Personalism

PERSONALISM. - From persona (v.), the term goes back to the 19th century (Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, Grote, Teichmüller), used in opposition to pantheism (v.) or to the conception of an impersonal divinity, and as a synonym of spiritualism (v.). This meaning is still preserved, especially in American culture, where the doctrine of J. Royce (v.), M. Calkins, W. E. Hocking is designated as "absolutistic personalism" (cf. D. S. Robinson, La philosophie religieuse américaine au XXe siècle, in the collaborative work L'activité philos. contemp. en France et aux Etats-Unis, I, Paris 1950, p. 321 ff.). Today the term, in the sense clearly designated by the works of Ch. Renouvier and B. P. Bowne (v.), generally indicates the doctrines that are founded on the value of the human person.

Such doctrines start from the opposition between individual (v.) and person, inherited from Kantianism and idealism, and tend to establish how the single human subject passes from the egoistic individual state to the fullness of personal human values.

1. Naturalistic P. considers the passage from individuality to the personal as an effect of the determinism of natural laws. Its first formulation has at its basis biologism, especially in the evolutionist form of Spencer and in the energetic form of Ward and Waxweller (cf. E. Waxweller, Esquisse d'une sociologie, Brussels 1906, p. 62). American neo-materialism fundamentally adheres to it (cf. R. W. Sellars, The philosophy of physical realism, New York 1932). Another form, on the other hand, starts from psychologism (v.) and finds its greatest expression in the doctrine of psychoanalysis (v.) (cf. R. Bloch, Les tendances et la vie morale, Paris 1948). But at present both formulations are assimilated by sociologism, which sees in "social pressure" the fundamental instrument indispensable for the formation of personality (cf. G. Gurvitch, Le contrôle social, in La sociologie au XXe siècle, by several authors, I, ibid. 1947, p. 122 ff.). E. Durkheim (cf. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, ibid. 1912, p. 387; L'éducation morale, posthumous, ibid. 1925) was the first to pose the problem of the reality of the social conscience and considered this as the means determining the personality of individuals in all its expressions. In the United States social "behavior" (v.) and the "theory of attitudes" (W. J. Thomas, F. Znaniecki, L. L. Bernard, R. Young) emphasize the social conditioning of individual responses to different situations; but it is above all "psychodynamic personality analysis" that brings into relief not only the action of the social group on the formation of the normal person, but also the morbid deviations of personality determined by social disorders. Its initiator is G. H. Mead (cf. Mind, Self and Society, posthumous, Chicago 1934); he is followed by K. Horney (The neurotic personality of our time, New York 1937), R. Linton (The study of man, ibid. 1936; The cultural background of personality, ibid.-London 1945), A. Kardiner (The individual and his society, New York 1939; The psychological frontiers of society, ibid. 1945). On the plane of naturalistic P. moves the pedagogical doctrine of not a few moderns who consider education either as a free vital expansion of the instincts or as a psychological sublimation of tendencies or as an active presence in social life: to this last form is connected Dewey's theory of education (v. STRUMENTALISMO).

Naturalistic P. shares the positivist error of compromising the freedom of the single person in the determinism of natural laws. Nevertheless its researches represent an important contribution to the scientific study of the psychophysiological and social conditioning of free spiritual activity (cf. L. Sturzo, Del metodo sociologico, Bergamo 1950, pp. 15-16).

2. Spiritualist P., in antithesis to naturalism, defends the absolute freedom of the human spirit and its interior commitment to self-perfection, in the full realization of its values. Its first formulation is based on vitalism and on dynamic monadism, elaborated under the influence of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (v.) and of the pluralism (v.) deriving from Lotze (v.). P. Janet may be considered its initiator: he opposes to egocentric individuality personality as "conscience de l'impersonnel" (La morale, Paris 1874, p. 593), that is, of those absolute values, adherence to which causes the absolute dignity of the person to arise from the sacrifice of the individual ego. Janet would have wished to call his orientation P., as Dauriac attests (Bulletin de la Soc. franç. de philos., Feb. 1904, p. 40); but it is Ch. Renouvier who first gave the system this appellation (Le personnalisme, 1903), introducing into it his own conception of the spirit as pure freedom, of the primacy of the good will, capable of reconstructing the whole universe according to the kingdom of ends, that is, centered on the absolute value of the person. In England this P. developed along the line of the morality of "self-realization" and of "self-sacrifice," in reaction to monism (v.) and to anarchic individualism (v.): T. H. Green, B. Bosanquet, F. H. Bradley (cf., for the latter, Appearance and reality, 9th ed., Oxford 1930, pp. 365-70). In the United States it is customary to distinguish within spiritualism: a) the position of absolute P.: it sees in the personal absoluteness of God the foundation of all disinterested values, which, pursued, allow the individual his own self-transcendence (cf. J. Royce, The philosophy of loyalty, New York 1908). W. E. Hocking adds to this an appeal to the experience of the real, in particular to religious experience, inspired by James: "The object of certain knowledge has this threefold structure: the Self, Nature, the Other Consciousness; and God, the appropriate object of the ontological proof, includes all three" (The meaning of God in human experience, New Haven 1912, p. 315). b) The position of pluralist P., which makes personality the first category of the real: raising themselves to it, individuals recognize the absolute value of their own person, can communicate with other human persons and above all recognize God as a personal being by essence. Initiated by Howinson, this pluralist P. was elaborated by B. P. Bowne (Personalism, Boston 1908); at present, with evident influences of Thomist thought, it is developed by many authors (R. T. Fleweling, E. S. Brightman, A. C. Knudson, F. J. McConnell, L. R. Ward) and defended by the journal The Personalist, founded in Los Angeles by Fleweling in 1919. The thought of the Australian A. C. Garnett can be connected to it.

The second formulation of spiritualist P. is due to the influence of the theory of values (v.) and of phenomenology (v.): critical P. In the analysis of consciousness the empirical ego comes to be opposed to the ego of value, which by its absoluteness and categoricity imposes itself on its respect and drives it to perennial self-transcendence. While the "relativist" position posits the ego of value itself as the creator of its values (cf. R. Polin, La création des valeurs, Paris 1944), the metaphysical or "absolutist" position gives values an absolute meaning in themselves, and seeks to reach the personal divine transcendent as their ultimate foundation (cf. R. Le Senne, Le devoir, 2nd ed., Paris 1950; Obstacle et valeur, ibid. 1934; L. Lavelle, Traité des valeurs, ibid. 1951).

Critical personalism becomes axiological personalism when personality is understood no longer as "consciousness of the impersonal," but, through the dialectic of I-Thou and through the "reciprocity of consciousnesses," as "consciousness of the personal." Max Scheler (v.) is its initiator; but in him values are still an impersonal absolute, even though they are present in the hierarchy of persons (individual, collective), and fundamentally in the divine person (cf. Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik, 3rd ed., Halle 1927, p. 94), and even though they operate emotionally in the formation of the human personality through interpersonal imitation (cf. Wesen und Formen der Sympathie, Bonn 1923).

The identification of value and person is due to W. Stern (cf. Die menschliche Persönlichkeit, Leipzig 1918; Person und Sache. System des kritischen Personalismus, III, Wertphilosophie, ibid. 1924). There is a hierarchical scale of values according to the hierarchical scale of persons. Every I is an absolute center in the personal world of values. The initial I must pass to the ideal I, that is, to its own personal value, representing its vocation ("Berufung," cf. Wertphilos., cit., p. 449). But one cannot attain one's own value except by positing it as the center of all the other value-persons and seeking to make them one's own, through Introzeption; the categorical imperative thus becomes: introzipiere (ibid., p. 353, p. 89). To realize one's own person means inner enrichment in an ever higher religious and social commitment.

Spiritualistic personalism, in the various forms indicated, fails to overcome the immanence of subjective consciousness, or to define the foundation of human values, of inner freedom, of moral obligation. The many reservations about the equivocalness of the term personalism are therefore well founded (cf. M. Blondel, L'action, II, Paris 1937, pp. 483-484). Nevertheless, even in its heterogeneity and equivocalness, this contemporary personalistic tendency expresses the ever more deeply felt need to rebuild social life on the dignity of the human person, overcoming the egoistic optimism of empirical and rationalistic individualism, the deterministic enslavement of positivism, the moral slavery of statist totalitarianism and Marxist collectivism. It appeals to the inner drama brought into modern thought by Pascal (v.) and pushed to its exasperation by existentialism (v.): but it seeks to resolve it, with trust in the energies of the spirit, with the aspiration to a transcendent absolute that fills the individual's insufficiency and above all with the power of love, which unites individuals in the communion of an operative personal life. Personalism thus comes to present itself as a "philosophy of salvation," individual and social. Its profound investigations into human values, its careful phenomenological analysis of consciousness, represent a highly positive contribution to the deepening of the problems of the human person and of all its activity.

Christian thought claims for itself the appellation of personalism in its authentic meaning. It was in fact Christianity that showed and defended the full value of the natural and supernatural dignity of the human person (cf. A. Tommasini, Il cristianesimo e la personalità umana, Rome 1940; E. Zeller, La filosofia dei Greci nel suo sviluppo storico, Italian trans., I, Florence 1932, p. 318), and that founded on it its work of moral and social renewal (cf. I. Giordani, Il messaggio sociale di Gesù, 2 vols., Milan 1947). Christian personalism can be defined as theocentric communitarian humanism. Contemporary Christian thinkers see in anthropocentric humanism, which inspires the entire development of the modern world, the true cause of the ills of present-day society. To it they oppose a systematic elaboration of Christian personalism, which can serve as the principle of a new social order, in which the natural and supernatural rights of the person are safeguarded, all the pluralistic demands of human nature are unfolded, and which therefore represents the fitting means of the integral historical perfecting of the person in relation to its eternal end.

Christian personalism presents itself under two fundamental attitudes, one of which is linked to the Augustinian approach, with more or less evident adherence to the various contemporary personalistic formulations; the other to Thomistic doctrine, of which it represents an organic elaboration (cf. C. Bortolaso, Incontro di filosofi cristiani, in Civ. catt., 1951, III, pp. 51-58).

a) Christian spiritualist personalism comprises very diverse tendencies, ranging from the existentialist to the phenomenological and axiological, to arrive at a genuine realism, considering the person as "incarnate spirit" in material and social concreteness. In France the existentialist position (cf. E. Gilson, L'existentialisme chrétien, Paris 1947) is represented principally by G. Marcel and N. Berdyaev. G. Marcel sees the affirmation of the I not through the objective opposition of the impersonal, proper to science and philosophy, but through the relation of communication with the "Thou," determined by faith: God is the "Thou" by essence, irreducible to objectification and therefore to rational inquiry (cf. Journal métaphysique, ibid. 1928, pp. 137-38, 155, 254). N. Berdyaev in De la destination de l'homme (ibid. 1935) rejects legalistic individualism in favor of a mystical morality of redemption, whereby the person actualizes its personal value with the love of God identified with the love of neighbor; and in the Cinq méditations sur l'existence (ibid. 1936) he studies the dynamism of the person in social life (cf. especially the 3rd and 5th meditations: "Le moi, la solitude et la société"; "La personne, la société et la communion"). The phenomenological position is represented especially by M. Nédoncelle (La réciprocité des consciences, ibid. 1942; La personne humaine et la nature, ibid. 1943; Vers une philosophie de l'amour, ibid. 1946). He sees the formation of the person in the reciprocity of consciousnesses, opposing dyadism to monadism: it is therefore love that causes that spiritual act whereby the ideal I opposes the natural non-I and becomes the higher form and the source of psychological reality. E. Mounier (v.) is founded instead on a realistic position (cf. especially: Rivoluzione personalistica e rivoluzione comunitaria, Italian trans., Milan 1949; Che cosa è il p., Italian trans., Turin 1948): the person attains its perfection by opposing every form of individualistic egoism and of totalitarianism that enslaves its absolute personal autonomy, and by becoming a radiating force of love in the concreteness of social life. Only from this personalist revolution can arise that communitarian revolution which transforms a society based on unitarianism into a true society of persons, or community, based on mutual love and on the love of God. In Italy the major representatives are L. Stefanini (Metafisica della persona, Padua 1950; P. sociale, Rome 1952), who passes from the present psychological consciousness of the person to establishing its metaphysical meaning; G. Bozzetti (Il valore della persona, in Filosofi it. contemporanei, by various authors, 2nd ed., Milan 1946, p. 195 ff.), who develops the thought of Rosmini (v.); A. Agazi (Saggio sulla natura del fatto educativo in ordine alla filosofia della persona e dei valori, Brescia 1951). One must further note the formulation of historicist personalism contained in the works of L. Sturzo (La società, sua natura e sue leggi, Bergamo 1949; Del metodo sociologico, ibid. 1950), which can be related to the thought of G. B. Vico (v.) cf. G. Marchello, Storicismo e spiritualismo, in Riv. intern. di scienze sociali, 22 (1950), pp. 61-67).

b) Neo-Scholastic personalism starts from the metaphysical value of the person, the principle of his interior dynamism toward the fullness of values, in order to found upon it the whole moral and social order. "It is only when our I is not phenomenalized and depersonalized that the value of end can be attributed to it" (F. Olgiati, I fondamenti della filosofia classica, Milan 1950, p. 269). The person is in fact perfectly in himself and for himself, really and intentionally. "Sola intellectualitas natura est propter se quaesita in universo, alia autem omnia propter ipsam" (C. Gent., III, ch. 112). The created person can fully realize God's creative end only by realizing his own personal end, which consists in the eternal possession of the Good in all the fullness of its entitative value, that is, in the vision and love of God. It is this coincidence between the ultimate internal end and the ultimate universal end, this intentional capacity of the person to bring into his unity the fullness of being, that makes the person himself an absolute and an end, which God himself recognizes, never reducing him to an instrument of his governing action (cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª-2ª, q. 1, a. 2).

The definition of Christian personalism contemplated a third term: theocentric communitarian humanism. The person is in fact a good for himself and for others. As a good for himself he entails individuality and unity, openness to the appropriation of all values; as a good for others he entails communication of his own good: "bonum est diffusivum sui." Since the person can never be reduced to a utilitarian instrument of another person, the associative bond of persons can be nothing other than the bond of mutual love: society, therefore, as an expression of friendship, that is, community. Supernatural elevation gives persons the possibility of the communion of Saints (v.), based on charity. The human person, by his essential composition of spirit and matter, entails an associative necessity for the progressive attainment of useful goods, proportioned to the objective pluralism of the demands of his nature: the individual, therefore, dynamically expresses his personal life in the family, in the profession, in the national and international community, in the State and, on the supernatural plane, in the Church. The law of love and charity allows the person the sacrifice of particular and temporal interests in view of the common good, but excludes the renunciation of his absolute values.

Christian personalism posits as its first element the duty that every single person has to recognize and carry out his own vocation, natural, supernatural and finally individual, in dependence on his bodily, historical and environmental situation. As a second element, the commitment of the active presence of the person in social pluralism, bringing to it the communitarian spirit of friendship and charity. As a third element, the right of the person — which must be made concrete by positive legislation — to be enabled, through appropriate educational work and the necessary collaboration, to recognize and carry out his threefold vocation. On these fundamental principles is founded the contemporary Christian social movement, tending toward the realization of a social order conforming to the natural and supernatural rights of the human person. Its inspirers, with their encyclicals and directives, have been the supreme pontiffs, from Leo XIII to Pius XII. Distinguished scholars have collaborated in it, from Ketteler (v.) to Toniolo (v.) down to contemporaries, who with writings, study weeks, social institutes and journals have deepened the principles of natural law and the psychophysiological and historico-social laws conditioning human activity. From these studies the social activity of Catholics takes its inspiration, both through the industrious apostolate of Catholic Action (v.) and in direct political, professional and educational action.

Tullio Piacentini