When does the Human Person Begin to Exist? Part 7. The Human Person: As Body and Mind
By David Fleischacker In the last blog, I had mentioned the final steps in reaching a conclusion. Ignore that, at least in part. In this current installment, I have chosen to examine the relationship between the body and the mind in the matured human person. Most of us would...
When does the human person begin to exist? Part 6: The human person as developing
by Dr. David Fleischacker In the former 5 parts of our inquiry, we had explored the meaning of the Thomistic definition of person as a “distinct subsistent in an intellectual nature.” A person needs to be distinct from mother or father or brother or sister or friend or enemy....
When does the human person begin to exist? Part 5: “In an Intellectual Nature”
By David Fleischacker “In an Intellectual Nature” As we move toward the final installment that will complete the current inquiry that began over a month ago, we now turn to the last terms in the Thomistic definition of person: “In an intellectual/rational nature.” St. Thomas identifies three types beings...
When does the human person begin to exist? Part 4 The basis of the unity-identity-whole in an explanatory viewpoint.
by David Fleischacker In the last installment on January 11th, a question was posed at the end. “The question then becomes more precisely what is required to grasp intelligently and affirm reasonably the unity of a concrete unity, a subsistent being? Since all insight requires an adequate image or...
When does the human person begin to exist? Part 3: The reality of the concrete unity-identity-whole.
By David Fleischacker In part 2, I began to examine the notion of the “subsistent” and noted that one key element in a subsistent is the unity of the reality — it needs to be a “that” or a “this” not a “those” nor a “these.” However, both a...
When does the human person begin to exist? Part 2: To be a subsistent, or not to be.
By David Fleischacker Last week, in the search for the answer to this factual question about when a human person begins to exist, I had turned to the definition of a person developed by St. Thomas Aquinas, with the hopes that it would add significant precision in the search...
When does the human person begin to exist? Part 1: To Be Distinct
By David Fleischacker In answering the factual question “When does the human person begin to exist?”, a first step is to examine what is meant by “person” as such. Lonergan’s work on Christology and Trinitarian Theology lends us a great deal of precision in answering this question. Though we...
Infusion of the human soul?
By David Fleischacker Here is an interesting point think about. Lonergan writes in INSIGHT, that the human mind and will are intrinsically independent of the empirical residue (this is the way that he identifies what is meant by “spiritual” as opposed to material). Intrinsically, the human mind operates with...