Newman’s anthropology duly appreciates the individuality and subjectivity of the human person, identifying each person as having “an infinite abyss of existence” within. Each person has thoughts and experiences that can never be fully understood by another. Yet Newman balances this focus on the radical irreducibility and individuality of the person with the inextricably social dimension of personhood, which is important for belief and value formation and moral development. He recognizes that we are social beings, discovering ourselves and growing through the influence of community and interpersonal relationships. This essay proposes, through a presentation of the personalist thought of Newman, that the radical individuality and subjectivity of the person does not need to be seen as an alienating or isolating reality but can rather be viewed as a basis for the development of interpersonal relationships.

The article interprets Kierkegaard’s thesis that “truth is subjectivity,” unfolding four possible meanings:1. the deepest kinds of knowledge can only come from lived experience;2. self-knowledge is essential for metanoia or change;3. if the “how” is right, then the “what” or the truth will also be given; and4. the deepest importance of truth lies in living it.These reflections are then related to personalist themes: the incarnate person as responsible, as inviolable, and as averse to coercion; the incarnate person as having a mysterious interiority, an infinite abyss of existence, and as never reducible to a mere part of a whole nor simply determined from within or without; this interiority is not isolating but opens up toward others; and freedom is not arbitrary but implies universal moral and particular religious calls.Finally, I ask whether Kierkegaard’s personalism is too individualistic and does not do full justice to some of the themes here.

This essay attempts to define Wojtyła’s personalism and to present the possibilities for the continuation and development of his work through what the author of the essay calls integral personalism. To do so, we present first of all some of the main keys of the philosophy and anthropology of Karol Wojtyła as they have been developed in his main work, The Acting Person. Later we compare them with the different types of personalism to show that his philosophy does not exactly fit any of them, particularly the Thomistic personalism of Jacques Maritain. Finally, a new stream of personalism is postulated, Integral personalism, which according to the author not only would be able to show with precision the main philosophical theses of Karol Wojtyła but could also develop them.

This essay evaluates the role of gender in the human person. According to the Thomistic account, gender is an accident of the material body. I suggest that the Thomistic account is in need of revision and examine a modified Thomistic account presented by John Finley, which establishes gender as an inseparable accident stemming from the soul. Finley’s account, which strives to remain faithful to Thomism, is closer to the essentialist position offered by personalist philosopher Edith Stein. I present Stein’s account of gender as essential by focusing on two poignant claims made by Stein: (1) that gender relates to the essence of the person as it unfolds from a spiritual core and (2) that human nature is comprised of a dual species, male and female. I argue that these two claims serve to establish Stein’s essentialist position regarding gender.

In this article, I compare Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Dietrich von Hildebrand’s analyses of the look of the other to argue that personhood is more fundamental than individuality. Sartre restricts subjectivity to individual consciousness, which, qua individual, is defined as not being what others are. As a result, both freedom and selfhood for Sartre are defined as “nihilation.” By contrast, for von Hildebrand, the experience of the loving interpenetration of looks reveals both the self and the other as concrete values precisely insofar as they are persons. I conclude with the implications of this primacy of person over individual for understanding freedom. Both Sartre and von Hildebrand recognize our “fundamental” freedom of choosing our ends, which corresponds to our being individuals. However, only von Hildebrand recognizes that the highest freedom is not found in individual choice but, rather, in the “cooperative freedom” of personal love.

This essay will examine an illuminating convergence in the thoughts of Pope John Paul II and the cultural anthropologist René Girard. It will be seen that this convergence is a consequence of the shared concern of both to understand the human person in terms of its relation to other persons. So while not a personalist philosopher in the strict sense, René Girard’s concern for the interpersonal brings him close to the personalism of John Paul II, who likewise understands human subjectivity in terms of the relations by which it is constituted. Both practice what might be called an “interpersonalist” personalism, which this essay will argue ought to characterize the practice of personalism in a Christian context. The essay will make this observation the basis for further reflections on the nature of personalism and its relation to the Christian intellectual tradition.