being is (to employ the philosophical terms of Boethius) an individual substance of rational nature. If one cannot be more or less of a human being, so far as “substance” is concerned, one cannot be more or less of a person. One may act as a human person ought not to act or in a way unbefitting a human person; one may even lose the normal use of one's reason; but one does not in this way become depersonalized, in the sense of ceasing to be a person. According to St. Thomas, a disembodied soul is not, strictly speaking, a person, since a disembodied soul is no longer a complete human substance; but every complete human substance is always and necessarily a person.