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Chapter 9 THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON It is upon the uniqueness of each person and the diversity of all that human dignity rests. If an inquisitive acquaintance gets uncomfortably close to what we don’t want broadcast to others, we are likely to demur with the excuse: “I really don’t want to talk about that, it’s very personal.” If the questioner has any sensitivity at all, that should warn him or her off any further inquisition, since to cry “Personal” is one of our acceptable informal social ways of preserving our privacy. In another sense of the term, however, we may credit a person (sometimes a figure in authority) with treating us “as a person.” By that, we mean that he or she respects us and accords us a particular dignity and value; he or she shows interest in us, not out of curiosity, but intrinsically “for ourselves.” Some commercial interests have caught on to this, availing themselves of something from which they can profit. And so, not infrequently the mail delivers “personalized ” letters, embossed with our names, not excluding degrees of familiarity, ranging from the formal to the informal. This trick—aided by electronic devices nowadays—while itself a fraud, plays upon something genuine in the meaning of the term person, viz., that a person is a unique center and that access to a person is access to a certain privileged intimacy. In flattering us, the advertiser plays upon three facets of the term: he accords us the innate dignity of a unique status and claims a certain insider’s knowledge of us, a kind of intimacy. Dignity, uniqueness , and intimacy: these cling to the meaning of the term person, and to the adjective personal today, even in such clichés as the sign-off “Personally yours.” Paradoxically, however, the term personality as we often use it lends itself to the opposite meaning. For if we say that he or she “has person149 Reprinted from Communio 13 (Spring 1986): 27–48. Copyright © by Communio: International Catholic Review. ality,” that may pass as a compliment, meaning that he or she creates a pleasing or striking impression upon first meeting; but such “personal charm” stands to intimacy as surface to depth. And if we say that someone “is a personality,” we usually mean that he manages to project a public image and is even well-known for it. The suspicion can never quite be banished that the image may not correspond to the private reality underneath . So that the term personality seems to suggest anything but intimacy , since it refers primarily to the surface impression. Nor does the term personality suggest dignity; if anything it carries the notion of a marketable asset. Finally, the distinctiveness of an image or personality often seems to be a product. As such, it stands in contrast to what we mean when we say that someone treats us “as a person,” since by that we mean that he or she appreciates us as we are and values us—not for our public appearance or fame or wealth or talent or connections to power and privilege—but in and for ourselves alone. Now, this ambivalence, between the hidden depth implied in the term person and the manifest display exhibited by the term personality, has been attached to the network of meanings associated with the terms from the beginning. It seems to me enlightening, therefore, to trace out the geography of the term person and its associates, and to note both the development of meaning and the constancy that preserves the original double sense of the terms. Ancient and medieval understanding of “person” Following the most probable account,1 we begin our tour more than two thousand years ago in the region of Etruria, which lies north of Rome on the way to Florence. The Etruscans observed a cult to the goddess Persephone, and they called the mask used in the religious rites by a name derived from the goddess: phersu. The Etruscans were influential in the development of the Roman theater, and so Persephone’s mask came to be known among the Romans by the adjective: persona, which later came to signify any mask, especially those used in the theater. In taking up the Etruscan word, the Romans fused it with one of their own 1. In addition to the standard etymological dictionaries, I take much of this from Alois Grillimeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kircle, vol. 1: Von der Apostolischen...

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