Two Key Factors in Personalist Philosophies
1. Personality is Key to Understanding
Dr. Martin Luther King summed this up saying,“Personalistic Philosophy – the theory that the clue to the meaning of ultimate reality is found in personality.”
Stride Toward Freedom, page 100, Dr. Martin Luther King
2. A Personalist Philosopher follows the Personalist Logic at the core of his thought to whatever conclusions it leads.
About a Few Personalist Philosophers
There is considerable ideological diversity amongst personalists, but each position is arrived at by an open process of intellectual honesty and a willingness to embrace theological conclusions that may be most unwelcomed by powerful groups in society. Every leading personalist follows their own core personal logic to whatever conclusion that logic leads them.
Bowne Uses Science to Refute the Physicalist of His Day
Borden Parker Bowne, the original personalist theologian faced the intense ideological controversies of the late 19th Century with a carefully studied honesty and wit. His belief that each of us is by nature an individual human soul led him to refute the Materialist philosophers of his day using the scientific laws of energy conservation.
The Materialists, like today’s Physicalists, argued that human personality is of complete material origin, so Bowne pointed out, with considerable relish and wit, that such a premise is scientifically impossible. Since the total energy in the body’s material is efficient, according to the scientific law of energy conservation, it only powers the body’s physical essence. So, by scientific law, there is no ‘extra’ material energy to operate personality.
Since we are talking about, soul or no soul, the argument was theological, not scientific, but Bowne’s appeal to the cutting edge science of his day is telling. Bowne’s knowledge of science was extensive, and he accepted without revision every scientific conclusion for which he felt there was adequate proof. The phrase, following the logic to whatever conclusion it leads was coined in the course of using science to refute the materialists.
Brightman and the problem of evil.
Edgar S. Brightman was a dissident student of Bowne whose strong feelings around the problem of evil led him to the conclusion that God is, in part, finite. In essence, infinite God cannot allow evil to exist without being the creator of it, so God must be, so far as evil is concerned, finite. The core idea of a finite/infinite personal Deity is at the heart of Brightman’s personalist theological philosophy, which he formulated with characteristic intellectual honesty by following the logic of his Personalism where it led.
Martin Luther King-The Inherent Dignity of Every Human Being.
Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. was assassinated for following his personalist theology to its logical conclusion. While earning his doctorate at the Boston University School of Theology he studied personalist theology under Brightman and L. Harold Dewolf. Dr. King characterized Personalism as, “the theory that the clue to the meaning of ultimate reality is found in personality.” He said that Personalism, “strengthened me in two convictions: it gave me metaphysical and philosophical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity and worth of all human personality.”
These quote from King’s 1958 book Strides Towards Freedom, encapsulates his life’s guiding logic that every human person is a child of God, and has an inherent dignity that must be respected. This respect cannot be in word alone but must be upheld by the laws of the United States of America.
Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. was instrumental in ending racial segregation, fighting for passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964), and the Voting Rights Act(1965). He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. More than any mere theologian could ever do, he courageously followed his personalists logic where it led him, despite fierce opposition against his efforts and tragic consequences for himself and everyone who loved him.
The New Personalism
The New Personalism is based in the logic of the Limitation Paradigm which states:
The Personality and Being of God is Limitless.
The personality and being of human beings is not limitless.
Everything about everything follows from this personalist logic.
It’s all-encompassing.
In it God is a boundless being of limitless personality, and humankind are limited personalities of local, temporal and discrete being. Much of human personality is shaped by living with these physical realities.
The New Personalism refutes Ordinary Theism, and replaces the Sin Dynamic with a Limitation Dynamic.
Acceptance of ones limited nature replaces god playing perfectionism, understanding of ones self and others replaces judgement. And finally, peace of mind replaces guilt, recriminations and resentment.
Why Personalism?
Adequate Explanation
Inert objects, such as various types of rocks, can be explained by their composition. An inventory of the elements present in the rock and their quantity explain the essential nature of the inert object, in this case a rock. Personality defies entropy because it is a complex, organized system that requires and uses energy to maintain stability against the natural tendency towards disorder. Personality and being are not explained by their parts. Personality and being form organic wholes that unify and explain diverse sets of complex realities.
Personality has a definite three part structure, intellect, emotion and volition, or in less formal terms, mind, heart and will. This identifiable structure is very useful because it generalizes to fundamentals, but it doesn’t come close to explaining personality. In fact, personality explains each part of the structure.
I think because I am a person. I feel because I am a person. I have desires and form goals, because I am a person. These things don’t explain me. The reality of me being a person explains the structure and gives it meaning without fully explaining me.
Would you ever expect anyone to fully explain personality? I sure wouldn’t. Personality is the large organic reality that explains many things while itself remaining inexplicable. My personalist philosophy is systematic, but not comprehensive. I can explain using words only those things which can be explained using words. Some aspects of reality are by nature inscrutable, and being inscrutable these things cannot be explained.
The thing we call personality is one of these inscrutable things. We can learn about it, but we cannot ever fully explain its deepest mysteries, such as how it defies entropy.
Not a System of Classifications
My goal is to discern the essential reality of things and explain them. Mere classification will not do this. The goal is to generalize to the actual fundamentals of reality, not to some language term or an imagined law that its classification implies.
Consider the words structure, movement and function. These are very simple words which can be used to generalize to fundamental realities inherent in the entire universe. The best case for structure being fundamental to the nature of all things is to imagine its absence. Actually imagining the absence of structure is in reality impossible because it renders all things into unstructured formless goo, but even formless goo has structure since it consists of matter, and matter consists of atoms, which are structures. So when I say that structure is fundamental to the very nature of all things, I am generalizing to a fundamental, and when I refer to mind, heart and will, I am generalizing to the fundamental structure of all personality.
These fundamental terms, structure, movement, and function, and terms for derivative fundamentals, such as mind, heart and will, operate as labels, but the classification does not define the reality. The label refers to a highly complex reality and denotes the concept that generalizes it.
In New Personalism, personality, structured as intellect, emotion and will is fundamental to the the nature of the universe and everything in it. All of New Personalism philosophy, follows from the Limitation Paradigm, and fundamental realities are the very first following concepts.
We ought not to seek for things in words, but for words in things; for things are not made on account of words, but words are put together for the sake of things.
Myson, a Hellenic Sage