Personalism - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Personalism is a philosophical school of thought searching to describe the uniqueness of a human person

Person

A person is a human being, or an entity that has certain capacities or attributes strongly associated with being human , for example in a particular moral or legal context...

in the world of nature, specifically in relation to animal

Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...

s. One of the main points of interest of personalism is human subjectivity or self-consciousness, experienced in a person's own acts and inner happenings—in "everything in the human being that is internal, whereby each human being is an eye witness of its own self".

Other principles:

Persons have unique value, and
Only persons have free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...

According to Idealism

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

there is one more principle

Only persons are real (in the ontological sense).

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

(469–399 B.C.) is praised for having taken philosophy seriously as the search for truth by which to live, even at the cost of his life, and opposed moral relativism

Moral relativism

Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...

by a critical, rational method which combined an ethics of satisfaction and an ethics of reason. He discovered the soul or self as the center from which sprang all human action.

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

(427–347 B.C.) the debt of Personalism is philosophically most significant. He stated that only the logical, the ideal, and the self–active is true. His doctrine of Eternal Ideas provided a clear affirmation of the objectivity of value–norms independent of human opinion. In his method, Plato contributed what he called a ‘synopsis’, a deliberate viewing of experience in its larger and more richly significant wholes. In ethics, he espoused a doctrine of self–realization, the aspiration to become a harmonious whole in which every aspect of the soul might take the role most consonant with the meaningful unity of the whole.

Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than...

(500–430 B.C.) approached a personalistic Theism by his doctrine that the divine Nous or Mind governs all motion.

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

(384–322 B.C.) emphasized reality as concrete and individual, and thus corrected Plato’s tendency toward an abstract metaphysical universalism. He substituted the World–Soul of Plato for a single self–conscious Being, a ‘Prime’ or ‘Unmoved Mover’. To Aristotle the American Personalists gratefully attribute an increased emphasis upon empirical method and a sharpening of logical instruments, the continuance of the ethical tradition of self–realization and an aesthetic theory which found intimate positive relations between aesthetic experience and other needs of the human person.

Gregory of Nyssa

St. Gregory of Nyssa was a Christian bishop and saint. He was a younger brother of Basil the Great and a good friend of Gregory of Nazianzus. His significance has long been recognized in the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholic and Roman Catholic branches of Christianity...

(c 335 – after 394) emphasized the notion of humankind as created in the image of God. He was among the first to explicitly claim that God is qualitatively infinite, and so incomprehensible. From this follows that humankind, being the image of God, is also to some extent incomprehensible and that every person has infinite value. This led him to his famous critique of slavery:

God said, Let us make man in our image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God's? (Homilies on Ecclesiastes)

Augustine

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

(354–430) developed the conception of the unity of the mental life, the significance of the will in the life of both God and humans, and also he formulated the truths that self–certainty is more immediate than our knowledge of the external world and that valid metaphysics must be based on the self–knowledge of the finite personality. Not only did he put thought above things but he valued the thinker above thought. Augustine established the existence of the soul as a thinking and willing being. In his Confessions and De Trinitate, he made much use of analogies between observed aspects of the human soul and the distinctions within the Holy Trinity, thus showing many times his belief in a profound kinship between the human soul and God, despite the mystery and transcendence which he also emphasized.

Boëthius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius was a philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many consuls. His father, Flavius Manlius Boethius, was consul in 487 after...

(480–524) defined the person as the individual substance of a rational nature (Personae est definitio: naturae rationabilis individua substantia).

Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas

Avicenna

Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...

(980–1037) in the Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic East and Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...

(1225–1274) in the Christian

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

West drew from Aristotle a personalistic interpretation and thereby preserved the peculiar genius of Eastern and Western culture. St. Thomas ascribed efficient as well as final causality to God and thus made the world directly dependent upon the divine will both for its origin and its preservation (creatio et conservatio mundi). He attributed a distinctly personal character to God as the Author of all being and established the belief in personal immortality, defending a system of philosophical ethics and ascribing to humans the highest worth possessed by any creature on earth.

Descartes

René Descartes

René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...

(1596–1650) revived the Augustinian doctrine of the primacy of self–certainty and made it basic to his system: Cogito, ergo sum (or more correctly, cogito sum, simply). At the same time he broke the Aristotelian distinction between matter and form which had triumphed over the western mind for almost two thousand years, and in its place he put a radical distinction between thought and extension or mind and body. He held the mind to be independent of the body and by virtue of its own unique self–identity capable of an immortal destiny.

Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) defined more precisely the nature of individuality and ascribed to the individual a large degree of metaphysical independence. He conceived of substance as realized both in the Infinite and in finite monads as psychical and active. The Leibnizian monadology represented reality as made up of active individuals, including human persons but also a vast variety of other psychic units, ranging from the most dimly conscious or unconscious sleeping monads to the sublime consciousness of God. Every monad is active (“to be is to act”) in the universe consisting of simple psychic monads, but the monads do not interact (only seem to) by virtue of a pre–established harmony. As Descartes reintroduced the primacy of self–certainty, so Leibniz reformulated the principle of individuality.

Berkeley

George Berkeley

George Berkeley , also known as Bishop Berkeley , was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism"...

(1685–1753) was the first philosophical personal idealist. He completely denied the substantial reality of the material world, reducing it to a series of presentations produced in finite minds by the Infinite. To God and to souls alone did he ascribe metaphysical reality. All reality consists of active spirits and their perceptions or passive ideas. There is no unconscious material substance (esse est percipi). Material substance is unverifiable. Nature exists only in spirits, primarily in the Divine Spirit or Person, and then is communicated as “a divine language” to human spirits. In describing the material world as the divine language G. Berkeley combined Christian Theism with metaphysical Idealism. His system was, in the strict sense of the term, a Personal Idealism.

Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

(1724–1804) influenced American Personalism under three headings: the theory of knowledge, ethical theory, and the primacy of practical reason. Personalism owes much to Kant’s theory of knowledge. The central aspect of his theory is the activity of the mind. By this doctrine of the creative activity of thought Kant gave to the spiritual individualism of Leibniz and Berkeley a definiteness of content that it had previously lacked and also supplied it with a firm epistemological basis.

Berdyaev

Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бердя́ев) (1874–1948) was a Russian religious and political philosopher who emphasized human freedom, subjectivity and creativity.

A Presentation of Personalism

Personalism as diverse category of thought

Writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...

, noted scholar Thomas D. Williams cites a plurality of "schools" holding to a "personalist" ethic and "Weltanschauung," arguing:

Personalism exists in many different versions, and this makes it somewhat difficult to define as a philosophical and theological movement. Many philosophical schools have at their core one particular thinker or even one central work which serves as a canonical touchstone. Personalism is a more diffused and eclectic movement and has no such universal reference point. It is, in point of fact, more proper to speak of many personalisms than one personalism. In 1947 Jacques Maritain could write that there are at least 'a dozen personalist doctrines, which at times have nothing more in common than the word ‘person.’ Moreover, because of their emphasis on the subjectivity of the person and their ties to phenomenology and existentialism, some dominant forms of personalism have not lent themselves to systematic treatises.

It is perhaps more proper to speak of personalism as a 'current' or a broader 'worldview, since it represents more than one school or one doctrine while at the same time the most important forms of personalism do display some central and essential commonalities. Most important of the latter is the general affirmation of the centrality of the person for philosophical thought. Personalism posits ultimate reality and value in personhood — human as well as (at least for most personalists) divine. It emphasizes the significance, uniqueness and inviolability of the person, as well as the person's essentially relational or communitarian dimension. The title 'personalism' can therefore legitimately be applied to any school of thought that focuses on the reality of persons and their unique status among beings in general, and personalists normally acknowledge the indirect contributions of a wide range of thinkers throughout the history of philosophy who did not regard themselves as personalists. Personalists believe that the human person should be the ontological and epistemological starting point of philosophical reflection. They are concerned to investigate the experience, the status, and the dignity of the human being as person, and regard this as the starting-point for all subsequent philosophical analysis" [Williams, 2009].

Thus, according to Williams, one ought to keep in mind that although there may be dozens of theorists and social activists in the West adhering to the rubric "personalism," their particular foci may, in fact, be asymptotic

Asymptote

In analytic geometry, an asymptote of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as they tend to infinity. Some sources include the requirement that the curve may not cross the line infinitely often, but this is unusual for modern authors...

, and even diverge at material junctures.

Emmanuel Mounier's Personalism

In France, philosopher Emmanuel Mounier

Emmanuel Mounier

Emmanuel Mounier was a French philosopher.Mounier was the guiding spirit in the French Personalist movement, and founder and director of Esprit, the magazine which was the organ of the movement. Mounier, who was the child of peasants, was a brilliant scholar at the Sorbonne...

(1905-1950) was the leading proponent of Personalism, around which he founded the review L'Esprit
Esprit (magazine)
Esprit is a French literary magazine. Founded in October 1932 by Emmanuel Mounier, it was the principal review of personalist intellectuals of the time. From 1957 to 1976, it was directed by Jean-Marie Domenach. Paul Thibaud directed it from 1977 to 1989. The philosopher Paul Ricoeur often...

, which continues to exist to this day. Under Jean-Marie Domenach

Jean-Marie Domenach

Jean-Marie Domenach was a French writer and intellectual. He was noted as a left-wing and Catholic thinker.He took over in 1957 the editorship of Esprit, the literary and political journal of personalism founded in 1945 by Emmanuel Mounier and continued from 1950 to 1957 by Albert Béguin...

's direction, it criticized the use of torture during the Algerian War

Torture during the Algerian War

Elements of the French Armed Forces as well as of the opposing Algerian National Liberation Front made use of torture during the Algerian War of Independence , creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet estimates that there were "possibly hundreds of thousands of instances of...

. Personalism was seen as an alternative to both Liberalism

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

and Marxism

Marxism

Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

, which respected human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

and the human personality without indulging in excessive collectivism

Collectivism

Collectivism is any philosophic, political, economic, mystical or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or nation...

. Mounier's Personalism had an important influence in France, including in political movements, such as Marc Sangnier

Marc Sangnier

Marc Sangnier was a French Roman Catholic thinker and politician, who in 1894 founded le Sillon , a liberal Catholic movement. He aimed to bring Catholicism into a greater conformity with French Republican ideals and to provide an alternative to anticlerical labour movements...

's Ligue de la jeune République
Ligue de la jeune République
The Young Republic League was a French political party created in 1912 by Marc Sangnier, in continuation of Le Sillon, Sangnier's Christian social movement which was disavowed by the Pope Pius X...

(Young Republic League) founded in 1912.

A famous historian of Fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

, Zeev Sternhell

Zeev Sternhell

Zeev Sternhell is an Israeli historian and one of the world's leading experts on Fascism. Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and writes for Haaretz newspaper.-Biography:...

, has identified personalism with fascism in a very controversial manner, claiming that Mounier's personalism movement "shared ideas and political reflexes with fascism". He argued that Mounier's "revolt against individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...

and materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

" would have led him to share the ideology of fascism.

Roman Catholic personalism

A distinctively Christian personalism developed in the 20th century. Its main theorist was the Polish philosopher Karol Wojtyła (later Pope John Paul II). In his work, Love and Responsibility
Love and Responsibility
Love and Responsibility is a book written by Karol Wojtyła before he became Pope John Paul II and was originally published in Polish in 1960 and in English in 1981....

, first published in 1960, Wojtyła proposed what he termed 'the personalistic norm': "This norm, in its negative aspect, states that the person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end. In its positive form the personalistic norm confirms this: the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude is love".
This is a first principle of Christian personalism: persons are not to be used, but to be respected and loved. In Gaudium et spes
Gaudium et Spes
Gaudium et Spes , the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, was one of the four Apostolic Constitutions resulting from the Second Vatican Council...

, the Second Vatican Council

Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council addressed relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the modern world. It was the twenty-first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church and the second to be held at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It opened under Pope John XXIII on 11 October 1962 and closed...

formulated what has come to be considered the key expression of this personalism: "man....cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself".

This formula for self-fulfillment offers a key for overcoming the dichotomy frequently felt between personal "realization" and the needs or demands of social life. Personalism also implies inter-personalism, as Benedict XVI stresses in Caritas in Veritate

Caritas in Veritate

Caritas in Veritate is the third encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI and his first social encyclical. It was signed on June 29, 2009, and was published on July 7, 2009...

: "As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal relations. The more authentically he or she lives these relations, the more his or her own personal identity matures. It is not by isolation that man establishes his worth, but by placing himself in relation with others and with God."

Boston Personalism

Personalism flourished in the early 20th century at Boston University

Boston University

Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

in a movement known as Boston Personalism and led by theologian Borden Parker Bowne

Borden Parker Bowne

Borden Parker Bowne was an American Christian philosopher and theologian in the Methodist tradition. In 1876 he became a professor of philosophy at Boston University, where he taught for more than thirty years. He later served as dean of the graduate school. Bowne was an acute critic of positivism...

. Bowne emphasized the person as the fundamental category for explaining reality and asserted that only persons are real. He stood in opposition to certain forms of materialism

Materialism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

which would describe persons as mere particles of matter. For example, against the argument that persons are insignificant specks of dust in the vast universe, Bowne would say that it is impossible for the entire universe to exist apart from a person to experience it. Ontologically speaking, the person is “larger” than the universe because the universe is but one small aspect of the person who experiences it. Personalism affirms the existence of the soul

Soul

A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...

. Most personalists assert that God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

is real and that God is a person (or as in Christian trinitarianism, three persons, although it is important to note that the meaning of the word 'person' in this context is significantly different from Bowne's usage).

Bowne also held that persons have value (see axiology

Axiology

Axiology is the philosophical study of value. It is either the collective term for ethics and aesthetics—philosophical fields that depend crucially on notions of value—or the foundation for these fields, and thus similar to value theory and meta-ethics...

, value theory

Value theory

Value theory encompasses a range of approaches to understanding how, why and to what degree people should value things; whether the thing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. This investigation began in ancient philosophy, where it is called axiology or ethics. Early philosophical...

, and ethics

Ethics

Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...

). In declaring the absolute value of personhood, he stood firmly against certain forms of philosophical naturalism (including social Darwinism

Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...

) which sought to reduce the value of persons. He also stood against certain forms of positivism

Positivism

Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....

which sought to reduce the importance of God.

California Personalism

George Holmes Howison

George Holmes Howison was an American philosopher who established the philosophy department at the University of California, Berkeley and held the position there of Mills Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity. He also founded the Philosophical Union, one of the oldest...

taught a metaphysical theory called Personal Idealism which was also called "California Personalism" by others to distinguish it from another type of Personalism called "Boston Personalism"(see above) which was taught by Borden Parker Bowne

Borden Parker Bowne

.
Howison maintained that both impersonal, monistic idealism and materialism run contrary to the moral freedom experienced by persons. To deny the freedom to pursue the ideals of truth, beauty, and "benignant love" is to undermine every profound human venture, including science, morality, and philosophy. Thus, even Personalistic Idealism Borden Parker Bowne

Borden Parker Bowne

and Edgar S. Brightman

Edgar S. Brightman

Edgar Sheffield Brightman was a philosopher and Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and liberal theology, and promulgated the philosophy known as Boston personalism....

and Realistic Personal Theism Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas

are inadequate, for they make finite persons dependent for their existence upon an infinite Person and support this view by an unintelligible doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

The Personal Idealism of Howison was explained in his book " The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism". Howison created a radically democratic notion of personal idealism that extended all the way to God, who was no more the ultimate monarch, no longer the only ruler and creator of the universe, but the ultimate democrat in eternal relation to other eternal persons. Howison found few disciples among the religious, for whom his thought was heretical; the non-religious, on the other hand, considered his proposals too religious; only J. M. E. McTaggart

J. M. E. McTaggart

John McTaggart was an idealist metaphysician. For most of his life McTaggart was a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was an exponent of the philosophy of Hegel and among the most notable of the British idealists.-Personal life:J. M. E. McTaggart was born in 1866...

's idealist atheism or Thomas Davidson

Thomas Davidson (philosopher)

Thomas Davidson was a Scottish-American philosopher and lecturer.-Biography:Davidson was born of Presbyterian parents at Old Deer, near Aberdeen. After graduating from Aberdeen University as first graduate and Greek prizeman, he held the position of rector of the grammar school of Old Aberdeen...

's Apeirionism seem to resemble Howisons personal idealism.

Antecedents and influence

Philosopher Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

, though not formally considered a personalist, made an important contribution to the personalist cause by declaring that a person is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends of other people, but that he possesses dignity (an absolute inner worth) and is to be valued as an end in himself.

Catholic philosopher and theologian John Henry Newman, has been posited as a main proponent of personalism by John Crosby of Franciscan University in his book Personalist Papers. Crosby notes Newman's personal approach to faith, as outlined in Grammar of Assent

Grammar of Assent

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent is John Henry Newman's seminal work. While it was completed in 1870, Newman revealed to friends that it took him 20 years to write the book....

as a main source of Newman's personalism.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...

was greatly influenced by personalism in his studies at Boston University

Boston University

. King came to agree with the position that only personality is real. It solidified his understanding of God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

as a personal God. It also gave him a metaphysical basis for his belief that all human personality has dignity and worth. (see his essay “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence”)

Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II

Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

was also influenced by personalism. Before becoming Pope, he wrote Person and Act (sometimes mistranslated as The Acting Person), a philosophical work suffused with personalism (ISBN 90-277-0985-8). Though he remained well within the traditional stream of Catholic social and individual morality, his explanation of the origins of moral norms, as expressed in his encyclical

Encyclical

An encyclical was originally a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area in the ancient Catholic Church. At that time, the word could be used for a letter sent out by any bishop...

s on economics and on sexual morality, for instance, was largely drawn from a personalist perspective. His writings as Roman pontiff, of course, influenced a generation of Catholic theologians since who have taken up personalist perspectives on the theology of the family and social order.

Notable Personalists

Herman Van Rompuy
Herman Van Rompuy
Herman Achille Van Rompuy is the first long-term and full-time President of the European Council...

, current President of the European Council
European Council
The European Council is an institution of the European Union. It comprises the heads of state or government of the EU member states, along with the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council, currently Herman Van Rompuy...
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...

(Karol Wojtyła)
Dietrich von Hildebrand
Dietrich von Hildebrand
Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German Catholic philosopher and theologian who was called by Pope Pius XII "the 20th Century Doctor of the Church."...
Thomas Buford
Thomas Buford
Thomas O. Buford holds the Louis G. Forgione Chair of Philosophy at Furman University and has been an adherent of the Boston Personalist branch of philosophy.-Academic career:Buford joined the faculty at Furman University in 1969...
Edgar S. Brightman
Edgar S. Brightman
Edgar Sheffield Brightman was a philosopher and Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and liberal theology, and promulgated the philosophy known as Boston personalism....
Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist and devout Catholic convert; she advocated the Catholic economic theory of Distributism. She was also considered to be an anarchist, and did not hesitate to use the term...
Ralph Tyler Flewelling
Ralph Tyler Flewelling
Ralph Tyler Flewelling was an American philosophy professor, born ar De Witt, Mich., and educated at the University of Michigan, Alma College . the Garrett Biblical Institute , and Boston University...
George Holmes Howison
George Holmes Howison
George Holmes Howison was an American philosopher who established the philosophy department at the University of California, Berkeley and held the position there of Mills Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy and Civil Polity. He also founded the Philosophical Union, one of the oldest...

Bogumil Gacka
Bogumil Gacka
Bogumil Zygmunt Gacka is a Catholic priest, member of the Marian Fathers and the Professor of Christian Personalism at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Poland....
Luigi Giussani
Luigi Giussani
Monsignor Luigi Giovanni Giussani , Italian Catholic priest, educator, public intellectual and founder of the international Catholic movement Communion and Liberation .-Biography:...
Georgia Harkness
Georgia Harkness
Georgia Elma Harkness was a Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition. Born in Harkness, New York, a town named after her grandfather, Harkness has been described as one of the first significant American female theologians and was important in the movement to gain ordination for women in...
Albert C. Knudson
Albert C. Knudson
Albert Cornelius Knudson was a Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and the school of liberal theology known as Boston personalism.-Biography:...
Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek
Edvard Kocbek was a Slovenian poet, writer, essayist, translator, political activist, and resistance fighter. He is considered as one of the best authors who have written in Slovene, and one of the best Slovene poets after Prešeren...
Christopher Boykin
Christopher Boykin
Christopher "Big Black" Boykin is an American bodyguard, best known for his role on MTV's Rob & Big, which followed him and his co-star, skateboarder Rob Dyrdek.-Career:...
Milan Komar
Milan Komar
Milan Komar, also known as Emilio Komar was a Slovene Argentine Catholic philosopher and essayist.-Life:...
Edwin Lewis
Edwin Lewis
Edwin Lewis was an American Methodist theologian primarily associated with Drew University in New Jersey.Born in Great Britain, Lewis traveled to Canada as a missionary before continuing his education in the United States...

Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Marcel
Gabriel Honoré Marcel was a French philosopher, a leading Christian existentialist, and author of about 30 plays.He focused on the modern individual's struggle in a technologically dehumanizing society...
Peter Maurin
Peter Maurin
Peter Maurin was a Roman Catholic social activist who founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 with Dorothy Day.Maurin expressed his ideas through short pieces of verse that became known as - Biography :...
Walter George Muelder
Walter George Muelder
Walter George Muelder was an important American social ethicist, ecumenist and public theologian. He studied under Edgar S Brightman at Boston University and began his teaching career at Berea College and the University of Southern California...
A.J. Muste
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngô Ðình Nhu was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Ðình Diệm. Nhu was widely regarded as the architect of the Ngô family's nepotistic and autocratic rule over South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963...
Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu
Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu
Trần Lệ Xuân , popularly known as Madame Nhu, was considered the first lady of South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963. She was the wife of Ngo Dinh Nhu who was the brother and chief adviser to President Ngo Dinh Diem...
Ngo Dinh Thuc

Nikolai Lossky
Nikolai Lossky
Nikolay Onufriyevich Lossky was a Russian philosopher, representative of Russian idealism, intuitionism, personalism, libertarianism, ethics, Axiology , and his philosophy he called intuitive-personalism. Born in Latvia, he spent his working life in St. Petersburg, New York and Paris...
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
Constantin Radulescu-Motru
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a Romanian philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, logician, academic, dramatist, as well as centre-left nationalist politician with a noted anti-fascist discourse...
Charles Renouvier
William Stern
Edith Stein
Edith Stein
Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, sometimes also known as Saint Edith Stein , was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun, regarded as a martyr and saint of the Roman Catholic Church...

(Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
F.C.S. Schiller
Pierre Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, , usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals,...

, Prime Minister of Canada
Francisco de Sá Carneiro, Prime Minister of Portugal

External links

Personalism: a critical introduction By Rufus Burrow
Emmanuel Mounier and Personalism
Personalism: A Brief Account. Department of Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, University of Central Florida
University of Central Florida
The University of Central Florida, commonly referred to as UCF, is a metropolitan public research university located in Orlando, Florida, United States...

, includes link to personalism bibliography
Personalism Magazine (Lublin, Poland)
History of Personalism - Acton Institute - also articles on Economic Personalism

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Socrates

Plato

Anaxagoras

Aristotle

Gregory of Nyssa

Augustine

Boëthius

Avicenna and Thomas Aquinas

Descartes

Leibniz

Berkeley

Kant

Berdyaev

Personalism as diverse category of thought

Emmanuel Mounier's Personalism

Roman Catholic personalism

Boston Personalism

California Personalism

Antecedents and influence

Notable Personalists

See also

External links