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 Truth Seekers: Why We Need an Authentic Metaphysics of the Human Person | Brian Jones, M.A. | September 1, 2011 | Ignatius Insight  Print-friendly
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In studying the metaphysics of the person, we continually receive a better understanding of ourselves and the true meaning of what it is to be a person. An authentic metaphysics of the person continually helps us to realize we are not "asleep," but rather, an "awakened" being. As an "awakened" being, we are conscious of the world and ourselves, capable of knowing the truth, willing the good, and of experiencing love, joy, sorrow, and sadness. Unfortunately, we live in a society that has lost this fundamental metaphysical outlook. There does not even seem to be a consensus on what it means to actually be a person. And there are many who will think that this subject is of little importance and not relevant to our times. We live in a time that is predominantly motivated by a utilitarian philosophical view towards persons, and when their so-called "value" runs out, they cease being a person. I want to provide a few brief reflections wherein which I will examine the person in relation to value, as well the relationship between person and substance in order to gain a greater knowledge of the metaphysics of the person. The relationship between person and value is vital for a foundational understanding the metaphysics of the person. Value always involves reference to persons. Value necessitates a right or due response, and only a person is capable of making such a response. My dog Kirby cannot give a right response, let alone any response, to value. To think that a dog or any animal could give a response to value would seem absurd. The influence of value on the world always goes through the person because it motivates us and it appeals to us as persons. Since value motivates and appeals to persons, they call for a personal decision and response. Dietrich von Hildebrand expresses this point in his book, Liturgy and Personality, when he says: The very soul of the response to value is the consciousness that an adequate response is due to each value according to its rank. The motive of the response to value should never be the desire to bring about the transformation of the person, but to give to value its due response. (64)Von Hildebrand notes that values "exist in themselves, regardless if they are perceived or not. Values are oriented towards the world of persons and they ought to be perceived and responded to properly by persons." So what happens when the proper responses to value are made? Is the proper response to value, an objective value perceivable by all, utterly pointless? When the proper response to value is given, a person unfolds his being and his calling as a person. As persons, we are continually perfected in and through our relation to values. Von Hildebrand notes, "the right response to value separates the theocentric man from the egocentric man." (65) If I strive only to gratify my own desires, then I am shut up with in myself, and I am incapable of something such as the gift of myself to another. The person is incapable of giving himself up to the world of meaning and value, simply for its own sake and for no other reason. When I respond truly to values, I actually transcend my own self-limitations. In this proper response to values, I find the true authentic happiness that all are meant for. As noted before, every value deserves an adequate response, but this can only be apprehended directly; it cannot be deduced or demonstrated from something else. Von Hildebrand says that "this primary fact finds its highest expression in the response to value of adoring love and glorification of God Who includes all values." (65) In order to be truly happy in this life and develop my full potential as person, I must seek truth, goodness, beauty, other persons, and ultimately, God.  
As important as it is to see the relation between person and value, it is just as important to understand the relation between person and substance. In order to gain a better understanding of the relation between person and substance, there are three important points to consider. First, man is really a composite unity of body and soul. The soul is not simply in a body and it does not just use the body. The soul is one with the body and forms one unified substantial being with the body. Substance is an endpoint in reality and stands in itself and not as the property of something else. The person is also characterized in this way. We as persons are separate from animals or plants because we are marked off by our freedom. Any action that I take originates with in itself. Animals react instinctively and plants respond from the organic forces from with in, but persons do not act that way. I am the cause of my own actions and I am responsible for my own actions and decisions. Another important mark of substance allows us to see that substance stands apart from its surroundings as an individual being. As a person, I cannot be split in half nor can I be fused with another being to become something else. Persons are never just part of a continuum. I am organized from within and I have my own center of unity and organization that explains and reveals my individuality. The self is indivisible and unrepeatable and can't be substituted for by any other being. Finally, substance is the enduring center of a being, that which endures throughout the life or existence of the being. It is important to remember that this does not deny the possibility of substantial change in the sense of unfolding and developing from with in. The person remains self-identically the same throughout his entire life. I am the same person now as when I was five months old. The accidents of my body have changed and are replaced over time, but the self endures and knows that it endures as the same conscious being. A third point in detailing the relationship between person and substance is whether substantial being is immaterial or not. Is substantial being something concretely real and individual, or is it just a meaningless abstraction? There are four reasons why the self is a non-material, though real and substantial being. The first reason is that it would not make any sense to speak of the self as extended in space, or as having a height or a width, or as round or flat. The personal acts and experiences of the self, such as joy, gladness, sorrow, and hope, have no spatial extension. It would be bizarre to speak of my happiness being two inches to the upper right of my willing. The second point is that the self cannot be divisible. My personal acts cannot be divided into parts. St. Thomas says that there is a distinction between "human acts" (i.e., intentional, deliberately willed) and "acts of man" (i.e., walking, sleeping, drinking), but this of course does not separate the self into parts. A third reason is the distinct difference between the self and matter. The personal self has a completely different structure compared to matter, which allows the self to do certain things that matter can't do. When I go to pray in the evening, I am capable of self-reflection and looking within myself and examining my conscience. We can recognize the existence of matter, but matter cannot affirm its own existence. Only the immaterial, real being is capable of this reflection and examination because the subject and object of consciousness is the same being. The final reason relies upon the unique unrepeatability of the self, or as Dr. John Crosby calls it, incommunicability. The incommunicability of the person refers to that which is shared by no other. The self cannot be reduced to the brain or any other body part. We can more clearly this is uniqueness of the person through an example. Let us take the newspaper. Imagine that I grabbed the sports section from today's newspaper and set it on my desk to read it. After reading the newspaper for five minutes, somebody in the hall wants to talk to me. Another person comes in and substitutes my paper for another edition of today's paper. When I return to continue reading, it would be humorous to think that I would yell, "Who took my paper?" Even if by some minute chance, I recognized that my paper had been switched, what is the big deal? It is just a newspaper, and if I had lost it, I could just get another one. This is not the case with human beings. If a parent loses a child, it would be contrary to reason for the parent to say, "I will just get another Bobby." No person could ever be copied or multiplied, not even by God Himself. Each self is its own unique center of knowing, willing, loving, etc. Its being depends on its own unique decisions and responses to reality. As Dr. Crosby says in his book, Selfhood of the Human Person, "every time a person goes out of existence, it leaves a great void in the universe." In his encyclical Fides et Ratio, Blessed Pope John Paul II declared that our society is in dire need of a return to an authentic metaphysics. A metaphysics worthy of the name presupposes that the intelligible reality we desire to know is in fact not of our own creation. Metaphysical enquiry calls upon the human person to ask the fundamental questions that are required for a more humanized existence. Through this experience, man comes to realize that he cannot reject the knowable truth implanted in the created order of things and most especially, in him. The human person is at the center of everything that is. May we continually pursue this truth without rest, and fulfill our unique vocations as human beings, an appropriate title given by our beloved Pope John Paul II: truth seeker! Related Ignatius Insight Articles, Excerpts, and Interviews: • The Dignity of the Human Person: Pope John Paul II's Teaching on Divinization in the Trinitarian Encyclicals | Carl E. Olson • Pope John Paul II and the Christ-centered Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes | Douglas Bushman • Acting Reasonable: Democracy, Authority, and Natural Rights in the Thought of Jacques Maritain | Brian Jones, M.A. • Jacques Maritain and Dignitatis Humanae: Natural Law as the Common Language of Religious Freedom | Brian Jones, M.A. • The Two Most Important Philosophers Who Ever Lived | Peter Kreeft • "The Agent of Truth on the Margin of the World" | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. • "The Dignity of the Person Must Be Recognized..." | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. • Dignitas Personae: On the Originality of Every Human Person | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. • Contemplation | Dietrich von Hildebrand Brian Jones is currently an MA philosophy student at the University of St. Thomas in Houston; he received an MA in theology from Franciscan University. He and his wife, Michelle, just welcomed the birth of their first child, Therese Maria. Visit the Insight Scoop Blog and read the latest posts and comments by IgnatiusInsight.com staff and readers about current events, controversies, and news in the Church! |
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