Human Person

The Human Person presents a brief introduction to the human mind, the soul, immortality, and free will. While delving into the thought of Thomas Aquinas, it addresses contemporary topics, such as skepticism, mechanism, animal language research, and determinism. Steven J. Jensen probes the primal questions of human nature. Are human beings free or determined? Is the capacity to reason distinctive to human beings or do animals also have some share of reason? Have animals really been taught to use language?

"This book presents a philosophical portrait of human persons that depicts each way in which we are irreducible, with the goal of guiding the reader to perceive, wonder at, and love all the unique features of human persons. It builds this portrait by showing how claims from many strands of the Catholic tradition can be synthesized. These strands include Thomism, Scotism, phenomenology, personalism, nouvelle théologie, analytic philosophy, and Greek and Russian thought. The book focuses on how these traditions' claims are grounded in experience and on how they help us to perceive irreducible features of persons. This book also explores irreducible features of our subjectivity, senses, intellect, freedom, and affections, and of our souls, bodies, and activities"--

Crosby unfolds the mystery of personal uniqueness, shedding new light on the unrepeatability of each human person.

In this book, Robert Sokolowski argues that being a person means to be involved with truth. He shows that human reason is established by syntactic composition in language, pictures, and actions and that we understand things when they are presented to us through syntax. Sokolowski highlights the role of the spoken word in human reason and examines the bodily and neurological basis for human experience. Drawing on Husserl and Aristotle, as well as Aquinas and Henry James, Sokolowski here employs phenomenology in a highly original way in order to clarify what we are as human agents.

The Human Person, African Ubuntu and the Dialogue of Civilisations contributes to the ongoing discussions about the clash of civilisations, illustrating the potential of a dialogue based on the dignity of the human person. The author invites the reader to an intellectual exploration, which is premised on the thesis that "e;a person is a person through other persons"e;, the central idea of the (South) African Ubuntu philosophy. He discusses the differences and similarities in the philosophies of such reputed African leaders like the late Leopold Senghor, Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, showing how Ubuntu not only shares similar concerns about interpersonal relations but also attempts to come to terms with present-day requirements and hindsight. The book highlights Ubuntu's potential to promote corporate life and reconcile it with African concerns for consultation and participation. It widens the debate by comparing Ubuntu with the personalism inherent in European, American and some non-Western traditions through a discussion of such themes as corporate culture, societal pluralism and sustainable development.

This book introduces the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the human person to a contemporary audience, and reviews the ways in which this view could provide a philosophically sound foundation for modern psychology. The book presents the current state of psychology and offers critiques of the current philosophical foundations. In its presentation of the fundamental metaphysical commitments of the Aristotelian-Thomistic view, it places the human being within the broader understanding of the world. Chapters discuss the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of human and non-human cognition as well as the relationship between cognition and emotion. In addition, the book discusses the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of human growth and development, including how the virtue theory relates to current psychological approaches to normal human development, the development of character problems that lead to psychopathology, current conceptions of positive psychology, and the place of the individual in the social world. The book ends with a summary of how Aristotelian-Thomistic theory relates to science in general and psychology in particular. The Human Person will be of interest to psychologists and cognitive scientists working within a number of subfields, including developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and clinical psychology, and to philosophers working on the philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and the interaction between historical philosophy and contemporary science, as well as linguists and computer scientists interested in psychology of language and artificial intelligence.

In the 20th Century three social revolutions—the industrial, sexual, and technological revolutions—challenged the religious convictions of many. John Paul II’s teaching on the theology of the body was his response to the resulting societal shifts. Fr. Bransfield explores John Paul II’s response to the challenges raised by these revolutions. In this context Bransfield then explores how Theology of the Body leads us to live the fullness of the Christian life.

Freedom is the key issue for both Karol Wojtyla and Immanuel Kant that connects the Polish with the German philosopher. This analysis aims to show the importance of Kant's ethics in the work of Karol Wojtyla. Kant's paradigm shift in the anthropological thought was revolutionary. The categorical imperative obliges each person to act morally and thus elevates them. It is the foundation of human dignity, not only for Kant but also for Wojtyla. Who is man? Is man free? Or is materialistic man determined and arrested in immanence? What should man do? Man is gifted with freedom. He is a person because he has the capacity to act. Wojtyla and Kant put special emphasis on a person's power of selfdetermination that reveals itself through the experience as a freely acting person. The realisation of the personal norm - the categorical imperative - was defined by both thinkers as a fulfilment of freedom. Freedom shall be fulfilled in the responsible act, which reveals the person's power of love.