The Boethian definition of the notion of person between immanence and transcendence
Abstract
The current crisis of the notion of the person is more broadly a crisis of the foundation of human knowledge, where, having renounced a metaphysics capable of accounting for the transcendental root within which the notion of the person finds its origin, it is relegated solely to the horizontal realm of immanence that oscillates between empty abstract and universal definitions on one hand and equally sterile exaltations of narcissistic and self-referential individuality on the other. The aim of this study is to recover the philosophical root of Boethius’s definition of the person, as an individual substance of rational nature, bringing to the fore the logical and metaphysical structure of the transcendent being, as defined by the Neoplatonist Porphyry, within which it is embedded. In the Porphyrian paradigm of the descent of the One-Being into the many, individuation does not occur through matter, but rather at the formal and intelligible level, thereby implying for individual substances the possibility of their ascent, where rational nature plays the fundamental role of restarting, through a movement of conversion, the process of recomposing the many into the One. Boethius shares this framework but places the notion of the person within a Christian vision of existence, thus definitively delivering it to Latin Western thought.Downloads
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