Some virtue ethicists are reluctant to consider principles and standards in business ethics. However, this is problematic. This paper argues that realistic Personalism can be integrated into virtue-based business ethics, giving it a more complete base. More specifically, two principles are proposed: the Personalist Principle (PP) and the Common Good Principle (CGP). The PP includes the Golden Rule and makes explicit the duty of respect, benevolence, and care for people, emphasizing human dignity and the innate rights of every human (...) being. The CGP entails cooperation to promote conditions which enhance the opportunity for the human flourishing of all people within a community. Both principles have practical implications for business ethics. (shrink)

This article has a twofold purpose: first, it explores how Leonardo Polo's personalist anthropology enriches and enhances neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and second, it highlights how this specific personalist approach brings new perspectives to servant leadership. The recently revived neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics tradition finds that MacIntyre's scholarship significantly contributes to virtue ethics in business—particularly his conception of practices, institutions, and internal/external goods. However, we argue that some of his latest insights about the virtues of acknowledged dependence and human vulnerability remain underdeveloped (...) because of the underlying anthropology that neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics relies on. To overcome this limitation, we introduce Polo's transcendental anthropology as a possible foundation of a personalist approach that enriches virtue ethics. To do so, we address how transcendental anthropology can enrich two central aspects of virtue ethics, namely (1) the understanding of human beings and their flourishing and (2) the relationship of virtue to praxis and human work. Finally, to address the practical implications for business leadership and work that can derive from assuming transcendental anthropology, we address how servant leadership acquires a new perspective in light of this personalism and its logic of gift, highlighting interpersonal self-giving as a way of service. (shrink)

After briefly describing the philosophy of personalism this article assesses each of three normative leadership paradigms (transformational leadership, postmodern or postindustrial leadership, and servant leadership) in terms of five major themes of this phenomenological philosophy. Servant leadership appears to be closest to personalism. The critical ingredient for servant leadership is also personalism’s starting point, i.e. the dignity of each human person. A genuine servant leader works with his followers in building a community of participation and solidarity. However, (...) some claim that servant leaders are subject to manipulation by their followers. If so, and if transformational leaders, when too successful, gain too much power or manipulate using bogus empowerment, a superior approach might be provided by a combination in which a morally tough servant leader adopts certain transforming behaviors of Bass’s altruistic transformational leader. The leader and the followers would focus on a jointly formulated and refined vision, avoiding manipulation by any party through a mutual commitment to participation, solidarity of community, and respect for each person. (shrink)

After briefly describing the philosophy of personalism this article assesses each of three normative leadership paradigms in terms of five major themes of this phenomenological philosophy. Servant leadership appears to be closest to personalism. The critical ingredient for servant leadership is also personalism’s starting point, i.e. the dignity of each human person. A genuine servant leader works with his followers in building a community of participation and solidarity. However, some claim that servant leaders are subject to manipulation (...) by their followers. If so, and if transformational leaders, when too successful, gain too much power or manipulate using bogus empowerment, a superior approach might be provided by a combination in which a morally tough servant leader adopts certain transforming behaviors of Bass’s altruistic transformational leader. The leader and the followers would focus on a jointly formulated and refined vision, avoiding manipulation by any party through a mutual commitment to participation, solidarity of community, and respect for each person. (shrink)

We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Notwithstanding the fact that care ethics has received increased attention, it has also faced much criticism. One of the focal points of critics is the normativity of care. Only when the objective normative basis of care is sufficiently clarified can care practices be evaluated and optimized from an ethical point of view. We emphasize that two levels of normativity can be identified: the context level and the foundational anthropology level. The personalist approach to care ethics is normatively stronger, at least (...) on one level, namely the foundational anthropology level. This personalist approach to care ethics indicates in which direction action must be taken so that human action may be considered ethically sound. (shrink)

The detailed analysis of a particular quasi-historical numerical example is used to illustrate the way in which a Bayesian personalist approach to scientific inference resolves the Duhemian problem of which of a conjunction of hypotheses to reject when they jointly yield a prediction which is refuted. Numbers intended to be approximately historically accurate for my example show, in agreement with the views of Lakatos, that a refutation need have astonishingly little effect on a scientist's confidence in the ‘hard core’ of (...) a successful research programme even when a comparable confirmation would greatly enhance that confidence. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis. (shrink)

Albert Cornelius Knudson, the man, by E. A. Leslie.--Bowne and personalism, by F. J. McConnell.--Personality as a metaphysical principle, by E. S. Brightman.--Personalism and nature, by C. D. Hildebrand.--The cultural integration of science and religion, by E. T. Ramsdell.--The personality of God, by F. G. Ensley.--Divine sovereignty and human freedom, by Georgia Harkness.--Personalistic elements in the Old Testament, by R. H. Pfeiffer.--Personalism and the trend of history, by R. T. Flewelling.--Personality and Christian ethics, by W. G. Muelder.-- (...) class='Hi'>Personalism and race, by W. J. King.--Personalism and religious education, by E. B. Marlatt.--Bibliography of Knudson's writings, by C. D. Hildebrand (p. 249-257). (shrink)

My paper highlights one Personalist aspect of St. Anselm's Platonic perspective, namely the ontological priority and interpenetration of persons. The paper first discusses Anselm's metaphysical Platonism, then charts the Anselmian path towards God, through participation in the divine attributes. It then focuses on images of persons, and their degree of being. I argue that, at least for certain human relationships marked by strong love or friendship, Anselm regards the image of the person as mediating the being of the person imaged.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction European Personalism American Personalism Conclusion Works cited.

Medical ethics enjoyed a remarkable degree of continuity from the days of Hippocrates until its long-standing traditions began to be supplanted, or at least supplemented, around the middle of the twentieth century. Scientific, technological, and social developments during that time produced rapid changes in the biological sciences and in health care. These developments challenged many prevalent conceptions of the moral obligations of health professionals and society in meeting the needs of the sick and injured .The Anglo-American textbook of Beauchamp and (...) Childress became the referential work for the discipline of `bio-ethics'. The authors are convinced that a long history of ancient, medieval and modern health care reflection remains very disappointing from the perspective of contemporary biomedical ethics: “It shows how inadequately, and with what measure of insularity, problems of truthfulness, privacy, justice, communal responsibility and the like were framed in past centuries ”. They defend the four principles approach to biomedical ethics, an approach which somewhat disparagingly has been called principlism.The influence of their work has been so strong that bio-ethics seemed to become overwhelmed by the importance of their contribution. It even created a large separation between Anglo-American approaches in bio-ethics and the European-Continental approach . In any case, contemporary biomedical ethics incorporates theoretical conflicts of considerable complexity, and the diverse theories make it no easier.The personalist approach to biomedical ethics presents itself as a typical European reaction to the rapid changes in medicine and health care. Some call it, however, a kind of renewal of the old Thomistic approach, whereby the concept of `nature' has been replaced by the more dynamic concept of `person'. In that way personalism has been situated by many observers as a `person' centred natural law tradition which focuses on the rational nature of the human person as the moral norm of nature. This gives the impression that personalism is only a very `static' variant of the natural law approach.I would, however, defend the opinion that personalism offers a very dynamic and creative approach to the complexities of recent developments in biomedicine. In what follows, I will illustrate this by clarifying two basic dimensions of the integration of personalism in biomedical ethics: the personalist approach offers a relational foundation for medicine as a healing profession and it presents an ethical framework for the integration of new developments in medicine. First, however, I would like to situate the importance of this theoretical reflection for medical ethics. (shrink)

To mark the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the author embarked on an attempt to analyze the theoretical and historical framework that contributed to the adoption of the document. The first part of the article discusses the development of the philosophy of personalism from Mounier to Maritain and analyzes Maritain’s views on human rights. In the second part of the article, the author shows the decisive influence of the personalists Charles Malik and (...) Rene Cassin on the adoption of the document, which clearly bears the mark of the Christian personalistic discourse and notions. (shrink)

The integration of personalism into business ethics has been recently studied. Research has also been conducted on humanistic management approaches. The conceptual relationship between personalism and humanism , however, has not been fully addressed. This article furthers that research by arguing that a true humanistic management is personalistic. Moreover, it claims that personalism is promising as a sound philosophical foundation for business ethics. Insights from Jacques Maritain’s work are discussed in support of these conclusions. Of particular interest (...) is his distinction between human person and individual based on a realistic metaphysics that, in turn, grounds human dignity and the natural law as the philosophical basis for human rights, personal virtues, and a common good defined in terms of properly human ends. Although Maritain is widely regarded as one of the foremost twentieth century personalist philosophers, his contribution has not been sufficiently considered in the business ethics and humanistic management literature. Important implications of Maritainian personalism for business ethics as philosophical study and as practical professional pursuit are discussed. (shrink)

This volume is Mounier's final definition of personalism. First published less than a year before his death in 1950, it is a beautifully written, clear yet unsystematic statement of personalism.

Historical study has traditionally been built around the placement of the human at the center of inquiry. The de-stabilized concepts of the human in contemporary thought challenge this configuration. However, the ways in which these challenges provoke new historical perspectives both expand and enrich historical study but are also weak and vulnerable in their concept of the human, lacking or omitting something valuable in our self-understanding. A Personalist Philosophy of History argues for a robust concept of personhood in our experience (...) of the past as a way to resolve this conflict. -/- Focused on those who know history, rather than on the abstract properties of knowledge, it extends the moral agency of persons into non-human, trans-human, and deep history domains. It describes an approach to moral life through historical experience and study, rather than through abstractions. And it describes a kind of historiography that matches factual accuracy to both the constructed nature of understanding and to unavoidable moral purpose. -/- Table of Contents: Introduction Chapter 1. Receiving the Past Chapter 2. Moral Agency Personalism Chapter 3. Shaping Up Time Chapter 4. The Long Experience of Moral Obligation Chapter 5. From Moral Force Ethics to Personalist Philosophy of History . (shrink)

Although synthetic biology is a promising discipline, it also raises serious ethical questions that must be addressed in order to prevent unwanted consequences and to ensure that its progress leads toward the good of all. Questions arise about the role of this discipline in a possible redefinition of the concept of life and its creation. With regard to the products of synthetic biology, the moral status that they should be given as well as the ethically correct way to behave towards (...) them are not clear. Moreover, risks that could result from a misuse of this technology or from an accidental release of synthetic organisms into the environment cannot be ignored; concerns about biosecurity and biosafety appear. Here we discuss these and other questions from a personalist ontological framework, which defends human life as an essential value and proposes a set of principles to ensure the safeguarding of this and other values that are based on it. (shrink)

Leslie, E. A. Albert Cornelius Knudson, the man.--McConnell, F. J. Bowne and personalism.--Brightman, E. S. Personality as a metaphysical principle.--Hildebrand, C. D. Personalism and nature.--Ramsdell, E. T. The cultural integration of science and religion.--Ensley, F. G. The personality of God.--Harkness, G. Divine sovereignity and human freedom.--Pfeiffer, R. H. Personalistic elements in the Old Testament.--Flewelling, R. T. Personalism and the trend of history.--Muelder, W. G. Personality and Christian ethics.--King, W. J. Personalism and race.--Marlatt, E. B. Personalism (...) and religious education. (shrink)

Ethical Personalism proposes to reflect on the person from at least three levels: ontology, epistemology, and ethics. Articulating the ontological and inalienable value of the human person, i.e., her dignity, from various philosophical and religious angles and traditions, the contributors show not just what it means to be a human person, but also what it takes to live accordingly. Hence, beyond the purely theoretical elaboration on ethical personalism that reposes the crucial debates between relativism and realism on the (...) one hand, and consequentialism and deontology on the other, this volume offers a range of insights useful for addressing concrete and practical matters that we, as humans, are confronted by in our everyday life. Ethical Personalism unequivocally affirms the necessity of (re)placing the person in the centre of our project of society, economic plans, political settings, and environment policies. (shrink)

I have argued that the central Christian doctrine of general resurrection (with particular reference to the Pauline corpus) can and should be understood in a scientifically and philosophically informed context, and have proposed a personalist-phenomenological model of general resurrection as a personally continuous transformative re-embodiment by the grace of God within an interpretative framework that respects the methods and findings of science while rejecting scientism and associated physicalist metaphysical claims. I have considered and rejected the re-assembly model of resurrection on (...) theological, philosophical and scientific grounds. (shrink)

Although synthetic biology is a promising discipline, it also raises serious ethical questions that must be addressed in order to prevent unwanted consequences and to ensure that its progress leads toward the good of all. Questions arise about the role of this discipline in a possible redefinition of the concept of life and its creation. With regard to the products of synthetic biology, the moral status that they should be given as well as the ethically correct way to behave towards (...) them are not clear. Moreover, risks that could result from a misuse of this technology or from an accidental release of synthetic organisms into the environment cannot be ignored; concerns about biosecurity and biosafety appear. Here we discuss these and other questions from a personalist ontological framework, which defends human life as an essential value and proposes a set of principles to ensure the safeguarding of this and other values that are based on it. (shrink)

Philosophical personalism has generated a very powerful field of study in the twentieth and twenty first centuries but has not produced a systematic exposition. This book fills this big gap by offering for the first time a full systematic personalistic vision of the human person. This ambitious volume offers a pedagogical and integrated exposition of philosophical personalism, answering vital questions about human identity and existence in a way that the reader can achieve an integrated view of the person. (...) The book points to the real life of each person so that, by partially unraveling the mystery of the personal being, it becomes a philosophical guide for life. For these reasons, the book can be used both for academic purposes, as a manual of philosophy of man or for personal enlightenment. Divided in five parts, the first part of the book works as an introduction, offering an overview of the human person and of the notion of person. The second part describes the internal structure of the human being addressing topics as corporeity as a personal fact; sensibility and the senses; affectivity; intelligence; freedom understood as choice and self-determination and, finally, the personal self. The third part analyses the person in action and some special types of action such as work and language. The fourth part deals with interpersonal relationships beginning with I-You relationship and following with the family and the social structure. Finally, part five deals with the so-called ultimate questions, that is, those that decide the final meaning of each person's life, namely, time, death, immortality, and religion. (shrink)

Abraham Maslow’s needs theory is one of the most influential motivation theories in management and organizational behavior. What are its anthropological and ethical presuppositions? Are they consistent with sound business philosophy and ethics? This paper analyzes and assesses the anthropological and ethical underpinnings of Maslow’s needs theory from a personalistic framework, and concludes that they are flawed. Built on materialistic naturalism, the theory’s “humanistic” claims are subverted by its reductionist, individualistic approach to the human being, which ends up in a (...) needs-based ethics that understands goodness, virtue, and rights in instinctual, subjectivistic, and relativistic terms. Its moral imperative, “Be yourself!,” is either the materialistic fiat of genetic drives or the voluntaristic command of unbridled will. Significant implications for business educators, managers, and organizations are discussed, along with recommendations. Managerial theories and approaches that reduce personality to individuality are inconsistent with proper anthropological and ethical business principles. Adopting those individualistic theories may ultimately undermine organizational effectiveness, and the very essence of business as human activity and of management as human calling. Instead, personalistic anthropology and virtue ethics, rooted in Aristotelian–Thomistic thought, soundly account for properly human nature and the good life. Business educators and practitioners are encouraged to embrace this integral, truly humanistic framework for motivation, and management theory and practice. (shrink)

The third and purportedly final attempt to outline a personalism appropriate for a post-modern, post Marxist cultural phase, linked to but independent of Grant's (English, U. of Victoria, British Columbia) Literature and Personal Habits (1992) and Spirituality and the Meaning of Persons (1994). Concerned here with the idea of the person in relation to the politics of culture, he considers certain relationships between literature and religion to find clues about persons and human community. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., (...) Portland, OR. (shrink)

Church-ethical statements in the context of contemporary medicine often give rise to a lot of controversy and commotion. Just think of the debates about medically assisted reproduction, genetics, prenatal diagnosis, stem cell research, organ donation, palliative sedation or euthanasia. Paul Schotsmans notes that many of these statements are inspired by a well-defined ethical model, specifically the act-deontological model. He argues that a more dynamic ethical model (personalism based on Western-European value-systems) creates space for a humane integration of the new (...) medical possibilities. With this book, he seeks to indicate how Christian faith can be an inspiration for an open-minded, humane and dynamic health care. (shrink)

In a posthumously published paper, Fr. W. Norris Clarke, S.J., declares that Thomistic personalism is the most creative and fruitful development in twenty-first century Thomism. I agree with Clarke, and I would also add that Thomistic personalism is the most creative and fruitful development in twenty-first centurymoral and political philosophy. Thus, in this paper—focusing on clarification and exhortation—I (i) identify the main commitments of personalism; (ii) identifyweak, moderate, and strong versions of Thomistic personalism; and (iii) suggest (...) that Thomistic personalism is a vocation for the twenty-first century that requirescollaboration between specialists from diverse backgrounds. (shrink)

One version of the problem of evil concludes that personalistic forms of theism should be rejected since the acts that one would expect a God with person-like qualities to perform, notably acts that would prevent egregious evils, do not occur. Given the evils that exist in the world, it is argued, if God exists as a person or like a person, God’s record of action is akin to that of a negligent parent. One way of responding to this “argument from (...) neglect” is to maintain that there is a good reason for the apparent neglect—namely, that God could not intervene even once with respect to suffering without thereby incurring the responsibility of doing so on every occasion, which would be deleterious. So God never responds to evil. It is argued in this paper that a profoundly integrated, personalistic model of God and the God-world relation—one that is reflected in a soul-body analogy—provides a way of addressing the argument from neglect without affirming the not-even-once principle. (shrink)

This essay describes a visionary philosophy of education at Morehouse College. The educational process at Morehouse, construed here as a form of pedagogical personalism, is personified in three luminaries of Morehouse College: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Howard Washington Thurman, and Martin Luther King. The educational process at Morehouse should be interpreted as an ambivalent response to segregation and discrimination in Jim Crow America. Like all black institutions in the South, Morehouse was subject to racist constraints; Morehouse was created and existed (...) in large part due to just such constraints. I attempt to more accurately describe in order to more sensitively appreciate not only how historically black colleges and universities helped to shape the spiritual or intellectual blueprint of the civil rights movement but also how they served—and continue to serve—as ongoing experiments in democratic education. By way of conclusion, I suggest that the pedagogical personalism espoused and practiced at Morehouse College during what has been called her golden age, i.e., 1940–1967, constitutes a significant contribution to the history of higher education in America. (shrink)

Juan Manuel Burgos presents his own version of personalism, which is nevertheless well rooted in the personalist tradition. He has been developing his project for years and is among a group of world-renowned personalists who study the complexity and mystery of the human person. His new book deals with the relationship between personalism and metaphysics. He poses the question of whether personalism can be considered a first philosophy. The answer is positive: it is indeed a sectorial first (...) philosophy, which may or may not be supported by traditional metaphysical projects, especially Thomistic ones. Not every personalist has to agree with its final thesis, although its position is well-founded and deserves much scholarly attention. It provokes further questions and opens up new areas of personalist discussion. This book confirms that personalism is a dynamic and growing school of thought that goes beyond describing the mere phenomena of the person and seeks deeper reasons for his being. I highly recommend this book as a new step to help us better understand the reality of the human person. (shrink)

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor (...) misses the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics. (shrink)

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in To Shape a New World, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Emersonian moral perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, by evading the personalist King, Taylor (...) misses the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalism that better situates love and shows why it is central to King’s philosophy. In conclusion I argue the following: Love is a type of orientation, attitude, and standpoint one can take in relation to another person. Philia and eros forms of love are contingent and conditional. Agapic love opens up persons to see the eternal dignity we all possess and is restorative and generative of community. The Holy Spirit that animates King’s conception of history is made manifest or hindered by the choice to act on the agapic principle of love that animates the cosmos. In the end, I suggest that Taylor’s perfectionist insights might be applied to a supplemental development of Kingian moral philosophy in the direction of a fuller virtue ethics. (shrink)

The personalist approach is an important contribution to the resolution of the re_levant problems of contemporary bioethics. After the period of universally expanded principalism, which was followed by its many-sided criticism, the bioethics finds itself unable to act effectively . In this situation personalism comes up with new insights, which make finding acceptable resolutions of moral dilemmas of contemporary biomedicine, as well as other natural sciences possible.

This chapter is Mary Whiton Calkins’ articulation and defense of the personalistic conception of reality.

Challenges, possibilities, and opportunitie for re-founding the tradition of philosophical personalism today.

Edith Stein’s life and thought intersect with many important movements of life and thought in the twentieth century. Through her life and eventual martyrdom, she gave witness to the primacy of truth and faith in the face of political totalitarianism, and in her philosophical works, she contributed to a synthesis of phenomenological thought with the thought of Thomas Aquinas and the living philosophy of Thomism, while also progressively advancing a compelling form of philosophical personalism. As a result, Stein represents (...) one of the most important Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century and is a figure of growing fascination and devotion among believers and nonbelievers alike. The Personalism of Edith Stein is an investigation of Stein’s mature philosophical anthropology, exploring her engagement with the thought of Aquinas and Thomism while maintaining the phenomenological mode of investigation. Through a careful examination of Stein’s later works under the themes of human nature, the human individual, and the human being’s relation to God, the author shows that Stein’s mature personalism is considerably expanded and substantiated by her assimilation of key anthropological and metaphysical teachings of Aquinas and Thomism, and, conversely, that Stein significantly develops and deepens these same teachings through a phenomenological reconsideration of each from a personalist perspective. As a whole, the study reveals the profound accord between Stein’s mature thought and the received teachings of Aquinas, while yet carefully attending to the remaining differences between them. Ultimately, the author proposes that Stein imbues the teachings of Aquinas with a fundamental personalization such that her mature anthropology can be understood as a Thomistically informed personalism which represents a significant, original contribution to the anthropological dimension of the philosophia perennis. (shrink)

In the time at my disposal I limit myself to tenets distinctive of a system of idealism founded by Borden P. Bowne. Two years before his death, in 1908, Bowne wrote Personalism, a condensed epitome of works that in themselves are worthy of a distinctive place in late nineteenth and early twentieth century philosophy. Bowne’s system was to be powerfully elaborated by Edgar S. Brightman, the first holder of the Borden Parker Bowne Chair in Philosophy in Boston University, which (...) I was to hold from 1953 to 1975, and followed by John N. Findlay since 1978. Professor J. Cook Wilson of Oxford, writing four years after Bowne’s death, said that he “always urged ‘the study of Bowne as the most important of the modern American philosophers.’” This is not the place to record the admiration of William James and of William E. Hocking, among other admirers in America and abroad, or to identify contemporaries and recent scholars as well as pupils of Bowne and Brightman. But Bowne’s disciple, Ralph Tyler Flewelling, who founded The Personalist, and Robert N. Beck, Brightman’s pupil, who established Idealistic Studies, cannot go unmentioned. (shrink)

The bioethics of four principles, named as principlism, began in 1979 with the work of Principles of Biomedical Ethics by Tom Beauchamp and James F. Childress and has been widely criticized since the 80s. In recent years four rival approaches towards principlism have been specified in this critique. These include: a) impartial rule theory, developed by K. Danner Clouser; b) casuistry, represented by Albert Jensen, and c) virtue ethics, developed by Edmund D. Pellegrino. The critique of principlism presented by K. (...) Danner Clouser, Bernard Gert was not only defended by T. Beauchamp and J.F. Childress themselves, but also by others, including B. Andrew Lustig, David DeGrazia, and Henry Richardson. The discussion has not weakened but continued till the present time. It was presented extensively in the June issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. We want to join the discussion from the position of personalistic bioethics. (shrink)

Committed to the metaphysical thesis that Person is first, working within the Liberal Protestant Consensus, and believing that our minds are capable of grasping reality, Boston Personalists have followed two roads in developing their thought: ratio and poeisis. The former is represented by Bowne and Brightman with their emphasis on reason, and the latter by Bertocci with his emphasis on creativity. Though Bowne and Brightman were deeply concerned with education, it was Bertocci who wrote on the subject, and his focus (...) was on moral education. My interest, however, is not in developing Bertocci's position. Rather I shall state the essentials of a Personalist view of moral education within the poeisis tradition. To do that I shall address this question: "Must one know to be good?" I shall discuss that question by examining the life of the developing moral person and the place of knowledge in that life. As this discussion unfolds, we shall see the educational ideal of Boston Personalism. (shrink)

A simple but valuable experience that all humans have in common is that their life and their actions, the things they do and the things they omit to do, their reflection and their praxis are always marked by the tension which exists between what is factual and what is appropriate. Ethics can be described in simple terms as the systematic reflection on this tension, an endeavour to explicate how notions such as ‘appropriateness’ can be translated into categories such as ‘goodness’ (...) and ‘rightness’ in such a way that we do not remain bogged down in this experience but can develop some kind of assessment. One can also say, therefore, that ethics has a critical approach: the aforementioned tension is not merely noted and left at that, it is scrutinised, studied and assessed on the basis of a particular measure or criterion, thus making it possible, for example, to distinguish between the acknowledgement of changes and the appreciation of improvements .Every theory of ethics which consistently aspires to such a critical reflection, therefore, will have to deal with the question how the aforementioned criterion can be put into words. I already pointed to our common experience of the tension between the actual and the appropriate. In an effort to pin down the criterion in question, a useful point of departure might be to reflect for a moment on what is meant by appropriate. The term itself hints at some kind of relation or belonging to. If, then, the appropriate can be formulated in terms of belonging to ‘the human’ then an understanding of what it is to be human will always constitute the point of departure of any critical ethical reflection. For those who might be tempted to view this as too deductive, the whole approach can be turned on its head: the specific sort of reflection in which people engage with respect to the tension between the actual and the appropriate and in which the appropriate can be formulated in terms of the human, is ethics.[...]In the present article I intend to focus on the image of the human person which is compatible with such a notion of ethical obedience as responsibility to-be-taken-up. The fact that people speak today of a ‘changing of the guard’ when it comes to fundamental ethics is certainly no exaggeration. An ethics founded on natural law has been evolving towards the use of the notion personalism as a designation for an inclusive anthropology which is the expression of the appropriate. Experience teaches that a substantive explanation of personalism — which I provide in the third part of this article — is best preceded by a methodical sketch concerning the ‘status’ of personalism as a fundamental ethical category. In the fourth part of the article I will endeavour to outline the contours of a personalist theory of action. (shrink)

A simple but valuable experience that all humans have in common is that their life and their actions, the things they do and the things they omit to do, their reflection and their praxis are always marked by the tension which exists between what is factual and what is appropriate. Ethics can be described in simple terms as the systematic reflection on this tension, an endeavour to explicate how notions such as ‘appropriateness’ can be translated into categories such as ‘goodness’ (...) and ‘rightness’ in such a way that we do not remain bogged down in this experience but can develop some kind of assessment. One can also say, therefore, that ethics has a critical approach: the aforementioned tension is not merely noted and left at that, it is scrutinised, studied and assessed on the basis of a particular measure or criterion, thus making it possible, for example, to distinguish between the acknowledgement of changes and the appreciation of improvements .Every theory of ethics which consistently aspires to such a critical reflection, therefore, will have to deal with the question how the aforementioned criterion can be put into words. I already pointed to our common experience of the tension between the actual and the appropriate. In an effort to pin down the criterion in question, a useful point of departure might be to reflect for a moment on what is meant by appropriate. The term itself hints at some kind of relation or belonging to. If, then, the appropriate can be formulated in terms of belonging to ‘the human’ then an understanding of what it is to be human will always constitute the point of departure of any critical ethical reflection. For those who might be tempted to view this as too deductive, the whole approach can be turned on its head: the specific sort of reflection in which people engage with respect to the tension between the actual and the appropriate and in which the appropriate can be formulated in terms of the human, is ethics.[...]In the present article I intend to focus on the image of the human person which is compatible with such a notion of ethical obedience as responsibility to-be-taken-up. The fact that people speak today of a ‘changing of the guard’ when it comes to fundamental ethics is certainly no exaggeration. An ethics founded on natural law has been evolving towards the use of the notion personalism as a designation for an inclusive anthropology which is the expression of the appropriate. Experience teaches that a substantive explanation of personalism — which I provide in the third part of this article — is best preceded by a methodical sketch concerning the ‘status’ of personalism as a fundamental ethical category. In the fourth part of the article I will endeavour to outline the contours of a personalist theory of action. (shrink)

The article is concerned with personalistic philosophy of the USA developed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. Although, in the narrow sense, USA Personalism is mostly associated with B.P. Bowne and his followers, the characteristic frame of personalistic philosophizing can be found in the views of such philosophers as: transcendentalists (R.W. Emerson, A. Alcott, W. Whitman), St. Louis Hegelians (W.T. Harris, H.C. Brokmeyer), number of Harvard philosophers (J. Royce, W.E. Hocking), and also G. Howison. Greatly influenced by theistic worldviews, (...) German idealism and pursuit of combining idealism with practical relevance, personalists in the USA have expressed their ideas in two main lines of thought. First, in the philosophy of religion they try to build idealistic philosophical systems based on Theism. Second, in the social philosophy personalists try to clarify special place of the person in human society. At the turn of nineteenth century personalist discussion on the ontological status of human personality became important event in the philosophical life of USA. The problem has been set between two possibilities: either person has no substantiality beyond God or its substantiality is independent from Him. Further development of Personalism in the USA doesn’t achieve comparable significance and by the end of XX century it quit its existence as independent philosophical movement. (shrink)

How can we, or should we, talk about God? What concepts are involved in the concept of a Supreme Being? This book is about the search to reconcile modern metaphysics with traditional theism--focusing on the seminal work of Austin Farrer who was Warden of Keble College, Oxford until his death in 1968, and one of the most original and important philosophers of religion of this century. Conti traces the evolution of Ferrar's thought and shows why he preferred a "personalist" approach (...) over Aristotle's metaphysics of "being.". (shrink)

R. A. Gorban. Personalistic Anthropology of Czeslaw Stanislaw Bartnik. The article suggests the conception of Personalistic anthropology of Czeslaw Stanislaw Bartnik, a modern Catholic philosopher and theologian, one of the founders of the Polish Personalist School. The author reveals that the Polish thinker clarifies the anthropologic theological model based on the principles of Personalism, in which the Person of Christ is the main hypostasis being an individual personality and a communal person, that is the Church. Stanislaw Bartnik believed that (...) anthropology must completely base on Christology, as humanization of a man has to fully actualize itself only in Christ. The theologian works out the definition of a communal personality, in which both an individual person and community gain the same considerable importance, as a human being finds the fullness of its personal dimensions only in a community, where it achieves its fullness. Accentuating mutual interdependence of personalities, he thinks society to be an anthropological environment that molds a personality, enabling it to realize its potential and reach the fullness of human existence, as it would be impossible without personal relations that are established within a community. In his works, written in different years, Stanislaw Bartnik generates the idea that a communal anthropology, which is complemented by a communal anthropology of salvation in the earthly dimension, is constituent of an individual anthropology. That is why it is important to build up a full-fledged anthropology based on Personalism and theology, as the theory and practice of Christian Perstonalist model help actualize the fullness of a man’s perfect personality in all its dimensions and manifestations. In conclusion, anthropology must become a universal science about a man as an individual and community. (shrink)

Agamben’s philosophy of education can be arrived at by focusing on the nexus of philology, philosophy and poetry that is prominent in his work. By exploring the functional and semantic reciprocity between these fields, one can identify diverse pedagogies: of language and the poetic voice, of infancy and history, of history redeemed (in the Benjaminian sense), of the cultural image, and of potentiality. These overlapping areas of research share the common trait of Agamben’s personalism, which embraces the view that (...) education expands the affective and spiritual wholeness of the person. (shrink)