Abstract

The development of the word person can be understood from a Greek, Hebrew Prophetic and Cartesian perspective. The development of an individual into a person is not a passive accomplishment. Person is a word that carries with it an attendant theory of action; in other words, to be a person is to act in accordance with value, worth and belonging. ;In a Greek tradition of action, the development of person is seen in that which engages one in the discernment of values. Action can be understood as a contemplation that seeks to spread this discernment of value over all of man's activity. Thus, the Greeks focused upon certain aspects of our definition of person by exploring the realm of values. ;From the Hebrew Prophetic tradition action is seen as the edification of the agent. This tradition is a setting for the development of person because of the significance of the worth of each individual through a concept of responsibility centering around the will of God. ;In the Cartesian tradition the principal aim of action is to dominate and organize external matter. The reprecussions regarding person and one's attending actions are found in the prerogatives of the individual subject and the apparent loss of a sense of belonging to a people. Thus, in the modern era the definition of action was shifted to one of sovereign conscience. ;As a consequence of this shift, modern man now faces the crisis of person because the regulative concepts of History, State or Polity, and Religion are no longer considered to be the proper setting for the discussion of man. With the loss of historical foundations to guide man's development of person, one has to think of the term in its species development. In the case of man, we must add the further settings of History, Polity and Religion in order to understand what it means to act, even to act within a species