The Phenomenology of the Person

Reference to a variety of scholars indicates a continuing perplexity concerning the meaning of Scheler’s concept of the person and its significance for material value-ethics. The acting person is said to be the fundamental category of ethics, to which the categories of virtues, norms, and Good Will are secondary. The highest moral value is that of the person; he is the bearer of moral value and of moral evaluation in terms of the objective Ordo amoris. The concept of the person – not the concrete individual person himself, which is impossible – must therefore be the object of phenomenological inquiry. This both Scheler and Hartmann undertake. The outcome of Scheler’s phenomenology is a description of the person as an unobjectifiable “trace of essence” that is phenomenally present in each of intentional acts. It is contrasted with the ego, which is the object of inner perception, and which corresponds on the psychic level to the lived body on the physical. The notion was severely criticized by Hartmann, who finds in it remnants of idealism and accuses it of unacceptable theological implications. Hartmann further insists that the objectifiable human subject must be the object of which moral categories are predicated; the subject endures throughout the life of the human organism. The chapter ends with an attempt to reconcile the two interpretations of the person, and concludes that Scheler’s concept of the ego could take over some of the functions that Hartmann finds absent in Scheler’s concept of the person. However, Scheler’s concept is far richer, has important historical resonance, and is amenable to a personalist ethics. The discussion brings us to the doorstep of ethical personalism in its normative implications.