Essay on Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, K.Wojtyla on...

Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, K.Wojtyla on Person and Ego ABSTRACT: Today the connection between person and the I is acknowledged in many respects but not always analyzed. The need to relate it to the reality of the human being has sparked the present investigation of the philosophical anthropology of four thinkers from the late ancient, medieval, and contemporary periods. Although it may seem that the question of the role of the I with respect to the human being hinges on the larger problem of objectivity v. subjectivity, this does not seem to be the case. Many topics, however, are necessarily entailed in this investigation such as individuality and universality, soul and body, consciousness and action, substance and history, the†¦show more content†¦(2) He reconciled the apparent contradictions with the use of new punctuation for the most decisive text against individual forms for human beings. The passages often taken as contradictions applied to quite other realities. Plotinus position is to be taken from Ennead V,7,1 lines 18- 23: No, there cannot be the same forming principle for different individuals, and one man will not serve as model for several men differing from each other not only by reason of their matter but with a vast number of special differences of form. Men are not related to their form as portraits of Socrates are to their original, but their different structures must result from different forming principles. As Armstrong points out, Plotinus higher self is not simply identical with the individual form of a particular human being. The higher self which Plotinus interprets as the intellect or Nous which does not come down is nevertheless said to be a soul. In Ennead V.3 humans are described as reasoning souls, wandering between embodiment and intellect. But humans can transcend their reasoning souls and identify themselves with their higher soul or intellect and even transcend that to arrive at union with the One, an unknowable Selfhood to which, according to J.P. ODaly, (3) it is urged on by love, given by the Good, which is what the Ones Selfhood is. The composite human being, that is, the human person as embodied rational soul is rightly represented by its higher self or the I as