What Is a Person? Realities, Constructs, Illusions by John M. Rist

Abstract

Reviewed by: What Is a Person? Realities, Constructs, Illusions by John M. Rist Jude P. Dougherty RIST, John M. What Is a Person? Realities, Constructs, Illusions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. vii + 188 pp. Cloth, $34.99 John M. Rist is emeritus professor of the University of Toronto. Author of more than a dozen books and over a hundred articles on ancient philosophy, patristics, and ethics, he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Aquinas Medalist of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. The immediate origin of this book is a series of lectures he gave to the graduate faculty of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America. He tells the reader up front that the book will make no claims about the immortality of the human soul or of the person. What he attempts to answer, he says, is a more elementary question: What does the concept of "person" add to our understanding of what it means to be a human being? Most contemporary philosophers assume they live in a godless world. The result: In a soulless and godless world there is no basis for morality; all norms are deemed mere moral constructs. In such a world, it is difficult to defend the concept of "person" and the allied concept of "human dignity." Given the absence of a clear understanding of the concept in contemporary academic discourse, Rist examines the concept of "person" as it has been held through the ages, from antiquity to the present. He begins with Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, and then consults the thought of Plotinus, Porphyry, Boethius, Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Aquinas, and Scotus, among others. He finds in these thinkers what he calls the "Mainstream": a notion of person that prevailed until challenged in the sixteenth century by neopagans like Giordano Bruno and subsequently attacked by the British empiricists, to say nothing of Nietzsche and Heidegger centuries later, who chose to revert to pre-Christian notions found in classical antiquity. It is true that recognition of human dignity was a feature of ancient Rome, but one that followed an acknowledgment of a hierarchy among human beings, each person due recognition according to status. The Apostle Paul taught differently: "In God's eyes all human beings possess [End Page 856] equal dignity." This became the common Christian teaching with its implications in the social order. It was the gospel's teaching that motivated Bartholomew de Las Casas (1484–1566) to assume defense of the rights of natives of the West Indies against the Spanish conquistadores, arguing that the former were fully human and not natural slaves. In defense of their rights, Las Casas was even prepared to tolerate their barbarous religious practices. They were to be converted, not compelled to worship the Christian God of their conquerors. Freedom of religion he considered to be a basic right. British empiricism of the eighteenth century, following Hume and Locke, produced Hobbes and Bentham, both of whom denied freedom of religion. Given a secular view of human nature, the task of defending human dignity was assumed by many. The names of participants flow by: Kant, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Berkeley, and Adam Smith. Each grapples with the issue: How can one hold on to morality in a godless and antimetaphysical world? Sympathy and empathy, promoted by some Renaissance humanists, or the invocation of Rousseau's "general will," left much to be desired. Kant's categorical imperative ("Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it become a universal law") seemed to offer a resolution. The gradual shift from talk of "human dignity" (Christian language, Rist points out) to "rights talk" seemed to many to offer the best choice, in a post-Christian world, of preserving human rights without explicitly drawing upon religious principles. Kant's claim that we should show respect for every human being by treating each as an end in himself was a fruitful legacy of his pietist upbringing. Grotius had long before argued that if the Christian God did not exist, some sort of natural law did, and consequently we would conveniently find some mutually agreeable deontological principles in order...