Transcript Philosophy 224

Philosophy 224
Many Persons?
Beothius
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Boethius was a Roman statesman and philosopher of
the Western Roman Empire.
He was born in Rome in 480 CE and died,
imprisoned, in Pavia in 524 CE.
He was a learned man, who wrote a number of
influential theological works, as well as commentaries
on Aristotle’s logical works. He also made a number
of original contributions to Aristotelian logic.
Christian martyr, killed the story goes for his support
of Justin against the Arian Osiligoth Theodoric.
The Person as a Natural Kind
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One of the most significant contributions
Boethius makes to our account of
Personhood is his argument that
“person” is a natural kind.
– Natural Kind: real, rather than artificial or
arbitrary grouping.
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This claim is implicit in the psycheologies of Plato and Aristotle, but
Boethius spells it out.
Substance or Accident
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Reflecting on its status as a natural kind,
Boethius then goes on to draw some
significant conclusions.
 The first is to specify whether as a natural
kind, personhood belongs to the order of
substances or accidents.
– Substance: independently existing thing; accident:
things which inhere in substances.
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His position is that persons are substances.
What kind of substance?
Not all substances are persons,
however.
 Persons are substances with specific
qualities: life, sensibility, reason.
 Moreover, persons are always particular
substances, rather than universals.
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– Max, rather than human being.
It’s all Greek to Me.
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Boethius then proceeds, through an analysis
of the relevant Greek philosophical terms, to
explore the connections between the notions
of essence, substance and person.
 His ultimate aim is a theological one:
clarifying the essential, substantial and
personal status of God.
 His conclusion: God is one essence
(whatness or nature), three substances
(substrates), and three persons (the Trinity).
Ousia or Hypostasis
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The key distinction for Boethius is that
between essence or nature on the one
hand and person on the other.
– “…Nature is the specific property of any
substance, and Person is the individual
substance of a rational nature” (35c2).
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This is a distinction that must be
maintained for Boethius, because it has
significant christological implications.
What Kind of Person is Christ
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Both human and divine, Christ poses a real
puzzle for the doctrine of persons.
 Some had argued that Christ is two persons.
Boethius denies this because it maintains a
overly rigid understanding of the relationship
between essence and person.
 According to him, Christ is one person in
whom the two substances have been united
(through the common element of reason).
St. Anselm
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Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church; born
in 1033 at Aosta a Burgundian town near Lombardy,
died 21 April, 1109.
As significant a philosopher as he was a theologian,
Anselm’s work is dominated by the then emerging
question of the status of the universals. A realist (as
opposed to a nominalist), Anselm’s arguments,
though more radical than would later become
common, were central to the debate that raged at the
heart of scholasticism.
His most famous contribution to the history of
philosophy was his ontological argument for the
existence of God.
How Many persons?
Despite Boethius’s best efforts, questions
about the personhood of God and of Christ
continued to animate significant theological
debate for the next 500 years.
 Anselm weighs in with his own account,
grounded in the sort of ontological
consideration which animates his famous
proof.
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– In this case, it comes in the form of a reflection on
the notion of a ‘supreme good’ (39c1).
Let’s Start with Three Persons
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Anselm assumes the trinitarian view point.
The problem is how to account for it in a way
that satisfies reason.
 Unlike Boethius, Anselm insists that the
trinitarian account has to be grounded in an
account of the substantial unity of God.
– This may not be so much a disagreement as a
terminological difference, with Anselm using
‘substance’ in place of Boethius’s ‘essence.’
What’s the deal with Incarnation?
Anselm is responding in this piece to
questions raised to the trinitarian
doctrine on the basis of the specific
nature of the divine persons.
 Christ was a man. If God and Christ are
one, doesn’t that mean God was a man.
Specifically, doesn’t that mean God
sweats (is incarnate).
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Christ is the only one who
sweats.
The answer lies for Anselm in the
doctrine of the person.
 It’s not in God’s substance that the
incarnation is to be understood, but in a
specific person of God, Christ.
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– “…the Son of God, who is one nature with
the Father and a different person from the
Father…” (40c1).
And only one person sweats
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Anselm also weighs in on the question of the
character of the personhood of Christ.
 Like Boethius, Anselm insists that Christ be
understood as one person.
 His argument is that we should understand
Christ’s person like God’s person: “one nature
is several persons, and he several persons
are one nature…so in Christ the diving being
is a person and the human being is a person,
and yet there is one person and are not two
persons” (42c1-2).