26. Personalism
26. PERSONALISM
Relative to the whole universe, we are extremely tiny and extremely temporary. How can we believe that we are so important? Isn’t that arrogant and provincial?
The answer is that we are important because we are important to God, Who is the standard of “importance”. And we are important to God because, unlike everything else in the universe, we are persons. And persons are supremely great because God is (three) Persons. We are made in His image. He is “I AM” and that is why we too can say “I am.” Animals can’t. Only persons are “I’s”. Animals have eyes but no I’s. That is why they are not immortal, rational, moral, or religious.
Person signifies what is most perfect in all nature (i.e., in all reality)—that is, a subsistent individual of a rational nature. Hence, since everything that is perfect must be attributed to God, forasmuch as His own essence contains every perfection, this name person is fittingly applied to God; not, however, as it is applied to creatures, but in a more excellent way (I,29,3).
That first sentence of St. Thomas’ quote constitutes a philosophical revolution: “Person signifies what is most perfect in all nature.” That is the essential metaphysical premise of Personalism, a modern philosophy often unfairly associated with subjectivism, anthropocentrism, and a prejudice against objective metaphysics, especially Thomism. Yet the essential foundation of Personalism is right here in St. Thomas, though he does not develop it. He opens the door to it but goes only a few feet inside. Pope St. John Paul II and others followed this lead many feet further, but on Thomistic metaphysical principles, not on anti-Thomistic, anti-metaphysical, anti-traditional, anti-objectivist, anti-intellectual principles, as many modern “Personalist” philosophers did. This marriage of medieval Thomism with modern Personalism is pregnant with possibilities, and begs to become the cutting edge of Catholic philosophy for the next century, even the next millennium.
Nearly everyone agrees with the morality of Personalism, i.e., with respect for persons and their rights, with the love of persons; with treating persons as ends and not means (Kant’s famous second formulation of the “categorical imperative”, which has become almost a universal moral consensus throughout the free world); and with Christ’s second great commandment and the second table of the Mosaic Law (“love your neighbor as yourself”), which is essentially the first formulation of Kant’s “categorical imperative”. But why? What is its foundation? Is it true because we say so, or because we will it? Do we will it into existence? Do we create it, as Kant says we do? Or do we discover it, so that first of all it is true, it is so, and then we say so because it is so? Obviously, the second, objective, alternative is a stronger foundation than the first, which is only subjective. Personalism requires a metaphysical foundation. And St. Thomas provides it.
Ultimately, God provides it by being a Trinity of Persons. Non-Christians do not know that, of course; but Jews and Muslims too know that man is great because he is immortal spirit created by God, not mere mortal animal emerging from slime by blind evolution; that we are the King’s kids, not King Kong’s kids. And even non-theists know that man is great, though they do not know God as the ultimate reason for that. But they too can agree with St. Thomas’ principle that persons are the most perfect things in all of reality, whether there are any divine Persons or not.
This is the strongest reason for love and cooperation with all other persons in the world, even those who appear to be your enemies, and for working against whatever dis-respects persons and working for whatever respects persons. This is not a merely pragmatic, tactical cooperation with those who seem to be less total opponents (e.g., Muslims) against more total opponents (e.g., atheists); it is a genuine, principled, enthusiastic “yes” to the image of God, and thus implicitly to God; for “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40).