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Personhood in Classical and Process-Oriented Metaphysics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2014

Joseph A. Bracken SJ
Joseph A. Bracken SJ*
Affiliation:
Xavier University
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Abstract

One major source of conflict in contemporary sexual ethics (e.g., artificial contraception and abortion) is the implicit difference in the worldviews represented by the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” Those who are pro-life support the notion of human personhood as a fixed and unchanging reality from conception to death; those who are pro-choice, in contrast, support the notion of human personhood as developmental, never fully realized. The pro-life position basically reflects the worldview of classical metaphysics; the pro-choice position is logically grounded in process philosophy and theology. The aim of the present article is to compare and contrast these two worldviews so as to see whether or not there is unexpected common ground between the two that could logically justify a consensus position on the more specific moral issues.

Keywords

human personhoodcontraceptionabortionThomas AquinasA. N. Whitehead
Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , June 2014 , pp. 96 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2014 

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References

1 Bracken, Joseph A. SJ, “Personhood and Community in a New Context,” Horizons 35, no. 1 (2008): 94–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ashworth, E. Jennifer, “Medieval Theories of Analogy,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), ed. Zalta, Edward N.Google Scholar, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/analogy-medieval/. Ashworth is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

3 Ashworth, “Medieval Theories of Analogy,” n. 6.

4 Ibid.

5 Gerhart, Mary and Russell, Allan Melvin, New Maps for Old: Explorations in Science and Religion (New York: Continuum, 2001), 10–11Google Scholar.

6 Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ed. Griffin, David Ray and Sherburne, Donald W., corr. ed. (New York: Free Press), 34Google Scholar: “The common element of form [defining characteristic] is simply a complex eternal object exemplified in each member of the nexus [group of actual entities].” But an eternal object for Whitehead is equivalently a logical universal, something generic to a group of entities rather than specific to one entity.

7 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 35.

8 Buber, Martin, I and Thou, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Scribner's, 1970)Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., 57–59.

10 Clark, Mary T., Augustine, Philosopher of Freedom: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New York: Desclée, 1958)Google Scholar.

11 Clarke, W. Norris, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics: Being—God—Person (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1994)Google Scholar.

12 Clark, Augustine, 236.

13 Ibid., 9.

14 Ibid., 10.

15 Ibid., 11. See Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, trans. Ross, W. D. (London: Oxford University Press, 1925)Google Scholar, 3.5.1115b.

16 Clark, Augustine, 12.

17 Ibid., 25–26.

18 Ibid., 33–34.

19 Ibid., 40–41.

20 Ibid., 224.

21 Ibid., 45.

22 Ibid., 55.

23 Ibid., 240.

24 Ibid., 104.

25 Ibid.

26 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 244.

27 Clark, Augustine, 105.

28 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 244.

29 Clark, Augustine, 175.

30 Confessions of St. Augustine, trans. Sheed, F. J. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1949)Google Scholar, 236.

31 Clark, Augustine, 177.

32 Ibid., 181.

33 In this sense, John Duns Scotus with his emphasis on God as Love as opposed to God as the divine Mind—that is, feeling-level understanding of the love of God manifest in creation as opposed to intellectual knowledge of the Plan of God for creation—may be closer to the thought of Augustine on the divine-human relationship than Aquinas, his senior in the medieval world of theology (cf., e.g., Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962], II/2: 261–64Google Scholar). But this view could certainly be contested on other grounds.

34 Maréchal, Joseph, Le point de départ de la métaphysique, 3rd ed. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1944)Google Scholar.

35 Clarke, Person and Being, 27–29; cf. Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1951)Google Scholar, I, q. 29, a. 1–2.

36 Clarke, Person and Being, 29.

37 Clarke, Explorations in Metaphysics, 31–44.

38 Ibid., 31.

39 Ibid., 31–32.

40 Ibid., 32.

41 Ibid., 33.

42 Ibid., 37–38.

43 Ibid., 40–42; see also 218: “To be an authentic person, in a word, is to be a lover, to live a life of inter-personal self-giving and receiving. Person is essentially a ‘we’ term. Person exists in its fullness only in the plural.”

44 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 18.

45 Ibid., 40–43, 244–65.

46 See, e.g., Bracken, Joseph A., The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001)Google Scholar; Bracken, Subjectivity, Objectivity, and Intersubjectivity: A New Paradigm for Religion and Science (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation, 2009)Google Scholar; Bracken, Does God Play Dice? Divine Providence for a World in the Making (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012)Google Scholar. Likewise, cf. Pugliese, Marc A. and Schaab, Gloria L., eds., Seeking Common Ground: Evaluation and Critique of Joseph Bracken's Comprehensive World View (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012)Google Scholar. A number of prominent Whiteheadians (including John Cobb) who contributed to the volume acknowledge the basic validity of my reinterpretation of Whiteheadian societies without endorsing it fully.

47 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 34–35.

48 In a forthcoming book, tentatively titled The World in the Trinity: Open-Ended Systems in Science and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014)Google Scholar, I make this argument in much greater detail and urge that Christian theologians at least experiment with the current scientific categories of structured fields of activity and systems for the explanation of Christian doctrine.