Differentiation of the theological conception of human person and personality with respect to selected approaches of empirical functionalism
Abstract
The paper deals with the issue of the theological conception of the human person and personality, two seemingly competing models of the concept of the person within Catholic theology and the risks of some lines of thought of empirical functionalism in relation to the dilemmas of Christian applied ethics from the perspective of the theological-ethical principle of personality. The following questions are asked: (1) What key approaches to the concept of the human person have emerged in contemporary Catholic theology? (2) What are the main lines of argument of ontological personalism and empirical functionalism with regard to the issue of ontological grasping of the term person? (3) How do the terms person and personality differ and apply? (4) How can the differences in thought between ontological personalism and selected approaches of empirical functionalism or significantly relational models be bridged through the concept of personality?
The reflection itself is the answer to the third and fourth questions, while the first and second questions provide an overview supplemented by the proposed options. The shift in the topic is - often neglected or insufficiently specified - the distinction of the ontological plane of the human person from the update and realization of the human person, the characteristics and manifestations of the actual being (not only) in the consciously experienced personality. In other words, we differentiate the concept of a person into two basic levels: (1) what is a person and what it means to be a person, (2) what is a personality, what establishes it and how it manifests itself. These two levels are related to selected approaches of empirical functionalism and assessed by the principle of personality.
The paper aims to specify the differentiation of the ontological and updating planes of being a person and to point out some risks of strongly relational models of empirical functionalism with respect to the theological-ethical principle of personality and at the same time verify their theses in the proposed extension to human personality.