PERSONALISM. — From *persona* (q.v.), the term dates to the 1880s (Schleiermacher, Feuerbach, Grote, Teichmüller), used in opposition to pantheism (q.v.) or to the conception of an impersonal deity, and as a synonym for spiritualism (q.v.). This meaning is still preserved, especially in American culture, where the doctrine of J. Royce (q.v.), M. Calkins, W. E. Hocking is indicated as “absolutistic personalism” (cf. D. S. Robinson, *La philosophie religieuse américaine au XXe siècle*, in the collaborative work *L’activité philosophique contemporaine en France et aux Etats-Unis*, I, Paris 1950, pp. 321 ff.). Today the term, in the sense clearly designated by the works of Ch. Renouvier and B. P. Bowne (q.v.), generally indicates the doctrines that are founded on the value of the human person.
These doctrines proceed from the opposition between individual (q.v.) and person, inherited from Kantianism and idealism, and aim to establish how the single human subject passes from the egoistic state of individuality to the fullness of personal human values.
1. **Naturalist personalism** considers the passage from the individual to the person as the effect of the determinism of natural laws. Its first formulation is based on biologism, especially in Spencer’s evolutionary form and in Ward’s and Waxweiler’s energetic form (cf. E. Waxweiler, *Esquisse d’une sociologie*, Brussels 1906, p. 62). The American neo-materialism fundamentally adheres to this (cf. R. W. Sellars, *The Philosophy of Physical Realism*, New York 1932). Another form, however, arises from psychologism (q.v.) and finds its greatest expression in psychoanalytic doctrine (q.v.) (cf. R. Bloch, *Les tendances et la vie morale*, Paris 1948). At present, however, both formulations are assimilated by *sociologism*, which sees in “social pressure” the fundamental and indispensable instrument for the formation of personality (cf. G. Gurvitch, *Le contrôle social*, in *La sociologie au XXe siècle*, by various authors, I, ibid. 1947, pp. 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 social consciousness and considered it as the determining means of the personality of individuals in all its expressions. In the United States, social “behavior” (q.v.) and the “attitude theory” (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 the “psychodynamic personality analysis” that highlights 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. It was initiated by G. H. Mead (cf. *Mind, Self and Society*, posthumous, Chicago 1934); 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). In the field of naturalist personalism, the pedagogical doctrine of not a few moderns moves, who consider education either as the free vital expansion of instincts or as the psychological sublimation of tendencies or as active presence in social life: to this last form is connected the educational theory of Dewey (q.V. INSTRUMENTALISM).
Naturalist personalism shares the positivistic error of compromising the freedom of the single person within the determinism of natural laws. Nevertheless, its research represents an important contribution to the scientific study of the psycho-physiological and social conditioning of free spiritual activity (cf. L. Sturzo, *Del metodo sociologico*, Bergamo 1950, pp. 15-16).
2. **Spiritualist personalism**, in antithesis to naturalism, defends the absolute freedom of the human spirit and its inner commitment to self-perfection, in the full realization of its values. Its first formulation is based on *vitalism* and on *dynamic monadism*, developed under the influence of Kant’s *Critique of Practical Reason* (q.v.) and of the pluralism (q.v.) deriving from Lotze (q.v.). P. Janet can be considered its initiator: he opposes egoistic individuation to personality as “consciousness of the empire-sonnel” (*La morale*, Paris 1874, p. 593), that is, of those absolute values to whose adherence the absolute dignity of the person arises from the sacrifice of the individual ego. Janet would have wished to call his approach personalism, as attested by Dauriac (*Bulletin de la Soc. franç. de philos.*, Feb. 1904, p. 40); but it was Ch. Renouvier who first gave the system this name (*Le personnalisme*, 1903), introducing into it his own conception of the spirit as pure freedom, of the primacy of good will, capable of reconstructing the entire universe according to the kingdom of ends, that is, centered on the absolute value of the person. In England this personalism developed along the line of the ethics of “self-realization” and “self-sacrifice,” in reaction to monism (q.v.) and to anarchic individuation: 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 in spiritualism: a) the position of absolute personalism: it sees in the personal absoluteness of God the foundation of all disinterested values, which, pursued, allow the individual to transcend himself (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, drawing inspiration from 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 personalism, which makes personality the first category of the real: by elevating 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 being who is personal by essence. Initiated by Howison, this pluralist personalism was elaborated by B. P. Bowne (*Personalism*, Boston 1908); at present, with the influence of Thomist thought, it is developed by many authors (R. T. Flewelling, E. S. Brightman, A. C. Knudson, F. J. McConnell, L. R. Ward) and defended by the journal *The Personalist*, founded in Los Angeles by Flewelling in 1919. To it can be linked the thought of the Australian A. C. Garnett.
The second formulation of spiritualist personalism is due to the influence of the theory of values (q.v.) and of phenomenology (q.v.): critical personalism. In the analysis of consciousness, the empirical ego finds itself opposed to the ego of value, which, with its absoluteness and categorical character, imposes itself upon respect and drives one to perpetual self-transcendence. While the relativist position places 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 transcendent divine person 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).
The critical personality becomes an axiological personality when personality is understood not as the “consciousness of the impersonal,” but, through the dialectic of the I-Thou and the “reciprocity of consciences,” as the “consciousness of the personal.” Max Scheler (q.v.) is its initiator; yet in him values remain an impersonal absolute, even if 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 1948, p. 94) and emotionally operative in the formation of human personality through interpersonal imitation (cf. *Wesen und Formen der Sympathie*, Bonn 1923).
It was W. Stern who identified value with person (cf. *Die menschliche Persönlichkeit*, Leipzig 1918; *Person und Sache. System des kritischen Personalismus*, III, *Wertphilosophie*, ibid. 1924). A hierarchical scale of values is posited according to the hierarchical scale of persons. Every I is an absolute center in the personal world of values. The initial I must become the ideal I, that is, its own personal value, representing its *vocation* (*Berufung*; cf. *Wertphilosophie*, loc. cit., p. 449). Yet one cannot attain one’s own value unless one posits it as the center of all other person-values and seeks to make them one’s own through *introspection*; the categorical imperative thus becomes: *introspire* (ibid., pp. 353, 89). To realize one’s person means an inner enrichment through ever higher religious and social commitment.
The spiritualistic personality, in its various forms, fails to transcend the immanence of subjective consciousness or to define the foundation of human values, inner freedom, and moral obligation. Hence the many reservations regarding the equivocity of the term are well founded (cf. M. Blondel, *L’action*, II, Paris 1937, pp. 483–484). Nevertheless, despite its heterogeneity and equivocity, this contemporary personalist trend expresses the increasingly felt need to rebuild social life on the dignity of the human person, overcoming the egoistic optimism of empirical and rationalistic individualism, the deterministic servitude of positivism, and the moral slavery of statist totalitarianism and Marxist collectivism. It appeals to the inner drama introduced into modern thought by Pascal (q.v.) and pushed to its “existential desperation” (q.v.), yet seeks to resolve it through confidence in the energies of the spirit, through aspiration toward a transcendent absolute that fills the individual’s insufficiency, and above all through the power of love, which unites individuals in the communion of an operative personal life. Personality thus presents itself as a “philosophy of salvation” both individual and social. Its profound inquiries into human values and its careful phenomenological analysis of consciousness constitute a highly positive contribution to the deeper understanding of the problems of the human person and all his activity.
Christian thought claims for itself the title of personality in its authentic sense. For it was Christianity that revealed 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 founded upon it its work of moral and social renewal (cf. I. Giordani, *Il messaggio sociale di Gesù*, 4 vols., Milan 1947). Christian personality may be defined as a theocentric communal humanism. Contemporary Christian thinkers see in anthropocentric humanism, which has inspired all modern development, the true cause of the evils of present-day society. Against it they set a systematic elaboration of Christian personality that may serve as the principle of a new social order, safeguarding the natural and supernatural rights of the person, satisfying all the pluralistic exigencies of human nature, and thus providing the appropriate means for the integral historical perfection of the person in relation to its eternal end.
Christian personality presents itself in two fundamental attitudes, one linked to updated formulations more or less clearly related to contemporary personalist trends, 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 personality comprises very diverse trends, ranging from existential and phenomenological to axiological, culminating in a genuine realism that views the person as “spirit incarnate” in concrete material and social reality. In France the existential position (cf. E. Gilson, *L’existentialisme chrétien*, Paris 1947) is represented chiefly by G. Marcel and N. Berdyaev. G. Marcel finds the affirmation of the I not through the objective opposition of the impermeable, characteristic of science and philosophy, but through the communicative relation with the “Thou,” determined by faith: God is the “Thou” par excellence, irreducible to objectification and hence to rational inquiry (cf. *Journal métaphysique*, 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 realizes its personal value through love of God identified with love of neighbor; and in *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*, 1942; *La personne humaine et la nature*, 1943; *Vers une philosophie de l’amour*, 1946), who sees the formation of the person in the reciprocity of consciences, opposing monadism with dyadism: it is love that brings about that spiritual act by which the ideal opposes the non-I of nature and becomes the higher form and source of psychological reality. E. Mounier (q.v.), instead, bases himself 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 egoistic individualism and enslaving totalitarianism, asserting its absolute personal autonomy, and becoming a radiating force of love in the concreteness of social life. Only from this personalist revolution can there arise that communal revolution which transforms a society based on exploitation into a true society of persons or community, founded on mutual love and on the love of God. In Italy the leading representatives are L. Stefanini (*Metafisica della persona*, Padua 1950; *P. sociale*, Rome 1952), who moves from the present psychological consciousness of the person to establish its metaphysical meaning; G. Bozzetti (*Il valore della persona*, in *Filosofi II. contemporanei*, by various authors, 2nd ed., Milan 1946, pp. 195 ff.), who develops the thought of Rosmini (q.v.); and A. Agazzi (*Saggio sulla natura del fatto educativo in ordine alla filosofia della persona e dei valori*, Brescia 1951). Also noteworthy is the formulation of historical personality in the works of L. Sturzo (*La società, sua natura e sue leggi*, Bergamo 1949; *Del metodo sociologico*, ibid. 1950), which may be related to the thought of G. B. Vico (q.v.) (cf. G. Marchello, *Storicismo e spiritualismo*, in *Riv. intern. di scienze sociali*, 22 [1950], pp. 61–67).
b) The neo-scholastic personalist starts from the metaphysical value of the person, the principle of its inner dynamism toward the fullness of values, and on this basis founds the entire moral and social order. "It is only when our ego is not phenomenalized and depersonalized that it can be attributed the value of an end" (F. Olgiati, *I fondamenti della filosofia classica*, Milan 1950, p. 269). The person, in fact, is perfectly in itself and for itself, both really and intentionally. "Only intellectual nature is for its own sake in the universe, but all things are for its sake" (C. Gent., III, cap. 112). The created person can fully realize the creative end of God only by realizing its personal end, which consists in the eternal possession of the Good in the fullness of its entitative value, namely 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 the fullness of being into its unity, that makes the person an absolute and an end, which God Himself acknowledges, never reducing it to an instrument of His governing action (cf. *Sum. Theol.*, 1a-2ae, q. 1, a. 2).
The definition of Christian personalism includes a third term: theocentric communal humanism. The person, in fact, is a good in itself and to others. As a good in itself, it entails individuality and unity, openness to the appropriation of all values; as a good to others, it implies the communication of its 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 only be the bond of mutual love: society, therefore, is 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 its essential composition of spirit and matter, entails a necessary associativity for the progressive attainment of useful goods proportionate to the objective pluralism of the demands of its nature: the individual, therefore, dynamically expresses its personal life in the family, in one’s profession, in the national and international community, in the State, and, on the supernatural plane, in the Church. The law of love and charity enables the person to sacrifice particular and temporal interests for the sake of the common good, but excludes the renunciation of its absolute values.
Christian personalism posits as its first element the duty incumbent upon every single person to recognize and realize its own vocation—natural, supernatural, and finally individual—in dependence on its bodily, historical, and environmental situation. As a second element, it emphasizes the commitment of the person’s active presence in social pluralism, bringing to it the communal spirit of friendship and charity. As a third element, it affirms the right of the person—which must be concretized by positive legislation—to be enabled, through appropriate educational efforts and necessary collaboration, to recognize and realize its triple vocation. These are the fundamental principles upon which
PERSONALISM – PERSONIFICATIONS
In this second sense, to which modern thought turns in preference, personalism denotes the person in act, namely the "person who affirms the values to which its being is directed" (Th. Steinbüchel, *Die philosophische Grundlegung der katholischen Sittenlehre*, I, 1, Düsseldorf 1938, p. 350). Personalism is thus the synthesis of the static and dynamic aspects of spiritual being considered in the commitment to the attainment of its proper end; indeed, spirituality, which is independence in being, finds its unfolding in the independence of action aimed at the choice of the end and the means corresponding to II. When Kant affirmed that "man exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means," proposing his formula of the categorical imperative "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means" (*Einleitung in die Metaphysik der Sitten*, § 4, ed. Cassirer, VII, Berlin 1916, pp. 21 ff.), he stopped at the first moment of the constitution of the person and laid the foundation for that absolutization of human nature which was to be consummated by idealism (v.). Without reference to a first principle (v.) of being and to the ultimate end (v.) of action, human freedom, and with it the person, lacks content and meaning: human reason elevated to an absolute by idealism does not satisfy this exigency, because humanity is finite and contingent and cannot found itself but can only unfold the possibilities it has received (cf. W. E. Hocking, *Types of philosophy*, New York 1929, especially pp. 314 ff.: critique of Kant and idealism). SCHELER, MAX (v.), who rightly sees in the person the "center of the spirit" and intends the person as "a hierarchy (Anordnung) of acts," fails to indicate the absolute foundation, limiting himself to defining the person as "the active center in which spirit appears in the pride of finite being" (*Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos*, 2nd ed., Munich 1947, p. 35).
From the metaphysical concept of the person as independence in being and action, one passes to the psychological concept as the formation, unity, and independence of character: it presupposes a certain degree of intellectual and moral development so that a man may be designated as a subject of responsibility (cf. J. Laird, *Problems of self*, London 1917, p. 82). When the unity of the various spheres of emotional and moral consciousness (individual and social) is no longer preserved, there arises the so-called "dissociation of the person," on whose causes psychology has not yet proposed a satisfactory theory. Psychological personality arises from "original dispositions" inherent in each individual and is constituted through the exercise of one’s capacities in accordance with the tastes, tendencies, and inclinations of each person and according to the particular behavior assumed in one’s social environment (cf. A. Gemelli-G. Zunini, *Introduzione alla psicologia*, Milan 1947, pp. 376 ff.). In this sense, personality converges with the new concept of "existence" (v.) dominant in contemporary philosophy, which emphasizes the factor of freedom in its historical becoming.