In the last half century, the war against Fascism, the process of decolonialization, new attention to the rights of minorities and women, and, finally, the social changes throughout the world at the end of the 1980s, all had as their common motivating force the renewed emergence of a sense of the dignity of the person. Hence, it is important to look closely at the different dimensions of the notion of person. As these are progressively ignored or taken into account our horizons for social change shrink or expand and the possibilities for a more rich harmony recede or advance.

Here, the intent is not to choose one dimension of the person against others, but to review them, in order to see how each makes possible a specific level of self-understanding and social relations, and points, in turn, to still other dimensions. In particular, we shall review our heritages for answers to three crucial questions about the person as the subject of a moral life and moral education.

(a) Is the person only a set of roles constituted entirely in function of a structure or system in which one plays a particular part? If so, one could not refuse to do whatever the system demanded or tolerated. Or is the person a subject in his or her own right, with proper dignity, heritage, goals and standards? If so, can this be understood within a context that liberates the person from the ultimate prison of egoism, conflict and violence.

(b) Is one merely a stream of consciousness which becomes a person only upon the achievement of a certain level of self-awareness? If so, it is difficult to integrate the experiences of early childhood and the emotions of adult life which play so central a role in moral maturity. Or is the person an essentially free and responsible psycho-physical subject? If so, can this be understood within an understanding of self which does not limit the person solipsistically, but opens his or her consciousness to the plenitude of being and life.

(c) Finally, does a person’s freedom consist merely in implementing a pattern of behavior encoded in one’s nature. If so, there would be little place for the anguish of decision, the pains of moral growth, or the creativity of a moral life. Or is this free subject a creative center whose basic dynamism consists in realizing a unique inner harmony and outer community? If so, is there a mystical character to this inner harmony that opens to the life of the Absolute Existence, and what is its meaning for our life with others in this world.

For orientation in this task let us begin by delineating the meaning of person by contrast to a number of other notions. These contrasts will serve subsequently as guideposts for a series of positive and progressively deepening insights regarding the nature of the person, its moral growth, and self-fulfillment.

This positive notion of the person has not always had an identical or unchanging meaning. By natural growth, more than by mere accretion, the notion of person has managed to incorporate the great achievements of human self-discovery for which, in turn, it has been both the stimulus and the goal. This continuing process has been central to philosophy from its earliest days. Like all life processes, the search for the person has consisted in a sequence of important steps, each of which has resulted in a certain equilibrium or level of culture. In time each has been enriched and molded by subsequent discoveries. Indeed, it may not be incorrect to say that a parallel search is the very dynamism at the heart of our personal life as well.

To look into this experience, it will be advantageous to study the nature of the person through reflection on a series of paired and progressively deeper dimensions: first, as a role and as the one who lives out this role; second, as free self-consciousness and as the subject of that freedom; and third, as moral agent and as searching for one’s moral development and fulfilment. The first member of each pair is integral to an understanding of the human person and of moral growth, but each of these members requires in turn its corresponding dimension and evokes the pair on the next higher level.

Indeed, to begin from its meaning as role can save the notion of person from hiding and then suppressing the ontological reality who fulfils that role. This route is suggested by an alternate (Etruscan) origin of the term ‘person’ locating it in the mask worn in the cult of the goddess Persephone. While the Latin grammarians seized on this to classify the speakers voices as first or second person, the original dramatic context was more mysterious, based on a vibrant interplay of presence and absence as the goddess manifested herself while remaining absent. The appearances, thus, became multiple while the unlimited reality of the source remained one and unfathomable. There is here a first suggestion of a central truth about person, namely that a person is an unlimitedly rich and even mysterious source; and, hence, that in dialogue with one’s physical and social environment, one can be adaptive and creative in one’s expressions. This holds a key to understanding the rich variety of cultures.

Though much has been accomplished through understanding the person in terms of roles, there may have been a distant early warning of the limitations of this approach in Auguste Comte’s (1798-1857) Cours de philosophie positive. By rejecting psychology as a scientific discipline and reducing all data concerning the person to either biology or sociology, he ignored introspection and the corresponding dimensions of the individual’s conscious life. The person was not only one who could play a role, but one whose total reality consisted in playing that role.

These difficulties suggest that attention must be directed to another level of meaning if the person is to find the resources required to play his/her roles. Rather than attempting to think of a role without an actor, it is important to look to the individual who assumes the role and expresses him or herself therein. 

Caution must be exercised here, however, lest the search for the subject or the self appear to reinforce the excesses of self-centeredness and individualism. This could be a special danger in the context of cultures whose positive stress on self-reliance and independence has been rooted historically in an atomistic and nominalistic understanding of persons as individuals, single and unrelated. This danger is reflected, for example, in the common law understanding of judicial rulings, not as defining the nature of interpersonal relations, but simply as reducing violence through resolving conflicts between individuals whose lives happen to have intersected.

In order better to appreciate the members of a community, it is helpful to consider them in three progressively more specific dimensions: first, as instances of a particular type, that is, as substances; secondly, as existing, that is, as subsisting individuals; and thirdly, as self-conscious, that is, as persons. The order in which these three will be considered is not accidental, for the former are required for the latter. Moreover, while it is necessary to be of a certain definite type, it is more important to exist as an individual in one’s own right. For the person, finally, it is important above all that one be self-aware and free. Hence, our exposition begins with substance and the subsisting individual in order to identify some general and basic–though not specific or exclusive–characteristics of the person. What is distinctive, namely, self-awareness and freedom, will be treated in the subsequent sections.

Hence, a first and basic characteristic of the moral subject, and indeed of any substance, is that it has its identity in its own right rather than through another; only thus could a human being be responsible for one’s action. Without substances with their distinct identities one could envisage only a structure of ideals and values inhabited, as it were, by agents without meaning or value. In this light the task of moral education would be merely to enable one to judge correctly according to progressively higher ideals. This, indeed, would seem to be the implicit context of Lawrence Kohlberg’s focus upon moral dilemmas which omits not only the other dimensions of moral development, but personal identity as well. Aristotle points instead to a world of persons realizing values in their actions. In their complex reality of body, affections and mind they act morally and are the subjects of moral education. 

Thirdly, being of a definite kind the individual has its own proper characteristics and is able to realize a specific or typical set of activities. These activities derive from, or are "born of" (from the Latin, natus) the substance as being of a specific kind or nature. The determination of what activity is moral will need to include, not only the good to be derived from the action, but respect for the agent and his or her nature. 

Something of the greatest importance was bound to take place, therefore, when the mind expanded its range of awareness beyond the nature of things to what Shakespeare was to call the question: "to be or not to be." At that point the mind became able to take explicit account not only of the kind, but of the existence of the individual, by which it is constituted in the order of actual, and hence of acting, beings.

The uncovering of existence in the context of early Christianity was described in Chapter II above. Its decisive impact cannot be overestimated. From recognizing the individual as just another instance of human nature this allowed one to see the explosive emergence of the unique person which is and refuses to be denied in whole or in any part. This life is mine and unique; it has never existed before and will never be lived by another now or ever; it is my precious responsibility but even more it is my opportunity to live and love, to create and to transform, to serve and to communicate.

It is this utter power of the person when seen as existence that created the Christian era after antiquity, and that now creates our contemporary dilemma when at last it meets other civilizations in this global age.

From this there followed a series of basic implications for the reality of the person. It would no longer be considered as simply the relatively placid, distinct or autonomous instance of some specific type. Rather, it would be understood in the much more dynamic manner as existing. This means not only being in its own right or, as is said, "standing on its own two feet" (sub-sisting), but bursting in among the realities of this world as a new and active center (ex-isting). This understanding incorporates all the above-mentioned characteristics of the individual substance, and adds three more which are proper to existence, namely, (a) complete, (b) independent, and (c) dynamically open to actions and to new actualization. Yet, since existing or subsisting individuals include not only persons but rocks and trees, these characteristics, though fundamental, still will not be exclusive to the person.

Further, the existing individual requires not merely a complete nature, but his or her proper existence. As existing, the individual is not merely an instance of a specific nature or kind, but a concrete reality asserting oneself and dynamically struggling to achieve one’s fulfilment. In the person this goes beyond merely walking a course whose every step is already charted; it includes all the unique, fully individual choices by which a life is lived. It is subject then to combinations of the precarious and the stable, of tragedy and triumph in its self-realization. These are described by the American pragmatists and Continental existentialists as the very stuff of life, and hence by Dewey as the very stuff of education.

Secondly, as subsistent the person is independent. Being complete in its nature it is numerically individual and distinct from all else. In accord with this individual nature, one’s existence is, in turn, unique, and establishes the subject as a being in its own right, independent of all else. This does not imply that the human or other living subject does not need nourishment, or that it was not generated by another: people do need people, and much else besides. There is no question here of being self-sufficient or absolute. What is meant by independence is that the needs it has and the actions it performs are truly its own.

In turn, this means that in interacting with other subsistent individuals one’s own contribution is distinctive and unique. This is commonly recognized at those special times when the presence of a mother, father, or special friend is required, and no one else will do. At other times as well, even when, as a bus driver or a dentist, I perform a standard service, my actions remain properly my own. This understanding is a prerequisite for education to responsibility in public as in private life. It is a condition too for overcoming depersonalization in a society in which we must fulfil ever more specialized and standardized roles.

Another implication of this independence is that, as subsisting, the human person cannot simply be absorbed or assimilated by another. As complete in oneself one cannot be part of another: as independent in existence one is distinct from all else. Hence, one cannot be assumed or taken up by any other person or group in such wise as to lose one’s identity. In recent years awareness of this characteristic has generated a strong reaction against the tendencies of mass society totally to absorb the person and to reduce all to mere functions of a larger whole called the state, the industrial complex, the consumer society, cult, etc.

As noted above it is perhaps the special challenge of the present day, however, to keep this awareness of one’s distinctive independence from degenerating into selfishness, to keep individuality from becoming individualism. The individual existent, seen as sculpted out of the flow and process of the physical universe, cannot rightly be thought of as isolated. Such an existent is always with others, depending on them for birth, sustenance and expression. In this context, to be distinct or individual is not to be isolated or cut off, but to be able to relate more precisely and intensively to others. 

This can be seen at a series of levels. My relation to the chair upon which I sit and the desk upon which I write is not diminished, but made possible by the distinction and independence of the three of us. Their retention of their distinctness enables me to integrate them into my task of writing. Because I depend still more intimately upon food, I must correlate more carefully its distinctive characteristics with my precise needs and capacities. On the genetic level it is the careful choice of distinctive strains that enables the development of new plants with the desired characteristics. On the social level the more personable the members of the group the greater and more intense is its unity. 

Moving thus from instruments such as desks, to alimentation, to lineage, to society suggests that, as one moves upward through the levels of beings, distinctness, far from being antithetic to community, is in fact its basis. This gives hope that at its higher reaches, namely, in the moral and artistic life, the distinctiveness of autonomy, freedom and culture need not to be compromised, but may indeed be the basis for a community of persons bound together in mutual love and respect.

The third characteristic of the subsistent individual to be considered is this openness to new actualization and to interrelation with others. The existence by which one erupted into this world of related subjects is not simply self-contained; it is expressed in a complex symphony of actions which are properly one’s own: thus, as noted above, running can be said only of an existing individual, such as Mary, who runs. What is more, actions determine their subject, for it is only by running that Mary herself is constituted precisely as a runner. This will be central to the person as moral agent.

To summarize: thus far, we have seen the early derivation of the notion of person from mask. For this to evolve into the contemporary notion of person a strong awareness both of the nature and of the existence of independent individuals needed to be developed. The first was achieved by the Greeks who identified within the one physical process different basic types of things. Substances are the individual instances of these specific types or natures. This provides the basis for the self-consciousness of one’s own nature and for relating to others within the overall pattern of nature(s).

There were limitations to such a project, for in its terms alone one ultimately would be but an instance of one’s nature; in the final analysis the goal of a physical being would be but to continue its species through time. This was true for the Greeks and may still be a sufficient basis for the issues considered in sociobiology taken in a reductivist manner, but it does not allow for adequate attention to the person’s unique and independent reality. This required the subsequent development of an awareness of existence distinct from nature or essence, and by which one enters into the world and is constituted as a being in one’s own right. On this basis the subsisting individual can be seen to be whole and independent, and hence the dynamic center of his or her action in the world.

There may be an inherent difficulty in this view. While it provides strong grounding for an affirmation of uniqueness and by implication for one’s proper dignity and individual rights, it may be subject to the danger of generating a self-centeredness that encloses, and in time stifles, the thrust of being.

If this is so, then it could be important to look for the Indian and other correlatives to this notion to see if they have resources for overcoming this difficulty without losing the appreciation of unique individuality that remains important for the emergence of the person and the multiple personal initiatives required for a people to prosper, or even to survive.

From the logical point of view merely coordinating different characteristics may be a candidate. But the metaphysical question of that by which a being is constituted in itself points rather to the foundation of being or the atman as the ultimate root of all existence. In the Upanishads it would appear to be a relational term expressing subjectivity and interiority, the enduring and pervading, in contrast to what is objective, external and manifest to our external consciousness. In this sense it stands as the support of the phenomena we perceive.

Here we come to a crucial juncture, that of the relation of the many to the one. In the history of Western thought this arose immediately as the field of metaphysics was opened by Parmenides. While it can be argued–I believe, successfully–that he did not intend to rule out a plurality of beings (why else write the second part of his Poem?), nevertheless within two generations Simplicius and others took such an exclusion of all plurality to be the case, holding that if being be one then there can be no multiplicity or many. This served as the basic challenge to Plato: to restore to the human mind finite, multiple and changing reality. There may be a lesson here, namely, if there had not already been a strong affirmation of the one unchanging being it would not be necessary to focus upon and provide for the reality of finite beings. The answer was initiated by Plato in terms of participation: the multiple, finite beings were participations and images of the One absolute. Aristotle further articulated their reality by seeing them not only as forms, but as principles of action.

The Christian message was that God not only appeared in the form of man, but literally became incarnate and existed also according to a human nature. Through this reality he carried out the work of salvation, bringing humankind from death to life. All of this continually reiterated the distinction between that which exists in itself (in se) and that which exists of itself (a se). The latter pertains only to that which is absolute and self-sufficient, infinite and hence unique. But the former (in itself) expresses the foundational or substantial (standing under) character of beings. They support accidents, but do not in turn inhere in another; they exist in themselves or, as it were, stand on their own two feet.

A strong sense of the independence of the person derives from this. As the processes of political entitlement, education and commerce evolve, this sense of the independence of the person becomes ever more essential to modern life; indeed, in a sense it is the true heart of modernity.

This is not a case of bargaining between the reality of the finite and that of the infinite. Rather, it is the greatness of the unity of the Absolute – to the point of uniqueness – that points to the substantial distinctiveness of the multiple finite beings existing in se or in themselves, though not a se or of themselves. The power of the creature does reflect the power of the creator, but the converse is true as well: the power and uniqueness of the creator implies the distinctive power and reality of the creature; only the absolute can make a being to be or to exist, but that existence must be taken with extreme seriousness. I am, and while much can be done to, for and even against me, finite agents can only transform, they can never annihilate me or any other limited being, no matter how small or insignificant.

This leads to a strong sense of efficient causality in which, not only is the cause really distinct from the effect, but the effects are distinct from the source and from one another. It should be noted that this is not a spatial matter, though our need from images whenever we think pushes us toward thinking of the efficient cause as external. We know, however, that the cause is present to the effect and that the more penetrating the causality exercised the more immanent the cause. The highest cause then is the most immanent as well; causing our being precisely as existing, it is more present to us than are we who act according to a nature or essence distinct from our existence.

In the Indian tradition with the notion of atman the perspective is more simply that of immanence: the being that is in se is also a se or cause of its own existence, eternal and self-explanatory. Any existence in itself which is not also of itself is in the final resolution illusion, and hence can be conceived only as maya or false superimposition. It would be hard to disagree that this gives the highest self-confidence, that it transcends anything that can be achieved by human efforts, and that it defies the vicissitudes of life. The recognized wisdom of the Gita is just this insight, as is the religious paradox that he who loses his life will save it.

But we might ask whether such a vision can provide as well the individuation of persons required for the development of personal initiative and the diversified modes of cooperation supposed for active modern life. Here, of course, one is at the heart of the basic dispute which differentiates the schools of Shankara’s advaita from Ramanuja’s visistadvaita and from the string of carefully worked out alternatives stretching toward ever greater substantiality and individuality for the person.

Together they provide a rich palate which can be drawn upon in expressing the sense of person. To suggest but a few insights: if for Advaita the multiple individuals as mutually contrasted are not what is definitively real, nonetheless each according to its proper characteristics is a manifestation (viyakti) of the divine absolute. This might join the Greek notion of prosopon or mask, or the modern sense of role. But where in the West this is reductivist in the sense that the reality is nothing but the role, in the Hindu tradition the person is so much more that the sense of role seems overshadowed. Though one must not forget the pervasive sense of the four roles (asramas) of the person according to one’s stage of life, i.e., student, householder, ascetic and mystic, Tagore would ask whether this could be lived with sufficient intensity and passion without the sense of love proclaimed by the Bauti singers of Bengal or in the Saiva Sedanta philosophy of South India.

Ramanuja would see the human soul as a vassal and even an attribute of the Lord. This opens the way to the ideal of service of humanity so manifest in almsgiving and in the Bodhi-satva ideal.

In the Nyáya-Vaisesika the living self or jivatman is the substratum of intelligence and mind (buddhi, manas), pleasure and pain, love and hatred, right and wrong (dharma-adharma).

In the Samkhya karikàs the notion of purusa is presented as witness consciousness in a way that could suggest important elements for a modern notion of person. It is not simply for others, but an end in itself to which all human activities are directed (purusartha). It is the controller of action, the reflection of all enjoyment, and the purpose of all activity: for which reason the more abstract notion of values is often expressed by the purusarthas.

There is great wealth in these traditions for use in the development of a notion of person for future use. The Indian tradition has rich resources for overcoming the tendency to organize this tightly according to only one type of rationality and thus desiccate human life in the confines of a mechanistic model of clear and distinct ideas. This would be relegated to the lower level of consciousness concerned with the structures of the buddhi (intelligence), the manas (mind) or other internal faculties deriving from the bodily pole of human nature, though through such rational activity there shines the spirit as reflection of the atman.

On the other hand, if the rationalization of life is to be truly humanizing and expressive of the divine in time, there must be a mode of human awareness which transcends the rational but does not abandon it. This must open to a full and transcendent meaning in which the modern person with all its cares can be truly liberated and rehumanized in a new birth or renaissance of the spirit. This points to Kant’s third Critique, that of Aesthetic Judgment, and the great attention it finally is beginning to receive in our times. This will be discussed in the fifth chapter below.

First, however, it must be noted that subsistence in oneself as complete and independent, while foundational for a person, is had as well by animals and trees: they too are wholes, independent and active in this world. Hence, to analyze the notion of person, in addition to what has been said above about substance as the subsisting individual, it is necessary to identify that which is distinctive of the human subsistent and constitutes it finally as personal. This is self-consciousness and freedom, which will be the burden of chapter four.