Personalism
Personalism
(Lat. persona, actor’s mask) A modern term applied to any philosophy which considers personality the supreme value and the key to the meaning of reality.
Typical or original Personalism was theistic, the term being first used in America (1863) by Bronson Alcott for “the doctrine that the ultimate reality of the world is a Divine Person who sustains the universe by a continuous act of creative Will.” (Odell ShepardPedlar’s Progress., p. 494.)
Theistic Personalism was given systematic form in America by Borden Parker Bowne (1847-1910) for whom it implied
Metaphysically, the personal nature of the World Ground;
Epistemologically, a knowledge validated by the common source of thought and thing in the World Ground and mediated through personality;
Logically, the pragmatic assumption that life is superior to logical form,
Ethically, that values are real and based in the Cosmic Nature.
While the term Personalism is modern it stands for an old way of thinking which grows out of the attempt to interpret the self as a part of phenomenological experience. Personalistic elements found expression in Heraclitus’ (536-470 B.C.) statement “Man’s own character is his daemon” (Fr. 119), and in his assertion of the Logos as an enduring principle of permanence in a world of change. These elements are traceable likewise in the cosmogony of Anaxagoras (500-430 B.C.), who gave philosophy an anthropocentric trend by affirming that mind “regulated all things, what they were to be, what they were and what they are”, the force which arranges and guides (Fr. 12) Protagoras (cir. 480-410 B.C.) emphasized the personalistic character of knowledge in the famous dictum “Man is the measure of all things.”
The doctrine of the person reached its high point in Greek philosophy in Socrates (469-399 B.C.) who recognized the soul or self as the center from which sprang all man’s actions.
Plato (427-347 B.C.) recognized the person in his doctrine of the soul, but turned the direction of thought toward dominance by the abstract Idea.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) made his contiibution by insisting that only the concrete and individual could be real.
St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) asserted that thought, and therefore the thinker, was the most certain of all things.
To Boethius (475-525) it was given to furnish the philosophy and definition of the person that held for the Middle Ages”A person is the individual substance of a rational nature.”
The importance of the person in Scholastic thought insured the personalistic concepts until they found expression in the work of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).
The renewal of philosophy signalized by Descartes introduced a long line of personilistic thinkers in France who under various classifications offered the main opposition to naturalism, materialism and positivism. Among these were Geulincx (1625-1669), Occasionalism; Malebranche (1638-1715), Activism; de Lignac (1710-1769), Theistic Personalism; de Biran (1766-1824), Philosophy of Effort; Cournot (1801-1877), Probabilism, Vitalism; Ravaisson (1813-1900), Spiritual Realism; Renouvier (1815-1903), Neo criticism, Personalism; Lachelier (1832-1918), Spiritua] Realism; Boutroux (1845-1921), Philosophy of Discontinuity; Bergson (1859-1941), Philosophy of Chinge, Intuitionism.
In Germany the first use of the word pcrsonalism seems to have been by Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and later by Hans Dreyer, Troeltsch, and Rudolf Otto. Among German Personalists would be included G. H. Leibniz (1646-1716), Monadism; R. H. Lotze (1817-1881), Teleological Personalism; Rudolf Eucken (1846-1926), Theistic Personalism, Vitalism; Max Schcler (1874-1928), Phenomenological Personalism; William Stern (1871-1939), Critical Personalism, Pantheistic Personalism.
In England many Theistic Personalists have appeared since Bishop Berkeley (1710-1796), Subjectivism, Subjective Idealism; including A. C. Frazer (1819-1914); T. H. Green (1836-1882); Edward Caird (1835-1908); James Wild (1843-1925), Singularism; A. J. Balfour (1848-1930); J. Cook Wilson (1849-1915); W. R. Sorley (1855-1935). Also English were H. W. Carr (1857-1931), Monadistic Personalism; F. C. S. Schiller (1864-1937), Humanism, Personalism; J. M. E. McTaggart (1866-1925), Atheistic Personalism.
In America we have among Theistic Personalists in addition to Bowne, G. T. Ladd (1842-1921); J. W. Buckham (1864-), Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930), Personal Idealism, Absolutistic Personalism; G. A. Wilson (1864-1941); H. A. Youtz (1867-); R. T. Flewelling (1871-), Personal Realism; A. C. Knudson (1873-); E. S. Brightman (1884-), “The Given.” Though probably rejecting the term personalism, a view of American Personalism would be incomplete without mention of W. T. Harris (1835-1909); C. W. Howison (1834-1916); Josiah Royce (1855-1916); G. T. W. Patrick (1857-); W. E. Boodin (1869-); J. A. Leighton (1870); W. E. Hocking (1873-); J. B. Pratt (1875-), Personal Realism. Among contemporary Personalists abroad mention should be made of Ph. Kohnstamm, Holland, Critical Personalism; N. Losski (1870-), Prague, Organismic Personalism; N. Berdyaev (1874-), Paris;, Maurice Blondel (1861-1939), Paris, Activism; Ch. Baudouin (1893-), Geneva; Radelescu-Motru, Bucharest. In France also should be noted the leader of the Personalistic movement which might be denominated Political Personalism, E. Mounier. — R.T.F.