THE NATURE OF PERSONALITY

Methodically we go from the nominal definition of personality to its real definition. Here again we observe the laws for establishing a definition laid down by Aristotle and St. Thomas.[279] We begin with the nominal definition not only of person but of personality itself. According to the common sense of men, personality is that by which some subject is a person, just as existence is that by which some subject exists. This may appear to be somewhat ingenuous, yet we have an intimation here that personality, whatever certain writers may say, is not formally constituted by existence.[280] Philosophically the transition to the real definition is made by comparative induction, by comparing this personality which we wish to define with similar and dissimilar things and by correctly dividing the genus of substance to which personality belongs.

Various opinions of Scholastics, who are divided into those who admit or do not admit the real distinction between what a thing is and its being, and between the created essence and being

Denying this distinction, Scotus said that personality is something negative, namely, the negation of the hypostatic union in an individual nature such as Socrates or Peter.[281] Suarez, likewise rejecting this real distinction between created essence and being, said that personality is a substantial mode presupposing the existence of an individual nature and rendering it incommunicable.[282]

Among those who with St. Thomas admit the real distinction we find three opinions.

Cajetan and many other Thomists say that personality is that by which an individual nature becomes immediately capable of existing separately per se. Others with Capreolus say somewhat less explicitly that personality is the individual nature under the aspect of its being.[283] Lastly, Cardinal Billot reduces personality to the being that actuates an individual nature.[284]

Many moderns abandon the ontological approach to this question and consider it from the psychological and moral viewpoint. They declare that personality is constituted either by the consciousness of oneself or by liberty. Consciousness and liberty, however, are only manifestations of the personality; the subject that is conscious of itself must first be constituted as a subject capable of saying. So also the free subject is indeed morally of its own right by liberty, but it also must first be ontologically constituted as I, you, or he.

The true idea of personality. We are looking for the real ontological definition of personality within the genus of substance, because a person is an intelligent and free substance or subject. We proceed progressively by dividing the genus of substance by affirmation and negation and by comparing the personality which we want to define with similar and dissimilar things.

1. Personality, or that by which anything is a person, is not something negative; it is positive just as the person of which it is the formal constituent. If the dependence of an accident is something positive, a fortiori the independence of the subject or the person is positive, that is, that by reason of which the person exists separately per se. Moreover, since the personalities of Socrates and Peter belong to the natural order, they cannot be defined by a denial of the hypostatic union, which is something essentially supernatural and unique. If this were true, it would follow that the personality could not be known naturally.

2. Personality, as something positive, must be something substantial and not accidental because the person is a substance. Hence personality in the proper sense cannot be constituted by consciousness or liberty. Thus personality is compared with dissimilar things and with accidents; we now compare it with similar and related things in the genus of substance.

3. Personality is something substantial but it is not the nature of substance itself, nor this particular nature, but it is this individual human nature, since nature even as individuated is attributed to the person as an essential part. St. Thomas says: "The suppositum signifies the whole which has nature as a formal part that perfects it."[285] We do not say, "Peter is his own nature," because the whole is not the part; it is greater than the part and contains other things besides.

Nor is personality the nature itself under the aspect of being, since the individual nature, Peter for example, is not that which exists but that by which it is a man. That which exists is Peter himself, the person of Peter. We are now asking for that by which something is what it is. Personality therefore is not the individual nature under the aspect of being; otherwise, since there are two natures in Christ, Christ would have two persons and two personalities.

4. Nor is personality Peter's existence because existence is attributed to Peter as a constituted person after the manner of a contingent predicate. Indeed existence is a contingent predicate of every person that has been created or can be created, for no human or angelic person is its own being. Therefore, as St. Thomas says, "In every creature there is a difference between that which is and its being."[286] He also says: "Being follows nature not as something that possesses being but as that by which a thing is; but it follows the person as something that has being."[287] If, therefore, being follows the person constituted as a person, it does not formally constitute the person.

If being formally constituted the created person, the real distinction between the created person and being would be destroyed, and it would no longer be true to say that Peter is not his own being. In other words, that which is not its own being is really distinct from its being, distinct apart from the consideration of our minds. But the person of Peter, as well as his personality which formally constitutes his person, is not Peter's being. Therefore Peter's person and his personality are really distinguished from his being. We shall see this all most clearly in heaven when we see God, who alone is His own being and who alone can say, "I am who am."

5. Personality, therefore, is something positive and substantial, determining an individual nature of substance so that it will be immediately capable of existing separately per se. More briefly, it is that by which a rational subject is what it is. Existence, however, is a contingent predicate of the subject and its ultimate actuality and therefore existence presupposes the personality, which cannot be, as Suarez would have it, a substantial mode following on existence. Personality is, as it were, the terminal point where two lines meet, the line of essence and the line of existence. Properly it is that by which an intelligent subject is what it is. This ontological personality is the foundation of the psychological and moral personality or of the consciousness of self and dominion of self.

This real definition explicitly enunciates what is vaguely contained in the accepted nominal definition: personality is that by which the intelligent subject is a person just as existence is that by which a subject exists. Therefore personality differs from the essence and from the existence which it brings together.

In order to show that the quid rei is confusedly contained in the quid nominis and that the real definition of personality should preserve what is vaguely contained in the nominal definition, Cajetan says: "The word 'person' and similarly the demonstrative personal pronouns like 'I,' 'you,' and 'he,' all formally signify the substance and not a negation or an accident or something extraneous. If we all admit this, why, when scrutinizing the quid rei, that is, when going from the nominal to the real definition, do we depart from the common admission?"[288] Why do we depart from the common sense of mankind, from natural reason, and forget the nominal definition of the person?

It is not surprising, then, that this opinion is accepted by a great many theologians, by Ferrariensis, John of St. Thomas, the Salmanticenses, Goudin, Gonet, Billuart, Zigliara, Del Prado, Sanseverino, Cardinal Mercier, Cardinal Lorenzelli, Cardinal Lepicier, Hugon, Gredt, Szabo, Maritain, and many others.[289]

Certain texts of Capreolus are quoted to show that the person is the nature under the aspect of being.[290] These texts, however, are not really opposed to Cajetan's stand because for Capreolus personality is properly that by which the individual rational nature becomes immediately capable of existence and it is clear that what exists is not the nature of Peter but his person, that is, Peter himself. In other words, personality is that by which the intelligent and free subject is constituted as a subject possessing its own nature, faculties, existence, operations, consciousness, and the actual free dominion over itself.

Finally this theory, accepted by many theologians, is based not only on the texts of St. Thomas cited above but on many others, such as, "The form designated by the word 'person' is not the essence or the nature but the personality."[291] For St. Thomas, therefore, personality is a kind of form or formality or modality of the substantial order. "The name person is imposed by the form of personality which gives the reason for the subsistence of such a nature."[292] Accordingly personality is that by which the rational subject has the right to being separately per se. Thus personality is a substantial mode, antecedent to being, not subsequent to being, because being is the ultimate actuality of a thing or of the subject.

Moreover, St. Thomas taught: "(In Christ) if the human nature had not been assumed by the divine person, the human nature would have had its own personality, and to that extent the divine person is said to have consumed the human nature, although this is not the proper expression, because the divine person by its union impeded the human nature from having its own personality."[293] Thus, according to St. Thomas, personality is distinguished from the individual nature and also from existence because "being follows the person as something that possesses being," and therefore being does not constitute the person.[294] Lastly he says, "The three (divine) persons have but one being," and therefore "the personality is not the same as the being since there are in God three personalities and one being";[295] and "being is not by reason of the suppositum," for a created suppositum is its own being.[296]

We conclude that a person is a free and intelligent subject and that it is predicated analogically of men and angels, and of the divine persons, and that personality is that by which this subject is what it is, namely, that which determines an individual nature to be immediately capable of existing separately per se.[297]