The Concept of the Person - Essay Example

Later concepts of the human involved the ideas of St Thomas to some degree: suggestions of Locke include consciousness "Whereby it becomes concerned and accountable"; that is, awareness of self which stirs a sense of responsibility. Rawls's idea of personhood is made problematic by the issue of insanity: "When we declare a man insane we cease treating him as accountable but still our interactions with him are virtually indistinguishable from normal personal interactions unless he is very far gone in madness" (Dennett).

Rawls brings up a complex subject, which goes to the very heart of the philosophy of personhood: the insane, their ability to be people, and how this affects their rights. If we concede, with Dennett, that a person is a rational being - his "First and most obvious theme" (Dennett), then a mental illness which affects that rationality must also affect the extent to which that person is agreed to be a fellow-person. This is related to the second theme, which considers the role of consciousness (self-awareness) in allocating personhood, and his third theme of personhood states "Whether something counts as a person depends in somewhat on an attitude taken towards it" (Dennett).

Personhood, therefore, is not a concrete or pre-determined thing but is affected both by the internal human, his circumstances, and the behavior of others towards him (or her). Other issues that impinge upon personality are such things as memory "Personal testimony, although it is given some weight, is not taken as indefeasible (e.g., cases of implanted memory)" (Mills, 1998). From these pieces of evidence, it is possible to conclude that personhood is a rather shifting concept: people may have basic personhood when born, but how they are born, how they behave as adults, and how others perceive them.

In keeping with the enlightenment concerns about personhood, the people who drew up the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, to name but two important texts, left us with a series of writings (and amendments), which touch upon the relation of the citizen to the state. Everyone knows the statement of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their created with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

" (National Archives). The first four amendments of the Bill of Rights uses the phrase "The right of the people" three times. The philosophy of personhood is related to the question of social justice: equality and the pursuit of happiness are named as specific rights of American citizens, which can then be related back to European notions of personhood being connected to legal rights. Being unable to be rational in some way, or having ancestors which are undesirable (Current ancestors would be slave owners or English colonialists).

However, the essential ingredient, that of self-knowledge, which has been agreed to by many philosophers throughout the centuries, remains consciousness, or self-awareness, which cannot be granted by a Government document, but which must be earned or developed through life.