{"id":24,"date":"2010-02-22T23:58:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T23:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=24"},"modified":"2016-03-30T10:56:47","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T10:56:47","slug":"jan-olof-bengtsson-the-worldview-of-personalism-oxford-oxford-university-press-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/05-1\/reviews51\/jan-olof-bengtsson-the-worldview-of-personalism-oxford-oxford-university-press-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan Olof Bengtsson, The Worldview of Personalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
\n\n\t\t<\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Bengtsson does not squeeze the writers he studies into a straitjacket but identifies a common theme: what exists is personal or the product of the personal. This theme is consonant with Christian belief.\u00a0 Theoretically, personalism does not rest on faith but it emerges within a Christian tradition. For some personalists the \u201cdistinction between Natural and Revealed theology in its old form thus vanishes. All theology is from one point of view revealed, and from another point of view it is natural.\u201d [p. 56 quoting from Knudson.]\u00a0 That idea is obviously debatable (in what sense is belief in the Trinity or the Incarnation natural?) ; it does, however, indicate the Christian influence in the personalist tradition.<\/p>\n

If what exists is existentially intelligible \u2013 if the answer to Leibniz\u2019 question as to why there is something rather than nothing is not simply that what exists simply happens, unintelligibly, to be \u2013 then the question as to the character of that intelligibility arises. Pantheism is one proposed answer; the impersonal self-explained Absolute another. In Christian reflection the proposed answer is the Trinitarian God \u2013 three persons in one nature or substance. The Latin \u2018persona<\/em>\u2019\u2013 originally \u2018a mask\u2019 or role in theatre, then in Roman Law a \u2018socially defined position\u2019 \u2013 was borrowed, related to but not identical with the Greek \u2018hypostasis\u2019, to speak of the Trinity [one nature, three persons] and of Christ [one person, two natures]. Over centuries of theological reflection the notion of what it meant to be a person became clearer and was summarized in the West in Beothius\u2019 definition: \u2018person is an individual substance in a rational nature.\u2019 [fn.4 p.131]. In his answer to the question as to whether or not it is suitable to use the name \u2018person\u2019 when writing of the divine persons, Aquinas wrote that \u2018person signifies that which is\u00a0 most perfect in nature, namely an existent in a rational nature (subsistens in rationali natura<\/em>). [Sum.Theol. I.29.3] The members of the Trinity are distinct and are persons because each is a distinct existent in an intellectual or rational nature.<\/p>\n

In his third chapter, \u2018The personal absolute\u2019 Bengtsson discusses later developments of the notion of person. Not alone for historians of philosophy but equally for philosophers of religion who would clarify their notion of God, that chapter is both very interesting and to some extent controversial as in the claim [underlined] that \u2018\u2026the God of personalism, while moral and rational\u2026was distinctly more free, active, and willing than the Aristotelian actus purus<\/em> into which the scholastic God tended to turn<\/span> [p.133]. Later in the same chapter [p.137] he writes that \u2018Jacobi insisted \u2026that rationality implies personality\u2026 (so, quoting Jacobi) \u2026if the world is to have a rational originator\u2026then this being must be a personal being \u2026There is no reason [Vernunft] except in personality [in Person], so since there is reason, there is a God<\/em> and not merely a godhead <\/em>[a divine, <\/em>ein G\u00f6ttliches<\/em>]\u2019.<\/p>\n

Running through the book is reference to, and discussion of, Jacobi\u2019s criticism of reason and his interpretation of nihilism that \u2018were to become leading themes of modern philosophy. But none of the later philosophies determined by this problematic has done justice to Jacobi\u2019s positive alternative \u2013 except personalism.\u2019 [p.282]<\/p>\n

In sum, Bengtsson\u2019s discussion of these and other important questions makes his book well worth the considerable effort it requires to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bengtsson ends his study thus: \u201cThere are good reasons for giving them [the personalists] a hearing again.\u201d He makes his case in a good and demanding book.<\/p>\n

As philosophers fall into obscurity, their place taken by others who in their turn will follow them, almost inevitably valuable ideas are lost. Bengtsson\u2019s effort is to show the origins of (almost exclusively) American and British personalism in Jacobi and Schelling (who are better remembered than are those they influenced).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[124],"coauthors":[991],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews51","tag-personalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1123,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/1123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}