On Human Personhood: Towards a Unification of the “Naturalist” and the “Personalist” Accounts

Baur, Michael

doi:10.5840/acpaproc2025710179

Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

ONLINE FIRST

published on July 12, 2025

Michael Baur

https://doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc2025710179

On Human Personhood
Towards a Unification of the “Naturalist” and the “Personalist” Accounts

There is something puzzling about the notion of the “human person.” Do human persons possess dignity by virtue of their being human, or by virtue of their being persons, or by virtue of some combination of humanness and personhood? This paper offers some first steps towards reconciling or uniting “naturalistic” accounts of human personhood (accounts which focus on the human being as one among many members of a shared natural kind) with “personalist” accounts of human personhood (accounts which focus on the radical individuality and uniqueness of the human person). These accounts can be united, I suggest, if one develops an adequate metaphysics of the human being as an intellectual being; if one appreciates how human beings are capable of a “complete” and immaterial return-into-self (reditio ad seipsum), one will also be able to appreciate how the human being is also radically individual and radically unique.

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