CHAPTER ONE
1.0             INTRODUCTION
There are diverse understanding of the concept of the human person among thinkers and philosophers. In this regard, Arthur C. Danto affirms that “Neither in common usage, nor in philosophy has there been a univocal concept of ‘person”[1].
But basically, the English word ‘person’ is derived from the Latin word, ‘persona,’ which can be traced to the Greek ‘prosopon,’ which in its original sense denotes the ‘mask’ worn by an actor. Later it came to refer to the role played by the actor or the dramatist, and finally to the human being as an actor on the stage of life; as Willaim Shakespeare says: Life is a stage where each person is an actor. Cicero used the term ‘person’ to denote an assumed appearance, a mark of distinction or dignity or a sum total of personal qualities.
Legally speaking, person denotes a subject of law, a being bound by law. This is evident in the Roman legal system where person designates cives Romani-the Roman citizen, a man who enjoys the citizenship (civitatis) or freedom (libertatis). In this sense, person refers to that being that possesses certain rights and conditions that make him capable of exercising them.
Nevertheless, the advent of the existentialist style of philosophizing brought about a kind of ‘Copernican revolution’ to the understanding of the human person in the history of Western philosophy. Kierkegaard, the “father of modern existentialism and the first European philosopher who bore the existentialist label”[2] paid particular attention to the concept of the human person. Just like Heidegger who pointed out the forgetfulness of ‘Being’ in traditional philosophy occasioned by the influence of science, Kierkegaard reacts against the forgetfulness of the concrete problems of the “thinking subject” in the history of thought. The early Greek philosophers were physicists, who had no direct concern about the human person. It was Socrates who first directed the attention of philosophy to the issues about man himself. After Socrates, the concrete problems of the human person were forgotten again until the dawn of existentialism.
Existentialism has been described “not as a ‘philosophy’ but rather as ‘a style of philosophizing’”[3]. It is a style that may lead those who adopt it to very divergent convictions about the world and man’s life in it. This diversity is obviously evidenced by a study of the thought of such existentialist thinkers like Kierkegaard, Sartre and Heidegger. Kierkegaard believes in the existence of God, Sartre denies the existence of God, whereas Heidegger neither affirms nor denies the existence of God. However, there are some strings of similarities in their general considerations of the business of philosophy and also in the understanding of the concept of the human person.
The first significant common feature of the existentialist philosophers is that they
begin from man rather than from nature. Existentialism is a philosophical movement concerned with the subject rather than the object. This is unlike idealism, which starts from the subject only as the “thinking subject”. For the existentialists, “the subject is the existent in the whole range of his existing”[4]. He is not only a thinking subject but also an initiator of action and a center of feeling. With regard to this, Sartre says, “Man’s existence precedes his essence.”5 He highlights that “man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world and defines himself afterwards”6. Thus, the existentialists, unlike the traditional Western metaphysicians concentrate on problems that are directly related to human existence rather than on the abstract or speculative issues.