A person is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and consequently what makes a person count as a person differ widely among cultures and contexts.
In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes.
The common plural of "person", "people", is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"). The plural "persons" is often used in philosophical and legal writing.
Video Person
Development of the concept
In ancient Rome, the word persona (Latin) or prosopon (????????; Greek) originally referred to the masks worn by actors on stage. The various masks represented the various "personae" in the stage play.
The concept of person was further developed during the Trinitarian and Christological debates of the 4th and 5th centuries in contrast to the word nature. During the theological debates, some philosophical tools (concepts) were needed so that the debates could be held on common basis to all theological schools. The purpose of the debate was to establish the relation, similarities and differences between the ?ó???/Verbum and God. The philosophical concept of person arose, taking the word "prosopon" (????????) from the Greek theatre. Therefore, Christus (the ?ó???/Verbum) and God were defined as different "persons". This concept was applied later to the Holy Ghost, the angels and to all human beings.
Since then, a number of important changes to the word's meaning and use have taken place, and attempts have been made to redefine the word with varying degrees of adoption and influence.
Maps Person
Personhood
The criteria for being a person... are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives.
Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law, and is closely tied to legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to common worldwide general legal practice, only a natural person or legal personality has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability. Personhood continues to be a topic of international debate, and has been questioned during the abolition of slavery and the fight for women's rights, in debates about abortion, fetal rights, and in animal rights advocacy.
Various debates have focused on questions about the personhood of different classes of entities. Historically, the personhood of animals, women, and slaves has been a catalyst of social upheaval. In most societies today, living adult humans are usually considered persons, but depending on the context, theory or definition, the category of "person" may be taken to include or not children or such non-human entities as animals, artificial intelligences, or extraterrestrial life, as well as legal entities such as corporations, sovereign states and other polities, or estates in probate.
Personal identity
Personal identity is the unique identity of persons through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time. In the modern philosophy of mind, this concept of personal identity is sometimes referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time.
Identity is an issue for both continental philosophy and analytic philosophy. A key question in continental philosophy is in what sense we can maintain the modern conception of identity, while realizing many of our prior assumptions about the world are incorrect.
Proposed solutions to the problem of personal identity include continuity of the physical body, continuity of an immaterial mind or soul, continuity of consciousness or memory, the bundle theory of self, continuity of personality after the death of the physical body, and proposals that there are actually no persons or selves who persist over time at all.
See also
References
Further reading
- Cornelia J. de Vogel (1963). The Concept of Personality in Greek and Christian Thought. In Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy. Vol. 2. Edited by J. K. Ryan, Washington: Catholic University of America Press. pp. 20-60
- Lukes, Steven; Carrithers, Michael; Collins, Steven, eds. (1987). The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-27757-4.
- Puccetti, Roland (1968). Persons: A Study of Possible Moral Agents in the Universe. London: Macmillan and Company.
- Stephens, William O. (2006). The Person: Readings in Human Nature. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. ISBN 978-0-13-184811-5.
- Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Person". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Korfmacher, Carsten (May 29, 2006). "Personal Identity". The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2011-03-09.
External links
- Rights of Non-Human Persons Program (Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies)
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