The Selfhood of the Human Person by John F. Crosby (review)

308 BOOK REVIEWS The Selfhood of the Human Person. By JOHN F. CROSBY. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 1997. Pp. 313. $34.85 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8132-0864-5 (cloth), 0-8132-0865-3 (paper). This book marks a milestone in Catholic philosophical anthropology. It is probably the most significant original contribution to the field, from the perspective of phenomenological personalism, to appear in the English language in recent years. No less important, it is clearly and accessibly written. Any reader who has languished through the iniquitous translation of Karol Wojtyla's The Acting Person, or who finds phenomenological approaches frequently impenetrable and mystifying, will be pleasantly surprised by the remarkable clarity and accessibility of Crosby's crisply written and wellorganized presentation. Crosby draws from phenomenology (Scheler, Wojtyla, Edith Stein, and his own mentor, von Hildebrand), personalist sources (Kierkegaard, Newman, Wojtyla again, and Josef Seifert), neo-Thomism (Maritain) and the philosophia perennis, combining many of the same sorts of perspectives one finds in Wojtyla. Readers of Crosby's painstaking phenomenological analysis of human "selfhood" may find portions of his discussion so penetrating and compelling as to induce an eerie sense of having been conducted into the precincts of that profound, mysterious interiority called the "self" as if for the first time. The book is divided into three parts. In part 1 ("Selfhood") Crosby argues for the "reception" of modern insights regarding the subjectivity and interiority of the human self by those who stand in the tradition of the philosophia perennis. He seeks to show, for example, how far one can go in pursuing profitably the insights of Kant concerning the autonomy and dignity of persons as ends in themselves without departing from the philosophia perennis or accepting the whole of Kantian philosophy. In part 2 ("Selfhood and Transcendence") and part 3 ("Selfhood and Theonomy"), he reverses perspectives and endeavors to show how those who stand in the modern tradition of freedom and autonomy stand to benefit from accepting the idea of personal transcendence towards truth, moral good, and ultimately God. Here he addresses the typically modern fear of heteronomy awakened by the idea of such transcendence. Accordingly, Crosby's argument plays both sides of the coin. He argues, for instance, that those who affirm that persons are ends in themselves may rebel against the idea of being subject to God and may be too quick to suspect heteronomy in the religious existence of human persons, just as those who are glad to exist under God may be too slow to assert the selfhood that is their birthright as persons and may even incline to a kind of religiously motivated nihilism with regard to human things and human values. BOOK REVIEWS 309 Thus, like Wojtyla, Crosby seeks to balance a traditional Catholic understanding of transcendence with a deepened appreciation for the interiority of the person, even as he seeks to counterbalance the typically modern appreciation for autonomy and subjectivity with a deepened understanding of the personal transcendence by which such autonomy and subjectivity are properly grounded. Starting with the assumption that it is in the moral life that we have our clearest experiences of ourselves as persons, Crosby begins his discussion by analyzing the phenomena of moral consciousness associated with depersonalizing ways of treating human beings. Why do we feel outrage at the idea of punishing an innocent person as a scapegoat, even if it serves the socially useful purpose of deterring crime? Why do prostitution, human eugenic experimentation, slavery, and violence against persons offend our moral sensibilities? Many of us would probably echo Kant's assertion that by treating others as means instead of ends in themselves, we do violence to their dignity as persons and moral subjects. Even the idea of God using us and discarding us as instrumental means is repulsive to our moral consciousness. Aquinas himself points out that "rational creatures are subject to divine providence in a special way"-that is, in a way that defers to the dignity of their free agency. In this sense, human persons belong to themselves and to no other. They are incommunicably their own and never mere specimens or means. They are wholes in...