Christian faith & human understanding: studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the human person

11. Language, the Human Person, and Christian Faith

[ 1 1 ] LANGUAGE, THE HUMAN PERSON, AND CHRI ST IAN FA I TH I wish to discuss the human person and its relation to language and Christian faith. I will begin with a point that I take from the work of the German philosopher Robert Spaemann.1 The point deals with the logic of the term person. ‘Person’ is a strange noun The word person functions in an unusual and interesting way. It is not what philosophers call a “sortal” noun. It does not mark oV a species or a genus in the way that terms like tree or animal or house or even the term man do. Each of these terms—tree, animal, house, man—expresses a kind of thing, but the term person does not, even though grammatically it might seem to do so.The word person does not “sort out” one genus or species of things over against all the others. Furthermore, because terms like tree or animal or human being each name a kind of thing, it also makes sense to speak of an individual in each of these species.We can properly speak of “an animal” or “a man.” In fact, we do also speak of “a person,” but this grammatical possibility masks an important conceptual diVerence.We really cannot speak of “a person” as an instance of a species. To illustrate the strangeness of the word person, consider the following  1. Robert Spaemann, Personen.Versuche über den Unterschied zwischen “etwas” und “jemand” (Stuttgart: Klett-CottaVerlag, 1996), pp. 14–15. situation, which Spaemann describes. It would make sense for me to say to you,“Come here, I want to show you a tree,” or,“Come here, I want to show you a house.” It would also makes sense for me to say,“Come here, I want to show you a human being.”The term human being or man is the name for a biological species and it is a sortal term. It would not make sense for me, however, to say to you,“Come here, I want to show you a person.”The term person has another kind of logic. The reason why the word person has another kind of logic is that from the beginning it is a radically individualized term. It expresses a singularity. In this regard, it is like the term this. I could not say to you,“Come here, I want to show you a this.” For that matter, it also makes no sense for me to say to you,“Come here, I want to show you an individual.”The terms this and individual are also essentially formal and particular, and do not mark oV a genus or species.The word person functions in the same way. Grammatically it may look like a sortal term, but it really is not one. I hope that these initial remarks have induced enough of a perplexity, enough of an aporia, to help us begin to see that persons are not like other entities. Persons lead their lıves Why does the word person function in this manner? Why does it not connote a genus or species? The word acts in this odd way not simply because of the peculiarities of the English language, but because of the way persons exist. Persons are subsistent individuals. More precisely, they are individuals that are rational, and their rationality makes them more radically individual than beings that do not possess reason.2 Beings with reason become individualized in a new way. It is true, of course, that other things are individualized; Fido is an individual and so is the tree by my window; but persons are individuals in a manner that is special to them. Persons are singularities and not just individuals. To bring this out, consider the diVerence between the way an animal develops throughout its life and the way a human being develops.An animal grows and reacts to things that happen to it, and the governing role in its development is the animal’s soul, its being as an animal.Animals are innocent and blameless of what they have become.We do not say that Fido  the human person 2.Thomas Aquinas, SummaTheologiae I, q. 29, aa. 1–3. should be proud of the way he has conducted himself throughout his life, and we do not say that an alley cat should be ashamed of itself for what it has become.They have...