Personality

PERSONALITY. - In the metaphysical sense, p. expresses the constitutive determination of the person (v.), the foundation from which the possibilities and capacities of its actualization proceed. One can therefore distinguish a double moment in the real structure of p.: the first, initial, which is constituted by the rational, intelligent and free nature of man; the second, terminal, which concerns and expresses the exercise of freedom in act as an operative process of means for an end and therefore as a unification and coordination of values.

In this second sense, to which modern thought turns by preference, p. indicates the person in act, or rather the "person who affirms the values to which his being is directed" (Th. Steinbüchel, Die philosophische Grundlegung der katholischen Sittenlehre, I, 1, Düsseldorf 1938, p. 350). P. is therefore the synthesis of the static and dynamic aspect of the spiritual being considered in the commitment to attaining its own end; indeed spirituality, which is independence in being, has its unfolding in the independence of acting with a view to the choice of the end and of the means corresponding to it. When Kant affirmed that "man exists as an end in himself and not purely as a means," proposing his formula of the categorical imperative "act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always and at the same time as an end and never purely as a means" (Einleitung in die Metaphysik der Sitten, § 4, ed. Cassirer, VII, Berlin 1916, p. 21 ff.), he stopped at the first moment of the constitution of p. and laid the basis of that absolutization of human nature which would be consummated by idealism (v.). Without reference to a first principle (v.) of being and to the ultimate end (v.) of acting, human freedom, and with it p., lacks content and meaning: human reason elevated to the absolute by idealism does not satisfy the requirement, because humanity is finite and contingent and cannot ground itself but can only develop the possibilities it has received (cf. W. E. Hocking, Types of philosophy, New York 1929, especially p. 314 ff.; critique of Kant and of idealism). Even Max Scheler (v.), who rightly sees in p. the "center of the spirit" and understands p. as "a hierarchy (Anordnung) of acts," neglects to indicate the absolute foundation, limiting himself to defining p. as the "active center in which the spirit appears in the sphere of finite being" (Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, 2nd ed., Munich 1947, p. 35).

From the metaphysical concept of p. as independence in being and in acting one passes to the psychological concept as "formation, unity and independence of character": it presupposes a certain degree of intellectual and moral development such that man can be indicated as a subject of "responsibility" (cf. J. Laird, Problems of self, London 1917, p. 82). When the unity of the various spheres of consciousness (emotional and moral, individual and social) is no longer preserved, there occurs the so-called "dissociation of p.," on whose causes psychology has not yet proposed a satisfactory theory. Psychological p. arises from the "original dispositions" inherent in every individual and is constituted through the exercise of one's capacities in conformity with the tastes, tendencies and inclinations of each and according to the particular behavior he assumes in his social environment (cf. A. Gemelli-G. Zunini, Introduzione alla psicologia, Milan 1947, p. 376 ff.). In this sense p. meets the new concept of "existence" (v.) dominant in contemporary philosophy, which emphasizes the factor of freedom in its historical becoming.

Cornelio Fabro