Overview

"This thesis approaches the question of what kind of being a person is through an investigation of the question of how a being becomes a person. The ""what"" question typically addresses certain necessary and sufficient conditions of personhood such as rationality and self-consciousness, which are then linked to what personhood implies in the practical domain, such as a moral standing or certain rights and responsibilities. The ""how"" question addresses, on the other hand, its genetic conditions; that is, those that essentially characterize the origin and mode of formation of that kind of being we designate a person. In philosophy this latter question is rarely put, arguably because it is deemed largely irrelevant to the former, analytic question, with the notable exception of medieval theories of creation or communication of a soul to a body. In various other fields several aspects of the genesis of persons attract more attention, but these are not investigated through particularly philosophical questions: how the human species came to possess its present form, how the human infant develops cognitively and socially, how the moral and legal status of persons differ from culture to culture or across historical periods, or how normatively structured social systems emerged would be some representative examples. I argue that the genetic and the analytic questions are intimately related to one another, to the effect that we need an understanding of the origins of personhood in order to reach an adequate understanding what personhood consists in. By an adequate understanding I mean a holistic exposition of the metaphysical, intersubjective and practical dimensions of personhood in their integrity."

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9781835207345

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