The Priority of the Person

David Walsh

Description

In The Priority of the Person, world-class philosopher David Walsh advances the argument set forth in his highly original philosophic meditation Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being (2015), that “person” is the central category of modern political thought and philosophy. The present volume is divided into three main parts. It begins with the political discovery of the inexhaustibility of persons, explores the philosophic differentiation of the idea of the “person,” and finally traces the historical emergence of the concept through art, science, and faith. Walsh argues that, although the roots of the idea of “person” are found in the Greek concept of the mind and in the Christian conception of the soul, this notion is ultimately a distinctly modern achievement, because it is only the modern turn toward interiority that illuminated the unique nature of persons as each being a world unto him- or herself. As Walsh shows, it is precisely this feature of persons that makes it possible for us to know and communicate with others, for we can only give and receive one another as persons. In this way alone can we become friends and, in friendship, build community.

By showing how the person is modernity’s central preoccupation, David Walsh’s The Priority of the Person makes an important contribution to current discussions in both political theory and philosophy. It will also appeal to students and scholars of theology and literature, and any groups interested in the person and personalism.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie de la religion
• Moral Philosophy
• Political
• Religious
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Solzhenitsyn
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Politics
• Ethics
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Benoît XVI
• Eric Voegelin
• Søren Kierkegaard
• John Rawls

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268107390
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE PRIORITY of the PERSON
THE BEGINNING AND THE BEYOND OF POLITICS
Series editors: James R. Stoner and David Walsh
The series is in continuity with the grand tradition of political philosophy that was revitalized by the scholars who, after the Second World War, taught us to return to the past as a means of understanding the present. We are convinced that legal and constitutional issues cannot be addressed without acknowledging the metaphysical dimensions that underpin them. Questions of order arise within a cosmos that invites us to wonder about its beginning and its end, while drawing out the consequences for the way we order our lives together. God and man, world and society are the abiding partners within the community of being in which we find ourselves. Without limiting authors to any particular framework we welcome all who wish to investigate politics in the widest possible horizon.
THE PRIORITY
of the PERSON
Political, Philosophical, and Historical Discoveries

DAVID WALSH
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Walsh, David, 1950- author.
Title: The priority of the person : political, philosophical, and historical discoveries / David Walsh.
Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. | Series: The beginning and the beyond of politics | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020018430 (print) | LCCN 2020018431 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780268107376 (hardback) | ISBN 9780268107383 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780268107406 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780268107390 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophical anthropology. | Persons.
Classification: LCC BD450 .W23755 2020 (print) |
LCC BD450 (ebook) | DDC 126—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018430
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018431
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
To my beautiful sisters,
Joan, Betty, Terry, Pat, and Maureen,
and to my irrepressible brother,
Bob, the best gift our parents left us.
CONTENTS Preface ONE The Priority of the Person as the Modern Differentiation PART 1 The Political Discovery TWO Are Freedom and Dignity Enough? A Reflection on Liberal Abbreviations THREE The Unattainability of What We Live Within: Liberal Democracy FOUR The Person and the Common Good: Toward a Language of Paradox FIVE John Rawls’s Personalist Faith SIX Dignity as an Eschatological Concept PART 2 The Philosophical Discovery SEVEN Voegelin’s Path from Philosophy of Consciousness to Philosophy of the Person EIGHT The Turn toward Existence as Existence in the Turn NINE The Indispensability of Modern Philosophy TEN The Turn to the Subject as the Turn to the Person ELEVEN Why Kierkegaard Is the Culminating Figure of the Modern Philosophical Revolution PART 3 The Historical Discovery TWELVE Epic as the Saving Truth of History: Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel THIRTEEN Art and History in Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel FOURTEEN The Person as the Opening to the Secular World: Benedict and Francis FIFTEEN Science Is Not Scientific SIXTEEN Hope Does Not Disappoint Notes Index
PREFACE
The title of the present work expresses its central assertion that the person, each person, is prior to all else that is. There is nothing higher in the universe or of greater worth. The person is the pivot around whom everything revolves. All that is meaningful in our lives flows from the persons we know and love. They are the ones without whom we cannot go on. Each is an inexhaustible depth in the whole of reality. We know it only because we glimpse the extent to which persons we know exceed all that we know about them. Words fail us when we try to define them, for they overflow all that even they can say or do. Each is a mystery in him- or herself, and just as unfathomable to themselves as to us. But this means that the language we use in our mastery of a world of things is defeated in the encounter with persons who unmaster us. The Thou who addresses me is a Who and not a What. How then are we to navigate the transition from someone to something, the most consequential negotiation of our lives? Somehow we must find a way to acknowledge the moral priority of the other over all the inclinations that might obscure that responsibility. To sustain our most crucial conviction we must find a way of articulating the metaphysical difference that establishes the radical priority of the person in being. As the missing category within the history of thought, the person who thinks is a decided latecomer to his or her own self-understanding. What we need to preserve the inexpressible dignity of persons is most impressed upon us as what we most need.

The project is formidable, and most of what is included under the rubric of personalism is merely an aspiration rather than an attainment of the goal. I am under no illusions concerning the challenge entailed in developing an account of the person that is adequate to the unique inwardness of each. Our linguistic reference to third parties must be displaced to accommodate the imperative of a second-person address. Some sense of the radical character of the project can be gained from my more systematic attempt in David Walsh, Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being (University of Notre Dame Press, 2016). When I completed it I was aware of the daunting nature of the task that readers had before them. They would have to follow the conceptual and linguistic overhaul I had attempted and then sprang upon unsuspecting readers. It struck me that there might be an easier and more accessible way, for the structure of Politics of the Person had not emerged fully born. Instead it had gestated over a number of years, and during that time I had been invited or drawn into other studies along the way. Naturally they were never divorced from the large theoretical goal of a philosophy of the person on which I had embarked. It was simply that they provided me with opportunities to think about what it means to be a person in a variety of more concrete contexts and in relation to other issues. As a result there was a series of personalist essays that had emerged in parallel with the theoretical statement and, in turn, contributed to the latter while also illuminating it in significant ways. In short, this book may present a more accessible inquiry into what it means to be a person because it is unfolded in dialogue with texts and controversies that are more specific. Some of the essays came from a time before I had decided to focus on the person, and some followed the conclusion of the major study. Looking back over them, I see that the intuition remained the same and that invitations to address questions of liberalism, the common good, and the work of Eric Voegelin, or to reflect on Solzhenitsyn, Benedict XVI, or the financial crisis of 2008 all provided an invaluable opportunity to broaden my thought beyond the boundaries I would otherwise have set for it. This book is, in other words, tangible proof that thinking is not and cannot be done alone, for it is ever and always in the company of others.
Among the others I would like to thank for making the book possible are the many friends who invited me to present my thoughts on the various occasions that provoked the chapters included here: Robert Kraynak, Glenn Tinder, Jude Daugherty, Chris McCrudden, Patrick Riordan, George Panichas, Barry Cooper, Thomas Heilke, John von Heyking, Anton Rauscher, Fran O’Rourke, Charles Embry, Steve McGuire, R. J. Snell, Peter Haworth, Ralph Hancock, Dan Mahoney, Nathalia Solzhenitsyn, Ludmila Saraskina, Brendan Leahy, Rafa Garcia Perez, Martin Palous, and William Frank. They along with my other conversation partners in the Eric Voegelin Society, including but not limited to Ellis Sandoz, Chip Hughes, James Greenaway, Tilo Schabert, Wolfgang Leidhold, Lee Trepanier, James Stoner, Henrik Syse, Paul Caringella, Steve Ealy, Bruce Fingerhut, and others, have made it possible for me to think out loud, as we must, if we want to think at all. In addition, there are the more localized conversation partners, in Dublin and Washington, who have provided more regular opportunities for the mutuality of thought, including Brendan Purcell, Joe McCarroll, Brad Lewis, Claes Ryn, Dennis Coyle, Cyril O’Regan, John McNerney, Herb Hartmann, the late James Schall, and many others. They, along with my students, have been important in ways that in the moment none of us fully understands. More tangible and much appreciated financial support has been provided at various stages by the Earhart Foundation. I am grateful to Steve Wrinn, director of the University of Notre Dame Press, for his encouragement of the series, and also to the staff of UNDP, including Rachel Kindler and Matt Dowd, and to copyeditor Scott Barker. To my wife, Gail, I offer again my thanks for her love and constancy as we journey together along the way. With her I share the joy of our own flashes of transcendence, Katie, Brendan, and Patrick—and the glad sunbursts of grandchildren.
Permission to republish earlier versions of many of the essays included here is gratefully acknowledged. The following are the locations where they first appeared:
“Are Freedom and Dignity Enough? A Reflection on Liberal Abbreviations.” In In Defense of Human Dignity , edited by Robert Kraynak and Glenn Tinder, 165–91. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
“The Turn toward Existence as Existence in the Turn.” In Philosophy, Literature, and Politics: Essays Honoring Ellis Sandoz , edited by Charles R. Embry and Barry Cooper, 3–27. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 20