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The Place of the Person in Social Life

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The Place of the Person in Social Life Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Life Series I. Culture and Values, Volume 6 The Place of the Person in Social Life Edited By Paul Peachey John Kromkowski George F. McLean The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy 1 Copyright © 1991 by The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy Gibbons Hall B-20 620 Michigan Avenue, NE Washington, D.C. 20064 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication The place of the person in social life / edited by Paul Peachey, John A. Kromkowski, George F. McLean. p.cm. — (Cultural heritage and contemporary change. Series I. Culture and values ; vol. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Philosophical anthropology. 2. Persons. 3. Social structure. I. Peachey, Paul, 1918-. II. Kromkowski, John, 1939-. III. McLean, George F. IV. Title: Person in social life. V. Series. BD450.P5477 1991 91-58117 128—dc20 CIP ISBN 1-56518-012-7 (pbk.) 2 Table of Contents Preface v George F. McLean Introduction 1 Paul Peachey Part I. Person 1. Notions of Person and Personal Growth 5 by George F. McLean, School of Philosophy, CUA, Washington, D.C. 2. Humanism and Freedom 33 by Ghia Nodia, Academy of Sciences of Georgia, Tbilisi, USSR 3. Anthropological "Person"s, Some Methodological Turns 45 by Jon W. Anderson, Anthropology Dept., CUA Part II. Person and Society: The Problem 4. Recovering from the Consequences of the Private Life 59 by John Kromkowski, Politics Dept., CUA 5. The Traditional Self in a Changing Society 73 by Richard A. Graham, Harvard Center for Moral Development 6. Structures and Persons in the Modernization of Societies 85 by Paul Peachey, Sociology Dept., CUA 7. The Person, Society and the State 99 by Bronius Kuzmickas, Academy of Sciences of Lithuania, Vilnius, Lithuania, SSR 8. Max Scheler's Personalism and Bourgeois Liberalism 111 by Stephen Schneck, CUA Part III. Tradition and the Construction of a Modern Society 9. Hermeneutics and Heritage 133 by George F. McLean, CUA 10. Africa: The Question of Identity 147 by Izu Marcel Onyeocha, Claretian Institute of Philosophy, Nigeria 3 11. Solidarity, Power and Democracy in Africa 165 by Atomate Epas-Ngan (Armand), The Catholic Faculties of Kinshasa, Zaire 12. Person and the Community 195 by Kaguongo Wambari, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya 13. Responsibilities and Rights: Tradition in Chinese Society 209 by Yang Fenggang, The People's University of China, Beijing 14. The Intellectual's Role in Social Change 225 by Osman Bilen, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey Part IV. Building a Society 15. On the Problem of the Relation `Between' Person and Society 243 by Assen Davidov, University of Sofia, Bulgaria 16. Person, Work and Religious Tradition 259 by John Farrelly, DeSales School of Theology, Washington, D.C. 17. Judeo-Christian Values and the Ecological Crisis 269 by Dean R. Hoge, CUA 18. Person, Society and Education 279 by Amado I. Carandang, Dallas and the Philippines 19. International Migration to Washington: Conflict, Margination or Structural Integration 293 by Timothy Ready, CUA 20. The "International Outlook" 321 by Paul E. Murray, CUA 21. Dance or Dancer: Another Look at the Relation Person-Community 347 by Joseph Donders, Washington Theological Union, Washington, D.C. Acknowledgements 4 Preface George F. McLean In retrospect, it appears that the constant, pervasive theme of the last half century has been the progressive discovery and emancipation of the person in society. In the 1940s World War II constituted an unprecedented human effort to break free from the repressive, depersonalizing and dehumanizing forces of Fascism. In the 1950s this was followed by an end to subordinate colonial status for other parts of the world. In the 1960s Vatican II's reformulation in terms of the person of the self-understanding of the church was followed by an analogous, if more raucous, call for reshaping society by the students and workers in the streets of Paris. The 1970s were characterized by the call for civil and minority rights and by a pervasive effort to expand participation in decision-making--whether in school, church, government or industry. The 1980s concluded in Central and Eastern Europe with a velvet revolution which matched the overthrow of totalitarian Fascism by a dramatic rejection of communism. To achieve a deeper understanding of this dynamism of our times with a view to rediscovering the nature and place of the person in society and to making it possible creatively to rebuild social life for the XXIst century, a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary team of scholars joined in an extended project of cooperative research. The present volume is the result of their work. To develop a vision of the place of the person in future social life required four steps which constitute the four parts of this volume. The first looks at the notion of the person (Part I), followed by studies on the problem of the place the person in society (Part II). These two sections constitute an analysis of the person-society problem in our time. To respond it is necessary to uncover the experience of the multiple cultural traditions and their resources of humane understanding (Part III), and to bring these forward for the task of social reconstruction (Part IV). Part I, concerning the person, it begins with a study by G. McLean which analyzes the evolution of the notion of person through time from that of a particular role to that of a self- conscious and free subject. The person is seen as developing through a process coordination of values and virtues in a life that is correlatively and indivisibly both personal and communitary. G. Nodia shows how this process has received vital coordinates and impetus from modern enlightenment values and relates the present dilemma to the failure of philosophy adequately to ground and integrate these. This points to the need both for a deeper personal center and for a correlative absolute or transcendent; both of these must be protected from being discounted or reduced through human limitations. J. Anderson focuses upon the recent dilemmas of the contemporary mind as it searches adequately to conceptualize the related forms and structure, and shows how these very dilemmas point to the deeper reality of the person as unique and free. Part II which concerns the relation of person and society begins with J. Kromkowski's statement of the present challenge, namely, how to recover from the consequences of the privatization of life suggested by Voltaire in his acerbic critique of all social institutions and forms. Is it possible to keep such new sensibility to personal freedom from becoming self-centered and even solipsistic? R. Graham suggests a positive response by examining cross-cultural studies of personal development. These show person and development to be oriented essentially beyond an earlier mere avoidance of personal reprimand and pain, through a sense of equality or fairness in social interchange, to an open and creative pattern of social concern predicated upon transcending 5 values and principles. This overall process can be described as the personal assimilation and redefinition of the social values of one's culture. There are, however, serious problems in this relation of person to society, as is pointed out by the following three chapters. The first by P. Peachey shows how modern sociological thought, reflecting broader sensibilities, has tended to substitute the more subtle communitary sense of the person by a rather abstract, formal and rigid sense of social structure, thereby transforming an open and creative self into a closed and empty ego. He suggests that the real sense of person lies precisely in its openness to the transcendent in terms of which the self precedes even its own self- consciousness. This is illustrated in two critiques of the ideologies of this half century. B. Kuzmickas, presently Second Vice President of Lithuania, shows the oppressive character of a Marxian ideological society, pointing thereby to the priority of personality as value oriented and free over role, of person over citizen, and of society over state. S. Schneck analyzes M. Scheler's critique of the formalistic character of liberalism reducing persons to individuals whose motivation is limited to needs and utility. From this there emerges the depth of the contemporary crises, namely, that in the present half century as the importance of the person has come to be felt more acutely the enlightenment mode of scientific clarification and the resulting technically rationalized structures of society have progressively eroded the very reality of the person, eviscerating personal life itself. Indeed, it is perhaps more true to say that it is this evisceration which, by brutal negation, has made manifest the radical importance of the personal life it has destroyed. Paul Tillich would describe this as a borderline situation similar to that in war time when a bombardment, having eliminated sports, business and art by forcing the person to confront the basic fact of life opens attention to the previously obscured question of the radical meaning of human life and meaning. From this emerges the need to rediscover a sense of the person which is not a mere function of society but a being in one's own right, essentially, open responsive and creative in relation to one's environing nature and community of persons. This points to a double search: toward the past and toward the future. Part III looks for the contribution which tradition can make. If as a person I am truly open to society then I can expect that the tradition, which has emerged from the experience of society over the ages, will have something to say to me about what it is to be a person in community.
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