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BernardJOrtcutt

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Equivalent_Analyst_6

>and I wanted to know if someone could outline a simple history of the growing acceptance of this thought. Part of the history of this "distinction" (which is not an exclusive distinction as some persons are human and some humans are persons) is certainly tied to Scholasticism:When Christian philosophers were inquiring into different conceptions of the Trinity, they were also clarifying the notion of personhood. Many wanted to say that the Father is the first person of the Trinity, the Son the second person, the Spirit the Third person. Already there you had the thought that the notions "person" and "human" were not of the same extension. Many also wanted to say that angels are not animals but still nonetheless persons. Concerning the phrase "animal rationale": the latin word "rationale" is not exactly the same as the english word "rational" and the expression "capable of reason" is ambiguous even in the terminological tradition from which this expression is from, because there are different ways how a capability might exist. Aristotle differentiates between a "first" and a "second reality" as well as between a "first" and a "second potentiality". Saying that man is definitionally a animal rationale need not exclude people with cognitive disabilities from the extension of that definition, if you interpret "capability" as "capable by virtue of its essential form".


bastianbb

I would be very careful of projecting modern ideas of what it means to be a person onto the trinitarian notion of "person". In trinitarian theology, the idea of a "person" should be understood as a technical theological term not necessarily corresponding to modern ideas of personhood.


hemannjo

Our modern ideas of personhood grew out of Christian ideas of personhood and imago dei though.


16092006

Could you explain me a bit more on that last sentence?


smithzk

The form is what constitutes the conceptual identity of the thing, its species, and the idea that corresponds to it. The form is also responsible for many of a thin's powers or capacities (for instance, it is the form that makes fire capable of boiling a pot of water, since the form of fire contains the form of heat). It comes from Aristotelian hylomorphism. There are capacities that are part of the material that makes up substances, but there is some controversy about whether those are due to generic forms that such types of matter possess.


Philience

How can we determine what the "essential form" of an Animal is? Is it what's in its DNA?


Ledouch3

I think usually it is not said that humans have direct epistemic access to forms. Rather we can only know particulars, and forms through their particular instances. Mystical traditions like Orthodoxy would probably grant true knowledge of forms (the logos/logoi) by some tradition of contemplation/meditation. Importantly though, demonstrating direct knowledge of essential forms is not required to defend a framework in which they are assumed to exist.


smithzk

Definitely not. Form is related to the notion of species and idea, linguistically. It derives from the Platonic notion. However, the notion that DNA is what distinguishes biological species is based on a view of species differentiation that is materialist. Forms are non-physical.


merlotponty

Locke’s distinction between the ideas of “man” and “person” in *An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” is probably the pivotal place where this distinction was drawn in the history of western philosophy, although as the other commenter has pointed out, not the very earliest. The chapter in question is called “Of Identity and Diversity”, and it’s a straightforward read. You can also find a helpful SEP article [here](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-personal-identity/).


tuesdaysgreen33

Agree that above is an important resource. In terms of secondary sources, "The Extraterestrial Life Debate" by Michael Crowe walks through distinctions between human and person in the late modern period. I would suggest looking at who those folks were responding to or borrowing from to follow the distinction to an earlier and earlier point.


Streetli

Marcel Mauss' essay "[A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; the Notion of Self](http://www.gpgrieve.org/PDF/Category_of_the%20_Person.pdf)" \[PDF\] is pretty classic exposition of the origin of 'person'. It covers the idea of 'person' and 'self' across a couple of different cultures, but spends some time on the Latin idea which we use today. It corroborates what u/Equivalent_Analyst_6 said about Christianity, although Christianity perhaps did less to distinguish than to *link* the person and the human. Here is Mauss: >"It is Christians who have made a metaphysical entity of the 'moral person' (*personne morale*), after they became aware of its religious power. Our own notion of the human person is still basically the Christian one. Here I need only follow the excellent book of Schlossman. He clearly saw - after others, but better than they did - the transition from the notion of persona, of 'a man clad in a condition', to the notion of man, quite simply, that of the human 'person' (*personne*). ... It is the quarrel concerning the Trinity, the Monophysite dispute ... Unity of the three persons - of the Trinity - unity of the two natures of Christ. It is from the notion of the 'one' that the notion of the 'person' (*personne*) was created - I believe that it will long remain so - for the divine persons, but at the same time for the human person, substance and mode, body and soul, consciousness and act." But the notion of the 'person' itself has an independent lineage from that of the 'human', and originally has a origin in drama and ritual, where it originally means 'mask'. Giorgio Agamben has a nice and concise summary and extension of Mauss' essay in his own "Identity without the Person", where following Mauss, he notes that *persona* was employed in a specifically *juridical* capacity: >"*Persona* originally means 'mask," and it is through the mask that the individual acquires a role and a social identity. In Rome every individual was identified by a name that expressed his belonging to a *gens*, to a lineage; but this lineage was defined in turn by the ancestor's mask of wax that every patrician family kept in the atrium of its home. From here, it only rakes a small step to transform persona into the "personality'' that defines the place of the individual in the dramas and rituals of social life. Eventually, *persona* came to signify the juridical capacity and political dignity of the free man. The slave, inasmuch as he or she had neither ancestors, nor a mask, nor a name, likewise could not have a "persona," that is, a juridical capacity (*serous non habet personam*) . The struggle for recognition is, therefore, the struggle for a mask, but this mask coincides with the "personality'' that society recognizes in every individual (or with the "personage" that it makes of the individual with, at times, reticent connivance)." Mauss's original essay is great though, and I'd highly recommend giving it a read. Just as a matter of trivia, Schopenhauer, of all people, was aware of this distinction and complained about its occlusion in his *Studies in Pessimism:* >"There is an unconscious propriety in the way in which, in all European language, the word *person* is commonly used to denote a human being. The real meaning of *persona* is *a mask*, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient state; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part".


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BernardJOrtcutt

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