Persons: The Difference between `Someone' and `Something'

by Robert Spaemann, Oliver O'Donovan (Translator)

An examination and defense of the concept of personality, long central to Western moral culture but now increasingly under attack, by a leading European philosopher. Persons takes issue with major contemporary philosophers, especially in the English-speaking world (such as Parfit and Singer), who have contributed to the eclipse of the idea, and traces the debate back to the foundations of modern philosophy in Descartes and Locke. Robert Spaemann offers extended discussions of the sources of the idea in Christian theology and its development in Western philosophy. He also provides a number of pointed discussions of pressing practical questions--for example, our treatment of the severely disabled human and the moral status of intelligent non-human animals. The book covers a great deal of ground before coming to a focused all human beings are persons.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Nonfiction, Catholic

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Robert Spaemann wurde 1927 in Berlin geboren. Er promovierte 1952 in Münster, war dann vier Jahre lang als Verlagslektor tätig. 1962 habilitierte er in den Fächern Philosophie und Pädagogik und war bis 1992 ordentlicher Professor an den Universitäten Stuttgart, Heidelberg und München.

Reviews

[Jeremy Fritz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought provoking, tough read.

For God and Humanity at CTS.

[Fr. Daniel Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read such a difficult book to understand with the amount of depth and richness it contains. My professor who assigned it said it best - it is a book you can read over and over and still learn something.

This book is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes you can skim a paragraph after getting the main idea. Spaemann crams every little bit of meaning into each sentence. There is no time to take a mental breath because the deep ideas simply flow. It is heavy into philosophical discourse. It expects you to be able to do abstract thinking. It uses enormous words, often rarely used ones and perhaps some he made up (he originally wrote in German, so I guess that comes with the territory). Prepare to be confused and not understand everything. But also prepare to come away with an incredibly unique and insightful way into understanding who we are as human beings and as persons.

The primary goal of Spaemann is to show that a person, or a "someone" does not depend upon the "something" that is there. Certainly we can use the "something" (characteristics, nature, actions, etc.) to determine whether or not a person is there, but the "someone" stands alone from all of that.

By using clever concepts which any human being can understand but which philosophers often blatantly ignore, such as motivation, recognition, and even play-acting, he makes the case for the human person as being irrevocably part of the human family, a community of persons.

It would be foolish for me to attempt to summarize what he says. I took so many notes and need to go back and process them. It's a hard read but its content is incredibly valuable and helped me to be able to understand life, personhood, and even myself just a little bit better.

Highly recommended - just know what you're getting into.

[Aaron Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Religion is the hope that the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not have the last word on reality” (101).

“There can, and must, be one criterion for personality, and one only; that is biological membership of the human race. The beginning and end of personal existence cannot be taken apart from the beginning and end of human life. If someone exists, that someone has existed since the individual human organism existed, and will continue to exist for as long as the organism continues to live. What it is to be a person is to live a human life. There is no sense in saying such things as ‘Brain-death means the death of the person, even if the human being is still alive.’ The person cannot die before the human being, for the person is the human being, not a property of the human being. The question of the person’s beginning and end is decided on the same terms as that of the biological beginning and end of human life” (247-48).

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly challenging read. The language and writing style took a lot of decoding, but there were some incredible philosophical insights into personhood. It has opened a range of questions on what freedom is, as opposed to autonomy and the role of relationaility in defining person's.

I would highly recommend it, but I think the difficulty would put a lot of people off (it nearly did me at many points).

[Kian Zwo Drei · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read such a rich and dense book like this. There is a depth of meaning in every sentence that could fill essays alone. This demands a lot from you, sometimes you might not quite follow, you would certainly have to read it twice or even many times. As Spaemann's introductory book I do not recommend this his most brilliant work.
In any case - if you want to read about a philosopher with a normative, not relativistic orientation who attaches unique value to the human being, you can't get past Spaemann. A critic of modernism, which by the way connects him very much with the Frankfurt School, even if he could rather be assigned to the conservative and not the progressive side - but, such categories are rather hard to find here.
Some people call him a "Christian philosopher" or "theologian", which is pejorative of his philosophical quality. Spaemann himself has always rejected this attribution, although he was a devout Catholic and also wrote about questions of faith. Anyone who can trace something of Spaemann's depth of thought will also notice that such a denigration has nothing to do with anything.

[Keith]

If you're looking for a Christian philosopher who can help you with questions of personhood (say with regard to the care of unborn children or animals). Nice, short chapters.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific philosophical/theological anthropology with a stunning final chapter.