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Ethics Matters
Ethical Issues in
Pragmatic Perspective

Nicholas Rescher
Ethics Matters
 Nicholas Rescher

Ethics Matters
Ethical Issues in Pragmatic Perspective
Nicholas Rescher
Department of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-52035-9    ISBN 978-3-030-52036-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 For Susanne Meinl
Extraordinary Historian
 Preface

Problems of ethics and moral philosophy have preoccupied me for many

years, and I have on various occasions published studies dealing with these
issues in the professional literature of philosophy. A number of these stud-
ies are included here, along with a good deal of unpublished material.
(Details of prior publication are given in the relevant chapter’s notes.)
The book covers a varied spectrum of ethical topics, ranging from the
fundamental considerations regarding ethical values, to the rationale of
obligation, and the ethical management of societal and personal affairs. Its
coordinative aim throughout is to show how fundamental general princi-
ples underpin the stance we can appropriately take on questions of specific
ethical detail.
I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her painstaking efforts in preparing
this material for publication.

Pittsburgh, PA Nicholas Rescher

vii
 Contents

1 Personhood  1

2 The Ethical Import of Value Attribution 41

3 The Rational Validation of Ethical Values 57

4 Rationality and Moral Obligation 73

5 On Compromise and Obligation 85

6 Moral Luck 97

7 Fairness Problems123

8 On the Ethics of Inaction127

9 Ancestor Worship?137

10 Distant Posterity (A Philosophical Glance Along Time’s

Corridor)143

ix
x Contents

11 Is There a Statute of Limitations in Ethics?169

12 An Ethical Paradox173

13 Collective Responsibility177

14 Allocating Scientific Credit193

15 Morality in Government and Politics207

16 Problems of Betterment215

17 Sovereign Immunity in Theological Ethics233

18 Perfectibility Problems237

Coda245

References247

Index251
 CHAPTER 1

Personhood

1   Part I: Humans as Persons

1.1  Human Beings and Being Human

Man is an animal and Homo sapiens a mammalian species. But man is not
just that, but is a person as well. And this means that we must be able to
do—at least sometimes—those sorts of things that mark a person as such
and differentiate them from the rest of creation.
There are various questions of transition which the Theory of Evolution
has made unavoidable. One is that of the point of development at which
the pre-human humanoids morphed into Homo sapiens: what does it
require for a humanoid mammal to be accounted human? And another is
that of the point at which humans qualify as rational agents: what does it
require for a member of Homo sapiens to qualify as a rational and morally
responsible person? Being human is a relatively straightforward matter.
The question just doesn’t arise save in the context of the beings we
encounter on the surface of our planet. But being a person is something a
great deal more difficult and problematic. Here we are dealing not with
biological taxonomy but with a complex manifold and convoluted theo-
retical matters. For here we are dealing not just with facets of what obser-
vationally is the case, but with a manifold of more problematic issues
regarding what can and might be.
In evolutionary biology, Homo sapiens is a developmental subgroup of
beings within the wider category of humanoids. Homo sapiens is a

© The Author(s) 2021 1

N. Rescher, Ethics Matters,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52036-6_1
2 N. RESCHER

classification subgroup of beings included within the potentially wider

groupings of persons.
Persons emerge late in the evolutionary time-table—and for under-
standable reason. For three stages of evaluative sophistication are involved:

1. The plus/minus, pleasure/pain, nice/nasty affective reactivity we

find throughout the organic realm.
2. The desirable/undesirable judgmental responses that provide evalu-
ation as we move it along the transit from higher primates to
proto-humans.
3. The right/wrong of ethical evaluation rooted in the developed sense
of community that comes on the scene with interactive among
Homo sapiens.

Stage 1 requires sensibility, stage 2 requires conscious reactivity, stage 31

requires rational evaluation by comparison with what would be and should
be different and calls for an awareness of contrast.
Persons alone have an inner thought-life. Reflectivity is present through-
out the range of significantly developed organisms: animals can feed them-
selves, wash themselves, protect themselves, move themselves, but only
persons have the cognitive reflexivity needed for forming a self-conception
that enables them to interest themselves, concern themselves, and appre-
hend and appreciate their own consideration. They alone have the self-­
awareness needed for a self-image in comparative content with
feature-attribution to others. Only persons can be proud or ashamed of
themselves. Only they can appreciate that there are things they ought or
ought not to think or do. Only they can gain entry into the realm of nor-
mativity. Animals can form habits of action; persons alone can adopt prac-
tical norms and rules.
Personhood is a well-established category of human understanding.
The Greeks personalized the forces of nature in the Olympian gods. And
throughout human history—from before Aesop until after Brer Rabbit
and Winnie the Pooh—we humans make persons of the animals that sur-
vive us. The “pathetic fallacy”—the ascription of human characteristic to
the innovative creations of nature and artifice (the “cruel sea,” the “unsuit-
able” machine, the “unrelenting” rain, and the like)—is something so
natural and commonplace as to deserve a kinder name.
 1 PERSONHOOD 3

To all appearances, then, we ourselves hold dual citizenship, both in the

human community and in the society of persons. However kinship with
our fellows has a somewhat different aspect in the two cases.
We are bound to our fellow humans by bonds of biological kinship.
And these ground claims to fraternal solidarity that enjoin mankind and in
the pursuit of basic needs—the security of life, liberty, opportunity in the
pursuit of happiness.
Personhood, by contrast, is a more difficult matter. Its impetus is rather
paternal than fraternal. To persons we can not only support in basic needs
but support in ethical innovation, to enhance the realization of potential,
to support their cultural growth, to aid not only their well-being and secu-
rity and to promote their ultimate ethical and “spiritual” constitution. For,
like good parents we actually should—and often do—want to see our fel-
low persons to be not just better off but to become better people.

1.2  Capacities of Persons
Personhood is a decisive classification and being a person is a binary mat-
ter—one either is or is not a person. But while we cannot be more or less
of a person, one can be a better or worse person. One can certainly honor
the obligations and harness the opportunities that being a person puts at
one’s disposal to a greater of lesser extent. In this regard personhood is
like kingship: a matter of better or worse even if not of more or less.
It is important to distinguish between degrees of personhood (which
there cannot be) and degrees of evidence for ascribing personhood (which
there certainly are). Granted, the grounds for ascribing personhood to X
can be partial and incomplete, but X’s personhood (if indeed there) can-
not prove to be partial and incomplete. Incomplete evidence for some-
thing is not evidence for something incomplete. Again, someone can
display and manifest the features requisite for personhood to varying
degrees, but that does not make this individual more or less of a person.
To reemphasize, personhood as such is a matter of the possession of capa-
bilities and not of the extent and requiring of their actualization. The
extent to which a creature quacks like a duck and waddles like a duck may
constitutes a stranger case for saying that it is a duck, but it does not make
it more of a duck. Like being a person, being a duck, is not a matter
of degree.
As a creature that makes its way in the world by the guidance of infor-
mation, we intelligent agents have a need for knowledge. And this enjoins
4 N. RESCHER

a cognitive dynamism on us whose natural consequence is a disaffection

from intellectual standing and an aversion to boredom. Our minds require
cognitive nourishment every bit as much as our bodies require physical
nourishment, and keeping the mind occupied becomes as important as
keeping the body fed. Characteristic of persons at large is an impetus to
being what is going on in the world and how things function there.
Persons must be mind-endowed. They must be capable of having belief,
forming opinions about things—in sum to process information, be it cor-
rectly or incorrectly. But they must also be capable of having evaluative
attitudes about things, pro or con, favorable or unfavorable.
Persons are bound to have beliefs about how matters stand in the world,
creating for themselves some sort of mental thought-model about its
arrangements. And they have various needs and wants that give them an
interest in what goes on. On this basis—their beliefs and their interests—
they make choices. It is this capacity to deploy beliefs, evaluations, and
choices into conjoint operation in an endeavor to produce results is what
defines them as persons. Agency guided by cognition, evaluation, and
choice constitute the heart of the matter. And to be fully a person, a being
should not only preside over the aforementioned capabilities of cognitive
and practical intelligence (belief, desire, choice) but be conscious and
indeed self-conscious thereof.
A reasonable accommodation has to be achieved between two conflict-
ing ideas:

• That the limits of a person’s cognitive world are set by the limits of
the individual’s experience. Experience accordingly sets limits to the
individual’s cognitive reach beyond which it cannot venture very far.
• That a person’s reflexivity of understanding enables them to realize
that reality extends above and beyond them on cognitive range.

The idea of a self, predicated on the contrast between the individual con-
cerned and the rest—both the impersonal remainder but also the personal
others. And persons as intelligent beings have a conception of their place
in impersonal nature and also as members of a wider grouping of other
persons.
This twofold, contrastive differentiation is at the cognitive disposal of
persons as intelligent agents, and endows them with an unavoidable aware-
ness of a realm of being that extends beyond the self.
 1 PERSONHOOD 5

The evaluative dimension spills over into the cognitive. Persons are first
and foremost cognitive agents, beings who act on the basis of information
and thought. For such beings, radical skepticism is not an option: a sys-
temic refusal to accept contentions creates a 100 percent certainty of lack-
ing the information needed to guide action. A person can reasonably be a
mild sceptic, denying the prospect of settling factual issues with 100 per-
cent certainty. But a person cannot reasonably be radical sceptic holding
that all factual claims are equimeritorious and that none is deserving of
greater credence than any other. For without evaluation rational decision
and thereby rational action becomes impossible and persons will no longer
function as rational beings.

1.3  Requisites for Personhood

And so, it has to be acknowledged that the physical embodiment of per-
sons (if any) involves issues very different from that of personhood itself.
The person at issue might be a multi-nodal plurality of jellyfish-like crea-
ture swimming connectively in a soupy sea. Or it might be a climate of
disembodied potencies leaping from one organic level to another tempo-
rarily enhancing it to a different mode of realization. The possibilities are
endless, and await the inauguration of science-fiction unified. But this has
important consequences, namely, that personhood as such is detached
from its physical manifestations, independent of its species and kinds.
(Personhood as such knows no race or sex.) The duties, rights, and claims
of personhood stand independent of all of these further taxonomic consid-
erations. They are something more fundamental and deep-rooted, with
ethical and metaphysical ramifications that stand independently on their
own feet.
So just what are these person-characterizing capabilities—those person-
abilities as we shall call them. To all appearances they stand as follows:

1. Intelligence: the ability deploy thought for acquiring and processing

information, encompassing consciousness, perception, reasoning
2. Agency: the ability to perform actions—alike mental (e.g., direct
attention) and physical (i.e., shift stones) and form habits and
rules of action
3. Will: the ability to make decisions, act purposively, using intelligence
to direct action for the realization of chosen objectives, thus fusing
the two preceding abilities.
6 N. RESCHER

4. Affectivity and judgment: the capacity for positive and negative

reductivity, to feel pleasure and pain and to evaluate conditions pro
and con, so as to effect evaluation and appraisal, prioritization,
assessment of worth
5. Reflectivity or self-awareness: the realization of oneself as a being
having the preceding abilities that characterize personhood
6. Communication: the ability to exchange thought with others
7. Socialization: community enlistment and social interaction subject
to shared norms and rules

The possession of these personabilities does not require the agent to exer-
cise them constantly and consistently. It is simply a matter of being able to
do so often and to some nontrivial extent. Capacity rather than perfor-
mance is of the essence here.
These personabilities are majoritatively necessary and sufficient condi-
tions for qualifying as a person.2 Here the connection is one of logico-­
conceptual implication. With evidentiation, however, far less is required.
The connection need not be one of logico-conceptual necessitation, but
can be a matter of eventual indications, with evidentiation, with consider-
ations of inductive harmonization now in the foreground.
Above all, persons must be able to obtain and manage information.
And to this end communication is virtually inevitable. For one thing there
is the matter of communication with oneself of other times and places by
means of memory, recollection, memoranda, and records. For another
there is the matter of communication with others. The recording and
transmission of information is thus an essential resource of personhood.
And the use of language is indemonstrable for the realization of these
requisites. All of the essentials of language use—pattern recognition, sym-
bolist realization, pattern detection, habitat acquisition, rule following,
etc.—are needed for the operation of the process that implements person-­
definitive capabilities.
Persons occupy a special place on Nature’s stage because they are “free
agents.” They are agents because they can act through thought-guided
intervention in the course of events. And they are free because their
thought can be developed autonomously rather than as an automaticity
responding to experimental conditioning. No doubt higher primates—
and even “lower” animals—can also engage in thought-guided action, but
only as the product of stimulus-response experience. Human persons can
move beyond this to shape their thinking by experience-transcending
 1 PERSONHOOD 7

speculation and conjecture in the light of speculation, conjecture, hypoth-

esis, and counterfactual. Ironically one of the hallmarks of this cognitive
skill is the prominence of error due to conclusive-presupposing and wish-
ful thinking. The autonomous self-management of belief characteristic of
freely formed beliefs and decisions makes persons cognitive amphibians
capable of functioning alike in the spheres of reality and speculative con-
jecture and mere—and even fact-controversy—positivity.
Affectivity and judgment, of course, have both a positive and a negative
dimension. But equally important is the negative domain where the ques-
tion is: Can they suffer—physically or mentally? Can they undergo pain,
dismay, frustration? The capacity to function in this domain of the plea-
sure/pain spectrum is yet another key definitive facet of personhood.
Persons are marked as such not only by positive but by negative features
as well. As finite beings they are subject to physical pain, mental suffering,
and existential termination (i.e., death). Be they natural or artificial, per-
sons are subject to the principle that “nothing lasts forever.” Even if a sort
of immobility would be achieved through ongoing processual reportative
we would come up against the Ship of Theseus paradox that a reconsti-
tuted vessel is only by custom and jurisprudence the same. The Tragic
Sense of Life of which the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote
so movingly is as inseparable from persons as their own shadow.
Whenever there is a plurality of interactive persons it is only to be
expected that persons should cluster together into groups. Many factors
conspire to result in this: the efficacy of collaboration, the commonality of
interest or experience (“Birds of a feather flock together”). The clustering
is all too common, “Don’t take it personally” means “Don’t be surprised
or offended at being treated in that way; everyone in your group is going
to be treated likewise.”
The connectivity among persons that is established via groupings
reflects a social proximity that is clearly a matter of more or less within
many divisions: kinship, friendship, comradeship, colleagueship, etc.—and
above all shared experiences: old soldiers find companionship even with
the enemies they fought earlier on. (When you meet in totally strange fel-
low timespans of distant corners of the world you are immediately friends.)

1.4  Being a Person
To count as a person calls for functioning on two fronts: the physical to
provide for interaction with nature that can provide information, and the
8 N. RESCHER

mental to access, process, and use this information. Both physically inter-
active and cognitively functional operations must figure in a person’s
repertoire.
A person must be able to realize things. But are there any specific, par-
ticular, identifiable things that a person must be able to realize?
Presumably yes—at least at the level of capacities and capabilities.
Presumably Cartesian reformalization of an ability to think of oneself as a
being, “a thing that can think,” is something of which any actual person
must be capable. The ability to see oneself as a distinctive unit in the
world’s larger scheme if things—to think the distinction between self and
other—is an integral essential feature of personhood.
The personabilities are not necessarily conjoined: it is theoretically pos-
sible for beings to have some while lacking others. Thus in specific

• A being could have intelligence but lack agency. It could be a mere

spectator to events it cannot affect, a witness to but not participant
in the passing scene.
• A being could act without itself possessing cognition and intelli-
gence. It can be a mere machine like those that nowadays produce
automobiles.
• A being could act with willing purposiveness but lack the cognitive
integration of selfhood. It can function as would a band of musicians
who just happen to perform the same piece.

Such beings, though possible, would not qualify as persons.

The personabilities fall into two groups: the indispensable and the likely
(or quasi-mandatory). The first division includes intelligence, agency, will,
affability, reflexivity. The latter category covers the collective aspect of
communication and socialization. In effect this means that the social
aspect could theoretically be absent or—as rather multi-nodal beings—
integrated into one single “organic” unit.
Being a person is a matter of performatory potential—of the capacity
for doing the things that typify the things that persons typically do. It is
not a matter of more or less—or even of better or worse. What is taxo-
nomically determinative is simply whether or not, and not more or less or
better or worse. Even doing something poorly manifests the potential of
doing it. (One need not be a competent performer to manifest a capacity.)
Personhood is a tertiary property. Magnets have the dispositional
capacity to collect iron filings. Sugar has the dispositional capacity to
 1 PERSONHOOD 9

dissolve in water and diffuse its sweetness there. Acts of violence or of

vandalism have the dispositional capacity to evoke shock and aversion in
humans. Dispositions of this sort—to evoke a certain sort of cognitive or
affective reaction in humans—are tertiary properties. (Secondary proper-
ties, by contrast, inhere in those despondent features that evoke a sensory
regime in sentient beings.) The tertiary properties correlate with the metal
responses for mind-endowed beings, the responses being judgmental
rather that sensitive (as with secondary properties). Personhood is a
descriptive characterization of just this sort.

2   Part II: Non-human Persons

2.1  Other Persons
Interestingly, it does not lie in the concept of a person that one must nec-
essarily have a body. To be sure, one must be able to act, but this agency
could in theory be purely mental—involving solely, say, the direct com-
munication between minds through a sympathetic resonance of some sort.
Only contingently—only among agents for whom the transmission of
information requires sending physical signals and where its recording
requires a physical depository—will persons have to be embodied.
Being a person thus contrasts with being human. We humans are Homo
sapiens, a biological species that has evolved here on planet earth. To be
sure, we are—or like to think we are—persons. But there is no good rea-
son to think that we have a monopoly here—that we are the only persons
in the universe. After all, Homo sapiens is a biological category. And what is
at issue with personhood is a functional category, a being with the capacity
to do certain sorts of things. And there is no basis for envisioning exclusiv-
ity here.
There is no decisive reason for thinking that humans are the sole and
exclusive instances of access to personhood. For one cannot but acknowl-
edge the very real prospect that those non-human persons could per-
form—and possibly perform better than ourselves—far better at the
various person-characterizing abilities than we humans.
Christiaan Huygens’ (d. 1695) book Cosmotheros (published posthu-
mously in 1698) was a landmark in the history of speculation about alien
life in the cosmos. On the one hand, it was a monumental exercise in
imaginative speculation on a scale not reduplicated to the time of Jules
Verne and H. G. Wells. But on the other, it was disappointingly
10 N. RESCHER

conservative. For Huygens, “planetarians” were pretty much like ourselves

in makeup, in social organization, and in culture. The difference for him
was not all that great. Their variation for his contemporary Netherlanders
was not greater—and sometimes less—than that of his contemporary
South Sea islanders.
And such a failure of imagination also threatens our present delibera-
tions. The threat is that just because the concept at issue with person-here
and person-there is one and the same, the realization of that concept must
also be very similar. But this similarity should in fact extend no further
than that for conceptual features that are at issue with personhood as such.
And that list of indistinguishable essentials can surely not extend far
beyond the handful of aforementioned personabilities.
Examining the scale of nature enable us to see what separates us from
the “lower” form of animal life, thus manifesting the basis for our claims
to rise above those “inferior” species. The issue is what precedes Homo
sapiens in the evolutionary order is critical here. However, the present
deliberations call for a very different perspective. Now the question is not
what separates us from the “below,” but rather what joins us to what does
or might lie “alongside.” The crux here is not differences from the lower
forms of being, but rather commonalties that join us to other “higher”
forms—be they actual or possible.

2.2  The Evolutionary Perspective

How is it that persons have come to exist in the world? Like everything
else they have come to be there in the course of natural events inserted
into Nature’s scheme of things by the processes of evolution: first apes,
then humanoids, then proto-humans, and then full-fledged human per-
sons—and elsewhere conceivably either sort of persons emerged by analo-
gous developmental processes. There is no reason why a Nature capable of
evolutionary intelligence would not in due course engender rationality as
well, and the same with an emergence of agents whose doings are guided
by intelligence and reason. Like persons and people, in the course of natu-
ral processuality evolution has given rise to persons as well. There is no
need to think that anything super- or supranatural is at work here. Beings
with all sorts of abilities—physical, perceptual, cognitive, and imaginative
engaged in the course of Nature’s ongoing processuality. There is no need
to exert the manifold of personabilities from this course of things.
 1 PERSONHOOD 11

Thought, decision, speculation, and the rest are emergent capacities that
increasingly complex and substandard natural beings have come to muster.
Persons as we know them are the product of evolutionary develop-
ment. Apes evolved into humanoids; humanoids into humans, humans
into persons. Evolution brings new qualities to the fore that can transcend
origins. DNA molecules are an assemblage of physical atoms but they
encompass the key to organic life. Birds doubtless initially developed song
for signaling warnings of danger, but that did not preclude the evolution-
ary transmutation of song-behaviors into means for establishing territori-
ality against potential competition. The physical rooting of an activity or
process does not restrict or circumscribe its functional character.
The emergence of new modes and levels of operation, function, and
behavior that transcend the capabilities of their causal origination is in fact
characteristic of evolutionary processes. For the first microseconds of cos-
mic history after the big bang there was no chemistry. The early stages of
the universe had no place for biology. There was no foothold in nature for
laws of sociology or market-economics before the origin of man. The
emergence of new phenomena at different levels of scale and organiza-
tional complexity in nature means the emergence of new processes and
stats at these levels. The transition from protophysical to physical and then
to chemical and onwards to biological law reflects a succession of new
levels of operational complexity. And this holds good for purposive intel-
ligence as well—it is a new phenomenon that emerges at a new level of
operational complexity. New products and processes constantly develop
from earlier modes of organization. The emergence of the psychological
processes that open up meaning and purpose is simply another step in this
course of development of new levels of functional complexity.
It is important to bear in mind, however, that while causal explanation
proceeds from a mind-external point of view, cognitive functions like
meaning and purpose can be comprehended as such only from within—in
the order of hermeneutical understanding. The physical processes that lie
at the causal basis of thought are, as such, fully open to second-party
(“external”) examination, description, explanation, and modelling. But
the ideational aspect of thinking can of course only be apprehended in
one’s own first-hand experience (though of course it can be described to
others who have similar experiences at their disposal.) There is, accord-
ingly, a crucial difference between having a causally productive account of
the physical-process concomitants of human mental operations (of the
sort that biological evolution provides) and having experiential access to
12 N. RESCHER

its products “from within.” Meaning, intending, understanding, purpos-

ing are all resources that are only at the disposal of someone who himself
has the appropriate sort of foothold within the realm of mind.
Understanding them requires performing them, and performing them
requires being a mind and having those mental experiences. (Explaining
them, on the other hand, can, in principle, be managed by any sort of suf-
ficiently intelligent being.)
Proper heed of this distinction between the productive causal basis and
the descriptive functional nature of mental operations should lead to the
recognition that one should not ask an evolutionary account of mind to
do the impossible in this regard. Such an account can perfectly well explain
the developmental origination of mental operations in terms of their causal
basis, but it cannot make their inner experiential character intelligible. The
existence of mental functions like meaning and purpose can be accounted
for on evolutionary principles. But their qualitative nature is nevertheless
something that can be adequately comprehended only “from within,”
from a performer’s rather than an observer’s perspective. The purposive
intentionality of certain mental processes is part and parcel of the internal-
ized, experiential aspect of the workings of the mind.
One can fully understand a physical process like the spider’s web-­
weaving without being a spider—without ourselves being in a position to
perform this process and so without having what it feels like to perform
the activity. But one cannot fully understand a cognitive process like color-­
vision or symbol-interpretation or anger without experiencing that sort of
thing. It is one thing to explain how operations originate and another to
know what it is like to perform them. The physiology of inebriation can be
learned by everyone. But only the person who drinks can comprehend it
in the “inner” experiential mode of cognitive access. The mental perfor-
mances that reflect meaning and purpose can be understood only from
within the orbit of experience (though their occurrence can doubtless be
detected and accounted for through external scientific-causal examina-
tion). Talk of meaning, intending, purposing, and the like is bound to
experience—to performer’s perspective—and thus differs from the neuro-
physiology of brain processes which is wholly accessible to external observ-
ers. They reflect issues that evolutionary explanations simply do not
address, given their altogether different orientation to the causal dimen-
sion of the matter.
An evolutionary account of the physical processes involved in mental
operations is thus by no means reductive (or eliminative) of the inner
 1 PERSONHOOD 13

dimension of intentionality and meaning. In addressing the issue of the

physical conditions and processes that engender (i.e., causally produce)
those mental operations at issue with intending, purposing, meaning, etc.,
it is by its very nature silent regarding their phenomenological character,
which can be grasped only “from within.” An evolutionary productive/
causal account is developed from the angle of the observer’s perspective,
whereas the substantive content of these processes has of necessity to be
grasped from within the vantage point of a performer’s perspective. And
of course the former, scientific, evolutionary, neurophysiological account
of thought processes does nothing to eliminate or preclude the contextual
aspect of meaning and purpose which can be appreciated only from the
“internal,” performer’s standpoint. But incompleteness is one thing, and
defectiveness quite another. The former (evolutionary) account is nowise
deficient or defective for failing to provide for the latter (phenomenologi-
cal/hermeneutic) one—which is in principle impossible because of the
different levels of consideration that are involved.
All that we can reasonably ask of an evolutionary account of mental
operations is that it should explain the emergence of the capacities and
processes thought. The inner phenomenology of thinking lies beyond its
range—not because of its deficiencies, but because of the simple fact that
it addresses altogether different issues. We cannot fault an evolutionary
account of the origination of mind for failing to provide that which no
causal account of mind’s origination could possibly deliver on its own—
cognitive access to the inner, phenomenological nature of mental experi-
ence. The nature of the apparatus of thought does not restrict the substance
of our thinking. An evolutionary account of mind is not at odds with
intentionality, purpose, meaning, and the like because it does not even
address these issues. And this is not a shortcoming because it is designed
to answer very different sorts of questions—questions which lie in the
order of causal explanation rather than hermeneutic explication.
An evolutionary account of the development of our capacities for men-
tal operation accordingly leaves open scope for purpose and meaning
because it does not—and cannot by its very nature—shut the door on
issues that it simply does not address. And it clearly cannot be faulted for
failing to deal with an issue (viz. the nature of understanding and inten-
tionality) that lies entirely outside the range of its causal concerns.
Intentionality (aims and purposes and the like) forms part of the
thought-machinery of thinkers, even as mathematical objects triangles and
spheres do. They do not evolve in nature but come to feature in the
14 N. RESCHER

operations of (sufficiently sophisticated) minds operating in social interac-

tion. How minds arise and come to acquire their talents and capacities is
one thing, what they do with them is another. Biological evolution has to
do with the first; intentionality with the second. Evolution operates with
respect to the workings of mind—with its processes; intentionality is a
matter of its products. There is—and can be—no incompatibility between
them, seeing that different issues are involved.
To be sure, then, an evolutionary account of mind is predicated on a
position that is “materialistic” in viewing the mind as having a crucial basis
for its operations in the processes of the body (and the brain in particu-
lar).3 But this sort of causal-origin materialism is nowise at odds with an
hermeneutical idealism which maintains that we understand various of the
world’s processes in terms of concepts and categories drawn from the
“inner” experience of the mind’s self-observation.4 Evolution’s “mechani-
cal,” causal accounting for our experiences of purposiveness and inten-
tionality is nowise at odds with the inner experienced aspect of these
phenomena. The former issue belongs to the domain of the causal expla-
nation of experiencing as events in the physical world, the latter to the
phenomenology of our experiences as phenomena in the world of thought.
The long and short of it is that a Darwinian account of the origin of
mind does not—and by its very nature cannot—conflict with intentional-
ity and purpose because its range simply does not extend to this domain.
But of course, it would simply be foolish to deny the originative power of
evolutionary processes. To say that a purposive being cannot arise by evo-
lution in a theretofore purpose-lacking world is much like saying that a
seeing being cannot arise by evolution in a theretofore vision-lacking
world or that an intelligent being cannot arise by evolution in a thereto-
fore intelligence-lacking world. A commitment to the spirit of Darwinism
may well impede an acceptance of the purposiveness OF nature, but it
clearly does not and cannot impede an acceptance of purposiveness IN
nature, through the emergence within nature of beings who themselves
have purposes, intentions, goals, etc. No doubt, Darwinian natural selec-
tion ill-accords with an anthropomorphism of nature, but it certainly does
not preclude an anthropomorphism of man.
The long and short of it is that acceptance of an evolutionary account
of the origination and operation of human intelligence leaves ample scope
for meaning and purpose in the domain of our human doings and deal-
ings. And it would surely be both naive and mistaken to think that our
 1 PERSONHOOD 15

human assessment of purpose, meaning, and value is somehow under-

mined or neglected by an account which sees their origination in capacities
that have been acquired through development in the natural course of
evolutionary events. After all arranging that logical reasoning, like our
other capabilities, has come our way in the evolutionary course of things.
If indeed Homo sapiens were the only type of persons actually to exist in
the universe then this has to be seen as a matter of sheer contingency.
There can be no sense of fundamental principle of natural law why other,
different realizations of the class persons should not be in existence. The
principle of ontological uniformity. What can happen in fact once here and
now can possibly (in theory) happen once more there and then!
On this basis, there can, of course, be non-human persons. For it is
clear that there is no reason of principle—no basic laws of nature (be they
physical, chemical, or biological—that could preclude the possibility of
persons other than Homo sapiens. With a bit of speculation one can readily
construct a list of possibilities ranging from

• Humanoids: evolutionary antecedents to Homo sapiens

• Aliens
• Robots
• Creatures of fiction (e.g., Merlin)
• Superior beings (e.g., angels)

Theoretically persons can come into the world by artifice: science fic-
tion has long inured us to the idea of sophisticated robots that have
advanced from “artificial intelligence” to “artificial personality.” And—
however much precedence and principal rationality may stand in the
way—there is no reason of fundamental principle why this project cannot
be carried to successful completion in the creation of machines that have
the entire array of the personabililtes at their disposal.
Moreover, there is yet another natural way to realize this end, namely,
evolution. For in our own case, if authentic persons we indeed are, then
evolution is how we get there.
After all, the prospect of non-human persons—the concept of persons
over and above humans—should be seen as commonplace. It is a long-­
standing and familiar conception. We find it well entrenched in religion:
with gods, and angels, and the “persons” of the Trinity. We find it at work
in the concept of extraterrestrial aliens, common thought, science fiction
16 N. RESCHER

and not absence from science itself. It is at work in speculation about

robots and artificial beings combined in the laboratory.
Special complexities arise in the case of multi-modal compound per-
sons. There are various possibilities here. One striking example would be
a plurality of persons jointly and collectively operating as a single unified
power-steamer in a unified directorate. A single “body” is thus shared in a
joint governing board composed of otherwise distinct persons. In this
way, a plurality of persons join in an interactive collaboration to create yet
another additional person —a “legal person” as it were—constituted by the
entire collectivity.

2.3  Identifying and Re-identifying Persons

Let it be that we see ourselves duly entitled to accept X as a person. But
which person? How are persons to be identified?
Persons—as we know or can imagine them—are embodied beings. In
the usual course of things we can thus identify them via their bodies. But
in theory—and in imaginative science fiction—we can envision persons as
impersonal forces or agencies. Then we can identify them only by what
they do. And even when embodied the prospect of their changing bodies
becomes imaginable, as does their splitting—say as X or Y every other day.
Should this happen, one would need to rethink the issue of personal iden-
tify from the ground up. But in the meantime it is best to walk on the side
of the street where the sunshine of realism shines, proceeding—ad interim
at least—to have it that a person is defined by what it does and how it goes
about doing it in the physical realm.
The issue of reidentification can be addressed analogously. When are we
dealing with the same person as the one we dealt with a month or year or
decade ago? This too can be addressed on the principle that persons are
defined by what they physically do. Yet, even in the absence of physical
continuity there is the psychic continuity of thought life—the perpetuation
of capabilities, the continuity of recalled experience and perspective, of
decision and action, and the harming of experiential flux and its aid to
continuity in memory. The continuity of personhood, in sum, is encapsu-
lated in that of experience (cognitive and emotive) of mental life in gen-
eral. Reidentification of person lies in the continuous functioning of a
personality. And given the vast number of different ways in which each of
these requisites can be realized, and the multitude of the resulting
 1 PERSONHOOD 17

combinations, the uniqueness of persons in any finite universe should be

no surprise.
Every person is unique. Everyone has their own characteristic make-up,
their own way of thinking and doing, their own style. (Le style c’est
l’hommes). With persons this uniqueness is not physical (as with finger-
prints or facial identification parameters). Rather it is procedural, behav-
ioral, operational. It is this uniqueness of style that constitutes what is
called personality. And it is this that identifies persons as the individuals
they are.
The theology of divine or angelic persons gives rise to unique difficul-
ties of its own. The Neoplatonism and Christian doctrine of the trinity has
engendered endless theological and philosophical debates and disputes,
focusing on the mystery of how a single, unique being can be constituted
as three distinct persons. Possibly available here is the seemingly viable
idea of a single person with distinct personalities manifesting themselves in
different relationships (much as a single woman may in different contexts
function in different roles as a mother, a wife, and a physician). But no
single such resolution has ever proved adequate to the varying perspec-
tives and conceptions of all different parties to the discussion.
Even as embodied persons who can in theory be deathless and immor-
tal, replacing and renewing whatever constitutes their physical makeup,
happen to wear out. But as this process continues ongoingly over time, the
cognitive dynamism inherent in personhood eventually changes the pat-
terns of thought and cognate that we read the condition of the Ship of
Theseus puzzle where the question of self-identity becomes increasingly
pressing in the wake of an increasingly altered self. As the thread of same-
ness becomes increasingly stretched in an ever-changing universe to a
point where it is so thin that its identification becomes a matter of courtesy
rather that constituted fact. Theology is wise to emplace its eternal angels
into a heavenly realm detached from the ever-changing consolations of a
natural world.
Personality—the mode and manner of the comportment of persons as
manifested through their doings and dealings, their performative style—is
the secular equivalent of their traditional “mortal soul.”
Persons as a generic type is exemplified in particular individuals as
instances. These are unique, each possessed of a “one of a kind” persona.
From the perspective of others this is a “personality,” from the perspective
of the individual it is an ego. (Borrowing in this usage to indicate that
18 N. RESCHER

someone is outstandingly noteworthy, we also characterize such a “celeb-

rity” as a “personality.”)
The persona of a person consists in the unique amalgam of personal
characteristics (personabilities) that identify this individual and set it apart
from all others. Such a recognition of one’s own uniqueness and conse-
quent acknowledgment of the uniqueness of others is part and parcel of
the endowment of persons in general.
People define what they are by what they do. And this indeed is immor-
tal. It is what it is—now and forever. As the Poet Omar Khayyam has it in
his Rubaiyat: “The moving finger writes and, having wrote, moves on;
not all thy pretty not wit will call it back to cancel half-time; nor all thy
tears wash out a word of it.” What we do ever after remains part of the
world’s history. It may be but a drop in the vast ocean of world history,
but it is there as an indispensable and ineradicable part; and one in whose
absence the control could not be what it is.
Person-formulation is a characteristic proceeding. The aim of the pro-
cess is to one person for another by adopting adopt many of the individu-
al’s identifying features and personabilities. Of course this project can only
be carried through to a limited extent. It may, however, on some occur-
rences be sufficiently developed to mislead parties into mistaken beliefs.

3   Part III: Personhood as Transcendental

3.1  Personhood as Reflective
Persons, like books, have two dimensions: the concrete, physical, observ-
able open to sensory inspection, and the intrinsic, covert, reflective dimen-
sion of meaning that comes to expression only in the interaction with
others. The physical aspect of the book is observable to everyone—even to
him for whom its text is “all Greek.” And then there are those who can
enter into the meanings and messages that those ink-marks represent.
Similarly, a person has an exotic open to observation and inspection as well
as a covert to existence dimensions of personality and character accessible
only in interaction with persons, the individual itself included. A person is
thus Janus focused, presenting one aspect (the ontological) to the world
at large and another (the ethical) only to the world of persons.
A person thus occupies two realms: the overt realm of discernible con-
stitution and the covert and observation-transcendent reality of apprehen-
sible significance and symbolic meaning. And just as books can exist as
 1 PERSONHOOD 19

such (rather than as mere physical objects) only in a world where there are
minds to apprehend their message, so here are persons as such (rather than
mere physical beings) only in worlds where this is apprehensible by intel-
ligent agents (conservably including only the individual itself).5
Presumably we have no doubt that we ourselves are persons. But what
of others? To view someone as a person is to regard them as being most
like ourselves in all fundamental respects.
Attributions of personhood transcends the information provided by
sensory observation. For being a person calls for the capacity to consider
a whole host of mental operations—understanding evaluating feelings,
etc.,—whose functionary can at most be evidential but not established by
observational means. Observation tells one that you are following X—i.e.,
following with a view to finding X’s intended destination—is merely a
plausible conjecture about matters above and beyond the sensory realm
and invokes information supplements by plausible guesswork alone. That
and how you move is observable; why you do so is not (even though it
often can be inferred plausibly for the former). The imputation of purpose
is observation transcendent; it can be evidentiated but not established by
observational means.
When accepting someone as a bona fide person I am not making an
observation report but moving beyond the observable realm. So we now
stand at the threshold of a somewhat convoluted but crucially important
line of thought resting on two crucial considerations:

Point 1. Although ascriptions of personhood can be evidentiated and plau-

siblified, they cannot be conclusively established and incontestably
demonstrated.

This is so because personhood requires that the being in question is

• An intelligent agent
• Capable of forming a self-image
• Possessed of an action-guiding manifold of values and per-
ceived interests

None of these functions lie open to sensory inspiration.

Granted, the actions that reflect this modus operandi can be observed.
But neither individually nor collectively is this conclusive. Those
20 N. RESCHER

observables probabilify, plausibilify, substantiate—but they do not estab-

lish, prove, demonstrate. They confirm but do not establish. And this
leads to:

Point 2. In the final analysis, the ascription of personhood is not a matter of

established fact but is an evidence-transcending imputation. It involves a
move from likelihood and plausibility to assurance and factuality and accord-
ingly is not an observational report, but a transcendental imputation. Its
justification accordingly does not lie in the epistemic realm of factual knowl-
edge, but in the realm of situationally appropriate supposition.

The capabilities that are definitive of personhood fall into two groups:
the overt that readily admit of observational/empirical verification, and
the covert that do not. The grouping is as follows:

• Overt: intelligence and the behavioral-oriented goals that guide our

interactions with the external world)
• Obscure: will motivation and self-oriented values (reflexivity in self-­
concerned matters)

What actions we perform in the world is relatively open to inspection.

And so is what comprises the needs and wants at which those actions aim.
But objectives, plans, and the like are another matter. And as any intelli-
gence operative knows, capabilities are easy to master but intentions more
difficult to discern and are wide open to conjecture and guesswork, seeing
that crucial features of personhood relate to issues regarding how such a
being thinks and—above all—thinks of themselves.
Instantiation of humanity is basically observational and empiri-
cal, but personality is an observation-transcending (albeit observation-­
evidentiated) reflection of mind-geared capabilities, which turns on the
imputation of mental capabilities. The difference renders in the distinction
between seeing that something is so and seeing something as being so.
Personhood accordingly is not a matter of evidentiation but of
indication-­based imputation: its justifying crux is not overtly conclusive
evidentiation but plausible but conjectural imputation. It is out of reach of
observational determination. Its entanglement in matters of motivation
and reflexivity render it (to some extent) transcendental, so that its ascrip-
tion is always (to some extent), presumptive. The (remote) possibility of a
slip between cup and lip—between claim and actuality—is always there.
 1 PERSONHOOD 21

3.2  Grounding Claims to Personhood

Claims to personhood are made on behalf of two groups of individuals:
(1) the very small group consisting only of oneself and (2) others.
In claiming personhood for oneself, one has two pivotal resources:
introspection (i.e., reflexive self-appreciation) and observation. This dual-
ity greatly ensures the task by reducing the need for speculative conjecture
and reference by analogy. The self has prioritized access not to what it
overtly does, but to what it understands and undertakes thereby. With
others, by contrast, we rely to a far greater extent on analogy, supposition,
and speculation.
To claim personhood for oneself one must view oneself in a certain
particular light. One must attribute to oneself all of the various person-­
essential characteristic capacities and capabilities: intelligence, agency reac-
tivity(?), and the rest. One must, in sum, regard oneself in the light not
just as a species member (Homo sapiens) but as an intelligent and respon-
sible agent capable of making appropriately informed judgments and
decisions.
No doubt there are people who do not view themselves in this light.
Some do not bother to think of the matter being sufficiently engaged on
other fronts. Some have given the matter much thought (Lucretus and
Spinoza) and have come to hold other discordant view about humans
(themselves included). But no matter—as already emphasized the issue is
one of what people can do not what they actually do.
In failing to see oneself as a person and seeing oneself as something
else—a robot, perhaps, or a creature of someone else’s thought—one can
readily be mistaken. But what of the other side? Can we be mistaken in
thinking of oneself as a person? For sure we are—or can be—mistaken
about virtually anything! But if they indeed are intelligent beings who are
possessed of appropriately correct conceptions of the matter and who
think of themselves as persons on this basis, then this is something about
which they cannot (in the postulated circumstances) possibly be mistaken.
The ultimate reason for acknowledging others as persons lies in the eth-
ics of self-respect. The personhood we cherish in ourselves is entangled
with that yearning for companionship and that generosity of self-analysis
beings as dividing acknowledgment and affinity. We could not regard
22 N. RESCHER

ourselves as we would like if we did not reach out to others when eviden-
tial considerations permit.
But why see ourselves as persons? Why take ourselves to have this spe-
cial actual experience-transcending status?
(1) Because we can—personhood is clearly a good thing, and nothing
bars our way to it; (2) its assumption is beneficial; it enhances our standing
in our own eyes and in that of others; (3) it serves motivation to motivate
and energize our obligation to make the best of ourselves; (4) it facilitates
a beneficial understanding of ourselves, the environing world, and our
place in it; (5) it motivates and reinforces our sense of the collegiality, reci-
procity, and mutual aid solidarity with others.
People generally do—and certainly should—regard personhood as one
of their most prized and indispensable features. They mostly do—and cer-
tainly should—rather lose a hand than their reason or their capacity for
choice and action. It is just exactly those of our features that qualify as
persons that do—and should—constitute our most dearly prized resources.
Anything that compromises or diminishes our personhood is monumen-
tally anathema to us.
Persons should by rights not only realize their personhood but treasure
it as something special, a feature that gives in a special status to one’s self
in the world’s scheme of things and calls for the recognition and respect
of others.
We should accordingly honor personhood in ourselves because we do
and should take its possession as the justifying basis for the status that we
claim for ourselves.
We are—and we think of ourselves as—intelligences functioning a
being of speculation, supposition, and imagination. And it is this reflectiv-
ity of self-apprehension in a complex negotiation between reality and pos-
sibility that we become not just members of the species Homo sapiens but
also citizen of the community of persons.
The crux here is the transition from Reflexivity to Reciprocity, the tran-
sit from self-conception to other-acknowledgment—from how we see
ourselves (as possessing a special status that provides for a characteristic
manifold of rights and claims) to how we must regard and treat others
(whom we procedurally would (and ethically must) regard as occupying
the same position).
What we have is an effect, an analogue to the Golden Rule. That rule
stipulates that with regard to action we should, insofar as possible:
 1 PERSONHOOD 23

• Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Whereas the present precept has it with regard to thought that we

should. Insofar as possible:

• Think of others as having the same status that you claim for yourself.

Both the original action-geared Golden Rule and its thought-geared

generalization extend into the wider range of people-in-general. And of
course, in both cases these “others” are (and should be) not only our fel-
low humans but persons at large.
A dual morality is inherent in a common perspective: “Do right by
everyone” (sunam anique tribuere). For what is “the just due” of others.
To those others who are persons—however distinct from us they may be—
we owe just and appropriate treatment because of this very fact: because
they are persons. The requirement to a justice to our posterity (however
distinct) and to whatever alien persons the universe may have in store
inheres in this very fact.
But why and how? Because it is demanded as a status as persons—and
in particular as rational agents. For in valuing personhood in ourselves,
we—as rational beings—can do so only because we take it (personhood)
to be of value, and if that is so it must be viewed as valuable and thereby
as having value whenever it is found.
And so we owe respect and moral treatment to those others because
they are persons.
On the other hand, we owe good treatment to animals (avoid being
inhuman) and even to inert objects (avoid vandalism) because we are per-
sons. For acting otherwise would damage our self-respect and make us
unworthy in our own right.

4   Part IV: The Ethical Dimension

4.1  The Ethical Landscape

Being a person is a categorical condition—one either is or is not a person:
there is no matter of degree about it. But while status is two-sided here,
merit is not, and while one cannot be more or less a person, one can be a
better person or worse. For all those capacities and potentialities that
define personhood (intelligence, evaluation, action in pursuit of properly
24 N. RESCHER

assessed objective, etc.) are proceedings that can be pursued more or less
ably, adequately, and effectively. And the more fully and adequately agents
cultivate this prospect the better a person they will be. To be a good per-
son, in sum, is to do extensively and well the sort of things that define a
person as such.
Ultimately what justifies the presumptive and speculative imputation at
issue with personhood alternative is a matter of moral obligation. It is
through seeing myself as a person that I become (ethically) obligated to
acknowledging the personhood of others. Ascriptions to personhood as
validated in the action not of factual/observation but on the order of ethi-
cal/practical/evaluative reason.
What this means is that we are now moving not in the region of observ-
ably ascribable fact but in that of ethically appropriate and perhaps even
morally obligatory conviction.
In a way we have moved from the domain of theoretical/cognitive
reason into that of what Kant would characterize as prudent/moral
deliberation.
The pivotal factor that provides a rational justification for this mode of
proceeding lies in the matter of ethical self-obligation. But this faces prob-
lems. For a question immediately arises: To whom do we owe this moral
obligation?
Here the answer clearly cannot be: We owe it to them. For this would
be circular in putting the cart before the horse. For we do not have any
moral obligation toward that until they are confirmed as members of the
moral community—until we have enrolled them as fellow persons—which
is just exactly the matter that is at issue (sub judice so to speak.)
The fact is that there is indeed a fellow person to whom this obligation
is due and this is ourselves.
We see ourselves as persons, as intelligent agents (etc.). Indeed it is
exactly this that we primarily prize about ourselves. (We would rather lose
an arm and a leg than to lose our reason, our self-consciousness, or free
agency.)
What we value in ourselves we must—as rational beings—see as being
of value. Whenever present and whenever focused—even in others.
We do or should want to make the most of our own personhood.
And acknowledging personhood in others is part and parcel of this
prospect. To be good at personhood is to be a good person, and generos-
ity of spirit is part and parcel of this.
 1 PERSONHOOD 25

Acknowledging the personhood of other epistemically licit beings is

point of being a good person. And it is this factor of making the best of
ourselves which (via generosity of spirit and openness to empathy) that
provides us with authorization to extend recognition to others.
On the ethical side of the matter, there are two prominent questions:
What do we owe to persons, and why do we owe it to them?
What we owe to a being, if indeed it is a person, is principally two
things. The first is recognition, acknowledgment as a person. After all,
persons are different and distinctive, and thereby deserve to be acknowl-
edged as such by those others capable of so doing. Be they human or not,
persons have a distinctive status in Reality’s scheme of things and thus
merit inert recognition as something special, something whose possession
of these person-invoking characteristic demands recognition and respect.
Special care is accordingly due to proper care for the well-being and proper
interests of persons. They are not “things” ethically available for exploita-
tion in the service of our own wants and desires.
Why do we owe other persons this care for their well-being and inter-
ests? We owe it to them exactly because we ourselves are—and see our-
selves—as persons. As such—as rational beings—we could not prize our
personhood and thus value personhood in ourselves if we did not regard
personhood itself as a thing of value. (Rational people will only value what
they deem to be valuable, even as they will only believe what they deem to
be belief-worthy.) And the simple rational consistency that is inherent in
personhood demands the personhood be seen as fit to be respected and
valued wherever it may be found. Rational beings must deem the things
that they themselves value as deserving it, as being valuable.
All the same, there is no question that the interests of persons can con-
flict, both individually and collectively in groupings. When this occurs
with individuals there is no automatic, algorithmic resolution. Disinterested
third parties can almost always arise at better resolutions than those imme-
diately concerned, but there is often no realizable way to reevaluation.
And the problem can be far worse with groupings. Worst of all are science
fiction cases of the sort modeled in H. G. Wells’ Time Machine where
evolution divides mankind into two subspecies, whose members can exist
only by exploiting the life of members of the other. Ethical considerations
are necessarily and convincingly applicable to persons, but that is not to
say that in some conditions and circumstances they cannot behave in ethi-
cally unacceptable ways.
26 N. RESCHER

Given the wide variations even of human lifestyles—ranging from

archaic intuits to rainforest dwellers to individuals of the Serengeti—it
hardly makes sense of common needs to persons, some at the level of wide
generality (nourishment, maintenance care, information access, and the
like). Life, liberty, and the pursuit of autonomous goals figure among the
universal endowments of persons, entitled to recognition, acknowledg-
ment constitution, respect, self-determination. They do so because all of
the embellishments become so many factors involved in the proper
respecting of persons as agents not only enabled but obligated to the
expression of personabilities.

4.2  Obligations That Persons Owe to Themselves and Others

Thus one thing that persons owe themselves is self-development—the
preservation, consolation, and enhancement of these characteristics that
mark them as persons. Exactly because our personhood is the last thing we
would want to lose and our personality is so precious to us we owe it to
ourselves and to the powers and potencies that have brought us into exis-
tence to substantiate and develop our personhood in the fullest and
best way.
In view of the opportunities that personhood puts at their disposal,
persons incur certain obligations. Being a person is to be the bearer of
rights and responsibilities. The framework among the rights is to be con-
sidered and treated as a person, and the framework among responsibilities
is the collective obligation to treat persons in exactly this basis. As rational
agents it is only natural to be expected of persons to cultivate their oppor-
tunities for the good in all its multiple relevant dimensions. Thus promi-
nent among the salient duties that persons owe to themselves is the
reflexive of realizing themselves in the best version they can manage to be:
to make the most of themselves, to do what enables them to achieve self-­
respect, to exert effort to the pursuit of appropriate objectives, to earn
their claim to the special status that is definitive of personhood.
Besides and not constituted to these obligations that people owe to
themselves there are also the obligations of others. The nature of these
obligations will of course vary in line with the specific relationship that
obtains between those involved, be it as parents and children, doctor and
patient, employer and employee, or the like. But additional to these are
the social obligations that persons owe to others just by virtue of this fact
of being fellow persons. Our moral obligation to others is thus part and
 1 PERSONHOOD 27

parcel of our obligation to ourselves—to the expression and development

of our personhood.
Seeing that our very personhood requires us to seize opportunities to
make the most and best of the opportunities for self-betterment at our
disposal that we are also mandated by our personhood to be moral in
regard to benevolence in suppling others in the realization of these.
Self-interest—the stake we have in making the best of ourselves—proj-
ects itself outwards through the benevolence-dimension of morality.
But if something has value in itself—if it is something that merits being
valued—then we as rational beings should value it whenever it is formed.
And so if we persons value personhood in ourselves then as individual
beings one must value it on account of its merit and accordingly must
value it in others as well. And so what we owe them includes preeminently
several things as recognition and recognizance, and respect as fellow per-
sons as well as mutual aid insofar as the circumstances permit and warrant.
We owe this to our fellow persons insofar as warranted by

• The nature and legitimacy of their needs

• The availability and extent of our resources
• The relationship obtaining between us (as family, friends, neigh-
bors, etc.)
• The other comparable claims on our resources

The manifold of our obligations to other persons at large is definite but

limited. Our moral obligation towards others depends on the ethical dis-
tance between us. In order of decreasing proximity we have: family, friends,
neighbors-colleagues, fellow contemporaries, people at large, and (last but
not least) persons. The moral fundamental are uniform throughout. To all
we owe mutual aid in times of need, benevolence is fundamental here, but
with vast differences in extent, and kind. The moral of the Good Samaritan
is not that he is a typical good person, but that he is an example of the
good, but someone whose virtue went above and beyond. Someone who
treats a stranger as a neighbor or a neighbor as a friend as someone takes
exceeds the bounds of the morally mandating into that of
supererogation.
Personhood can be viewed in theological perspective. The Nicene
Creed has it that Jesus was begotten as divine (not so made by the Father),
but made man (by God). With ordinary mortals something similar is at
work. They too are begotten (as humans by their parents) but made
28 N. RESCHER

persons (by Destiny). An analogous transformation of constitution is as

work, albeit in an opposed direction (with Jesus to mankind, with us from
it). The Homo sapiens transcendence of personhood carries us above and
beyond our human condition. For Jesus the transit to humanity is a decent
to a lesser life form, for us the transit to personhood is an accent to a
higher life form.
In simple, rational consistency we must thus view ourselves as commit-
ted to supporting, fostering, and enhancing the defining characteristics of
personhood as we find them in others. In sum we should thus see our-
selves as parts of a confraternity of persons who, in view if their member-
ship in this community, occupied recognition and mutual aid. At the level
of identity, at least, we are committed to rendering one another and in the
common journey toward the fullest realization of our personhood.

4.3  Good Persons
A person should have a properly developed sense of their own condition
and a just appreciation of their standing as a person. Undue self-­abasement,
self-designation, and deficient self-worth are all decided negativities. And
the same holds at the opposite side of the scale: inflated, self-esteem and
exaggerated self-importance are equally negative. We are bound to have
mixed feelings toward outstanding personalities who, like Henry the
Eighth, Kaiser Wilhelm, or Lord Curzon, presided over an outsize ego.
The obligations we owe to others we owe then by virtue of the classifi-
catory condition that reflects their relationship to us—be it as children, as
parents, as neighbors, as colleagues, etc. Interpersonal proximity is a per-
vasive conception in our thinking about other persons.
The idea of proximity admits of bull’s eye representation

54321
 1 PERSONHOOD 29

Display A: Interpersonal proximity ranges

Distant Space Time Genetic Friendship Extent Encounter
relation affinity

Immediate Here Now Self — Normal Unique

Close/ Near Soon Close Dear Large Common
nearby
Distance Afar Sooner or Near Good Massive Uncommon
later
Remote Remote Sometime Remote Final Enormous Rare
Beyond Astrono­ Perhaps Very Acquaintance Extensively Unheard of
mically sometime
remote

And there are five corresponding proximity ranges, going from the
Immediate to the Great Beyond (see Display A).
The underlying ideas extend to encounter frequency. In general we will
have it that the extent to which they encounter i-level phenomena, the
extent to which they figure as an item of prominence in our experience.

1. Unique
2. Seldom
3. Frequent
4. Extremely rare
5. Virtually never

As we now show the series of level of—let us call it—proximity of intensity,

the items figure with decreasing prominence in our experience. Their
encounter will in general decline markedly so that we have something of
an analogue to Newtonian gravitation.
Given their personal constitution with its characteristic priorities, goals,
preferences, and values, it is inevitable that persons should take differential
attitudes towards one another, be it individually or in groups. And the
“birds of a feather” principle is almost certain to come into operation. But
this need not and should not diminish a commitment to the fundamental
recognition of the paramount value of personhood as such. Individualized
attitudes need not and should not prevent recognition and respect for the
personhood of others.
30 N. RESCHER

Still, at this point unwelcome and unpleasant science fiction scenarios

come into view. What if (say) the evolving development of their life-­
conditions were to render one type of person species survivable only at the
expense of exploiting another in which it were personally dependent?
Were this indeed so then a discouragingly unfriendly universe would
result and the principle that “Necessity knows no limits” unfortunately
comes into operation. Theology apart, there is no reason of principle to
dictate that the universe must be person-friendly. However there is another
pathway of possibility here.
Next to self-preservation, the most fundamental natural rights is that of
kind-conservation. And at least in theory that one sort of person—be it a
natural kind or kind that has come into being by artifice of some sort—can
be in a position where its own prediction requires the sacrifice of another,
possibly even to extraction. And then it is not only understandable but
even accessible to take the dire steps when required by taxonomic survival
in conflict settled between parties long before they reached a high on a
rung on the developmental scale.
So are there any species-specific obligations that we are to others as
human beings rather than as persons—obligations that we owe a particular
human that we would not owe to any other individual in similar circum-
stances? Apparently not. To all visible appearances, those general obliga-
tions we owe to our human fellows are one and all encompassed within
their status as persons. There is no ethico/moral connection that is not
inherent in these states as persons! Biology as such has little ethical import!6
Our obligation of recognition and care for other persons is inherent in
their condition as persons. However while this obligation is oriented
toward them and concerned for THEIR interest, it is grounded in and vali-
dated through OURS. For in the final analysis its rationale and reason for
being lies in the enlightened self-interest of making the most and best of
ourselves in becoming good persons. (And this rationale enjoins not only
due care for other persons but also for sentient beings at large.)
Often a special relation obtains between two persons: they might be
kinfolk or neighbors, colleagues or friends, co-workers or classmates. To
treat someone impersonally is to act towards them as though no such rela-
tionship obtained. It is to treat them as one would treat any person what-
ever in circumstances where no special relationship of any sort obtained.
Impersonal treatment is a form of impartiality in putting aside any sort of
interrelation. It is ethically mandated by the nature of certain roles and
offices. (The judge should not “go easy” on his cousin; the instructor
 1 PERSONHOOD 31

should not make a “teacher’s pet” of her niece.) But nothing in the ethics
of empathy ever permits treating persons as a way that dismisses this fact.
It is important to distinguish the principles of moral goodness from
those of performatory goodness, for example, between being a good per-
son and being a good carpenter or tennis player. For moral goodness is
one sort of thing and performative goodness another. And even with per-
sons themselves this distinction can be brought to bear, for it is one thing
to be a good (i.e., ethically meritorious) person and another to be good at
the sort of thing (e.g., exercising intelligence, agency, judgments, etc.)
that being a person requires. However, while the distinction is clear the
difference is attempted. For the sortal merit of being good AS a person
calls for deploying to a significant extent the opportunities that the cor-
relative cognitivities put at one’s disposal. And since these indicate agents
with a view to the claims of others and the benefit of the community, it
becomes evident that being morally good (being a good person) is encom-
passed within the framework of requisites in being good as a person.
What makes for being good AS a person? How is one to be a Mensch?
Moral goodness is only a part of it; though by no means the least
important part. The entire range of personal abilities is critical here. What
is needed is a fully vivid effect to optimize realization of the totality of
person-­definitive character with its across-the-board deployment of those
person-definitive capabilities. In sum to develop their potential as persons
that is the birthright of all.
Bringing this to realization—let alone to optimalization—is unrealisti-
cally demanding, however, and too dependent in favorable circumstances.
Instead it is trying that is paramount, the endeavor to score an E for effort,
availing oneself of opportunities, doing what one can.
A good person is one who does the best possible within the limits of
opportunity. Emblematic here is the behavioral anecdote of the Widow’s
Mite.7 When the common and tertiary collected funds for the support of
the needy, Jesus singled out a poor widow for special commemoration:
“For she, in her poverty, has given all she had, her whole life-savings.” The
scope of the possibility is unquestionably limited in the conditions afforded
by a different world. But personal goodness is not a matter of realization
and achievement, but of intention and effort, of doing the best one can
within the limitations of circumstances.
Why should persons make this effort? What reasons can be given to
persons for this? Basically there are two: reasonableness and self-interest.
It is inherent in the nature of reason that reason itself should be our
32 N. RESCHER

grounds of action and that what reason implicates on its own behalf and
the behalf of the interests it serves should be accepted as action-guiding.
And of course it lies in the nature of our own best interests to have the best
and most of the opportunities at our disposal. It is close to being tautolo-
gously self-evident that one should make the effort to make the best of
themselves.

5   Part V: The Social Aspect and Community

5.1  Personhood and Ethical Community

Personhood is a matter of what individuals can and should aspire to do.
And to be effective in this endeavor, they must acquire, develop,
strengthen, and transmit these capacities in social contexts of group inter-
action. And this endows personhood with a social dimension. Even a god
needs associates (think of Mt. Olympus) or worshipers (think of the Book
of Genesis).
Persons are not solipsists. As rational beings they recognize the exis-
tence of others and acknowledge their claims to a community of condi-
tion. The interaction of persons creates a complex amalgam of self-interest
and benevolence that conjoins personal advantage and mutual aid. They
should not—must not—be seen as inherently indifferent objects put in the
world for our convenience to be used as well. Their very personhood
makes them bearers of rights.
Since reciprocal recognition and respect is something persons owe one
another in view of their very personhood, we are inexorably led to the idea
of an ethical community of persons.
The colleagueship of recursive acknowledgment, regard, and respect
cannot but move from the web of light to that of action. If, we think that
persons have a special status and origin, a member of probable value in the
world’s scheme of things, then as virtual beings we must also act on this
basis. If they merit special regard in thought, then they deserve special
regard in matters of action and motivation as well. In sum, persons deserve
special treatment by one another.
Personhood is thus inseparable from the idea and ideal of community.
Nothing is more characteristic of a person than that he regards and values
himself as such. And with a rational being valuing this feature requires
treating it as having value, as valuable in itself. But this, in turn, requires
 1 PERSONHOOD 33

deeming it of value whenever and wherever found, so that valuing person-

hood in one requires doing so in you as well. In consequence, special value
must be ascribed to the entire membership of the conformity of persons,
and special significance, acknowledgment, respect must be ascribed to per-
sons at large and they must be deemed colleagues, comrades, and associ-
ates in this special community of intelligent agents. Respectful recognizance
is of the essence here.
The nature and scope of this special condition and the responses it
demands of others is the subject matter of ethics, the concern for the
appropriate mode of operation in the treatment of persons by one another.
Where persons encounter one another in interactive proximity the
development of the communicative potential and reciprocally behavioral
norms is virtually inevitable. For personhood requires a manifold of capac-
ities that can develop and those in our impersonal environment only
through the mediation of mutual aid. (Think here of even such rudimen-
tary and impersonal collaboration as bee colonies and ant communities.)
The requirements of mutual supposition and in interactive collaboration
of persons calls for developing a socialization of norms that implement the
norms of socialization, developing a manifold of customs, norms, morals,
and laws that embody the realization of a society, a community of recipro-
cally supportive persons.
On this basis it a clear that the evolutionary requisites for communal
development require both norms of socialization and the socialization of
norms. Some degree of interactive normalization is required (in both
senses of the term) and the development of a community with shared cus-
toms and rules—of norms and morals—comes from a sine qua non of
viable personhood. Possibly that community could develop as a plurality
of interactive modes constituting a range precision. But this somewhat
strange development apart from the mutual development of persons pre-
supposes membership in a community. And the capacity of facts on their
basis thus figures among the personabilities essential to realizing of
personhood.
Need persons be able to empathize—to commiserate and sympathize
with others. Clearly this is requisite insofar as they conjoin to form inter-
personal social units. And reciprocal cooperation with others of the same
species and spatiotemporal proximity is virtually necessary to the forma-
tion and perpetuation of norms of interaction comportment. A natural
“organic” cultivation of the personabilities requisite for personhood is
almost unthinkable outside a social context.
34 N. RESCHER

However in some conceivable circumstances the ways and means of

communication with other species of personal being may well be missing.
No doubt the interest would be there, since we are dealing with intelligent
and empathetic beings. But it’s realization may require technical capacities
and resources beyond what is at the disposal of the species at issue.
Moreover it is possible that natural fright and self-protective instinct could
predominate to effect separation.

6   Part VI: The Wider Perspective

Let us pause a minute to reemphasize the principal points that have been
mentioned here:

1. Ascriptions of personhood—in combination to ascriptions of

humanity as not biological, empirical, scientifically formulated char-
acterizations. They are transcendental in import.
2. They are not scientific but metaphysical in nature.
3. Their justification is not a product of theoretical reason but in that
of practical reason. Their ultimate validation is not evidential
but ethical.
4. They are laden with moral implications as to how persons should be
treated. However, the leap to ethical considerations has to be tested
from a scientific, observational springboard.

At this point a reader is likely to object “You keep saying this is what
persons do and this is how they think of themselves. But that is surely false.
Most people do not think of themselves in that sort of way. They are much
less idealist about it.” And this is surely correct.
So if you do not think that Aunt June actually recognized herself as a
person in the sense of these deliberations, do not condemn this discussion
dismissively. Instead, acknowledge that the present project has to be con-
sidered along rather different lines. For these deliberations are not an exer-
cise in observational psychology. They do not claim to decide what people
actually do in the way of self-reflection. Rather, it is an account of what
people can do, what they should do, and what they would do if they were
duly reflective, insightful, and sensible. It is an exercise in the ethics of self-­
formation and the metaphysical anthropology of self-understanding. In
sum it is an exercise not in psychology but in the reflectively philosophical
self-understanding.
 1 PERSONHOOD 35

Just what is the format and method of the sort of inquiry considered
here? It is an exercise in what might be called concept elucidation. Its plan
is to consider an established concept—like that of a person and to proceed
to do three things:

• To begin by examining the actual usage of the established terminol-

ogy for dealing with the concept. A usage scrutiny of the dissonance
by which that concept is standardly addressed.
• A theoretical analysis of this usage in an endeavor to identify the sup-
position at work—to identify and coordinate the basic assumptions
and considerations that explain that usage and account for its
being as it.
• A rational sychronalization that seeks to regulate (i.e., rule coordi-
nate) their suppositions and assumptions under principles of under-
standing that serve to realize (i.e., provide a rationale for) the usage
and its underlying assumptions.

The overall proceedings thus have three components of concern

usage → underlying assumptions → explanatory principles

The initial basis (usage) is provided by the empirical observation of facts;

the analytic phase is governed by an explanatory expectation of the
assumptions that underlie these facts of usage, and the final, systematizing
phase is characterized by a retrospective validation of the assumptions that
exercise their determinative bearing in that initial usage. The overall pro-
cedure is thus three phased: observational, analogous, theory. And of
course these need not be set out sequentially but can be intermingled in a
manner complicative to the accessibility of the venture as a whole.8

* * *

The concept of persons has an important bearing on the important ethical

question of our responsibility to our human posterity: What do we owe to
our successors? In taking personhood as the basis of obligation we obtain
an immediate and cogent response to the question of the claims and enti-
tlement that future generations have in relation to ourselves. For because
those successors of ours must also be acknowledged as persons, they too
36 N. RESCHER

must be seen as members of the great ethical confraternity of persons, and

thereby entitled to the same manifold of duties, rights, and claims to
obtain throughout this range.

7   Part VII: An Historical Postscript—The

Valladolid Episode
As Spain was colonizing the New World in the reign of Charles V
(1516–1556), there arose a bitter discord between the lucre-hungry con-
quistadors and the pious friars who, on orders of the king, always accom-
panied their explorations. The object of dispute was the status of the local
natives, the Amerindians.
At the onset of Spain’s presence in the Americas it was not altogether
clear whether the Amerindians were to be classed as higher primates like
the large apes increasingly encountered in the exploration of Africa, or
were to be acknowledged as fellow humans. The Hispanic conquistadors
and the entrepreneurs who joined them found it advantageous to the posi-
tion of mines and ranches (encomiendas) to see them as inferior beings
available for exploitation. But the Catholic friars, who had, by order of the
king, always accompanied the conquistadors from the very outset, insisted
the Amerindians as fellow humans suitable for conversion to the One True
Faith and potential children of the church.
Were they—as the friars mainland—human beings with souls to be
saved and lives to be integrated into the community of the Church? Or
were they—as the conquistadors preferred to think—like some of the
larger hominids of Africa, sophisticated mammals available for labor in the
gold and silver mines in much the same way that camels and oxen served
as beasts of burden? Were they actually humans or were they to be seen as
a lesser form of being.
To settle the dispute, Charles V convened a commission (junto) of emi-
nent scholars and theologians in 1550–1551 at the College of de San
Gregorio in Valladolid. The principle advocated for the two opposing
sides were two Salamanca trained(?) scholars. Supporting the Indians was
the Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) Bishop of
Chiapas, Mexico, and the only commission member with personal experi-
ence of the Indians. Opposing him was the humanist scholar Juan Ginés
de Sepúlveda, the Emperor’s chaplain and official historian.
 1 PERSONHOOD 37

These scholars were, as the emperor saw it, fully qualified to give appro-
priate counsel and advice. They assembled in 1550–1551 to resolve the
issue through a scholastic debate whose focus was, in effect, the following
proposition: The indigenous natives of the New World are rational and
ensouled beings who, as such, deserve the protection of king and church.
The Salamanca-trained Dominican friar Bartholomeo de las Casas—
ever after dubbed “the Apostle of the Indies”—pleaded the friars’ case.
Las Casas’s main argument was that the Amerindians were rational beings,
open to communication and with a coherent organization of communal
affairs. Sepúlveda’s main opposing argument was that they lacked the con-
cept of private property and engaged in cruel practices offensive against
human rights. This, he argued, marked them as inferior beings qualified as
natural slaves under the specifications of Book I of Aristotle’s Politics.
Unsuitable to manage their own affairs they were, despite being a human-
oid, inferior beings fit for enslavement and disqualified for membership in
the community of Christians. However, as Casas argued with such elo-
quence and cogency that the assembled sages to their everlasting credit
came down on the side of humanity. Not that this made all that much
difference to the hard men in charge of affairs in the Americas. For while
the commission favored the perspective of las Casas, this did them little
good. And although the new legislation endorsed by the Crown spoke not
of the “conquest” but of the “pacification” of the natives, their actual
treatment remained essentially unaltered.
All the same, the episode stands out as one of the milestones in the
checkered history of the development of the conception of human rights.
The issue of transcendent philosophical interest here is the question of
the methodology of resolution. How is one to decide whether or not a
creature seemingly capable of intelligent action—possibly yet alien or
android in nature—is or is not a fellow rational being? Is the matter to be
addressed entirely in terms of analogies such as those at issue with the plea
of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
And the contrast between the legislative natural law approach of
Sepúlveda and the theological-ethical perspective of las Casas reflected the
different standings between the biological issues approach of our status as
Homo sapiens as the ethically grounded view of the status of persons.
Here the Valladolid commission had a third option which was pressed
by Sepúlveda, who saw the operative distinction not as that between sub-­
human and human (which the existence of Amerindians language and civi-
lization seemingly settled), but that between inferior humans and
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Qvando yo ui que no lo ueya, miré
a la parte donde Laureola estaua,
por uer si la ueia, e uila con tanto
pesar y los ojos bañados en agua,
que no como ella era hermosa,
mas como si uerdaderamente
estuuiera muerta, estaua amarilla,
perdida la habla, uencida la
fuerça y en tal disposicion la ui,
que mas conpassion hauia de
uella, que de Leriano, aunque
estaua muerto; e de uer tal el vno
y el otro en peor peligro estaua
tan desesperado, que diziendo
uerdad yo quisiera mas
acompañar a Leriano muerto que
seguir a Laureola biua; la qual
con mucha tristeza dissimulando
quanto podia la pena que la
muerte de Leriano le daua,
forçando las lagrimas como
discreta, començó a hablarme en
esta manera.

LAUREOLA AL AVCTOR
Verdaderamente con mas
coraçon e mejor uoluntad me
despidiera de la uida e tomara la
muerte, que salir de tu posada,
sino creyesse que saliendo me
hauia de salir el alma. Porque
cierto es que si creyera que
viendo a Leriano tal me hauia de
uer, nunca en tal me pusiera,
antes suffriera la pena de su
ausencia que la gloria de uelle,
pues no podia remediarle, que
nunca pense que assi me penara,
porque quanto mas sus seruicios
e lealtad delante mi ponia para
algo querelle, tanto mi bondad e
la grandeza de mi estado me lo
estoruaua; e no porque contra
esto esperaua yr, antes la uida de
mi fe uaya, saluo que con más
trabajo e menos oluido trabajara
con el rey mi señor en libertad,
aunque a mi no era dado, para
que entrasse en la corte e huuiera
lugar de uerme, e con esto segun
se dezia y en muerte
manifestaua, e con la esperança
que le daua huuiera lugar de no
desesperar; pero si yo con mi
crueza lo consentia, con la
passion lo he pagado y espero
pagar tambien, que para mi salud
estuuiera tambien hazello como
para mi bondad por qualquiera
parte negallo. Mas de la
hermosura que Dios me dió me
quexo, y él deue quexarse, que
esta pudo más ayna que mi
condicion ni uoluntad engañarse;
e porque el tiempo es corto e la
passion es larga, no quiero mas
dezirte, saluo que te hago cierto,
que aunque Leriano segun mi
estado e linaje por mujer no me
merescia, nunca deuiera él perder
la esperança. E pues a él no
puedo pagar sus obras e buenos
seruicios, a ti te ruego que de la
corte no te partas, aunque el
desseo de tu naturaleza te pene,
porque conozcas en las mercedes
que te haré aqui si biuieres, las
honras que a Leriano hiziera
biuiendo.

EL AVCTOR
Qvando Laureola acabó de
hablarme quedó tan triste, e tan
llenas sus uestiduras de lagrimas
de sus ojos que en gran manera
me ponia más manzilla su penada
uida que la muerte del muerto; e a
todo lo que me dixo quisiera
mucho respondelle,
agradesciendole las mercedes
que queria hazerme, como la
cortesia con que me hablaua,
saluo que qvando mas seguro e
pensatiuo en lo que me hauia
dicho estaua, se partió de mi con
vn gran sospiro, e con vna boz
con que pudo recordarme que
dezia: Ya no puede más doler la
muerte, aunque está cierta, que la
uida que está muerta.

EL AVCTOR
Despves que miré al derredor e ui
que hauia quedado solo, halléme
tan triste e tan embeleñado, que
no sabia lo que de mi hiziesse, ni
de lo que hauia soñado que
pensasse. E como no tenia con
quien hablar, estaua tan
pensatiuo que mill uezes con mis
manos quisiera darme la muerte,
si creyera hallar en ella lo que con
ella perdi; e como pense que con
mi muerte no se cobraua la uida
del muerto, ui que era yerro
perder el anima sin gozar del
cuerpo; e como es cierta
esperiencia que la musica cresce
la pena donde halla, e
accrescienta el plazer en el
coraçon contento, tomé la
uihuela, e mas como desatinado
que con saber cierto lo que hazia,
començe a tañer esta cancion e
uillancico:

Cancion.
No te pene de penar,
coraçon, en esta uida,
que lo que ua de uencida
no puede mucho durar.
Porque segun es mortal
el mal que se muestra, e
fuerte,
¿para qué es tomar la muerte
pues la uida es mayor mal?
Comiença te a consolar,
no muestres fuerça uencida;
que lo que mata la uida
con muerte se ha de ganar.

Uillancico.
 Pues porque es buena la
uida
sin la muerte,
se toma por mejor suerte.
Quien muere muerte
biuiendo
no haze mucho su suerte,
mas el que biue muriendo
sin la muerte,
¿qué mal ni pena hay mas
fuerte?
Quien puede suffrir su mal
o quexallo a quien lo haze,
con su mal se satisfaze
su uida aunque es mortal,
pero el dolor desigual
de mal e pena tan fuerte
¿quien lo suffre que no
acierte?

EL AVCTOR
Acabada de dezir la cancion e
desecha lo menos mal que yo
pude, dexé la uihuela, sin mas
pensar lo que deuia hazer, mandé
ensillar, porque me parescia que
era tiempo e bien de partir a mi
tierra; e despedido de los que
hallé por la calle, sali de la corte,
más acompañado de pesar que
consolado de plazer. E tanto mi
tristeza crescia e mi salud
menguaua, que nunca pense
llegar biuo a Castilla, e despues
que començe a entrar por mi
camino, uinieronme tantas cosas
a la fantasia, que no tuuiera por
mal perder el seso, por perder el
pensamiento dellas. Pero
membrandome como no hauia
ningun prouecho pensar más en
ello, trabajaua conmigo quanto
podia por me defender de traellas
a la memoria. E assi trabajando el
cuerpo en le camino, y el ánima
en el pensamiento, llegué aqui a
Peñafiel como Diego de Sant
Pedro, do quedo besando las
manos de uuestras mercedes.
 NOTAS:
[283] Parece que debe leerse «cuando en el cabo dél es dicho».
 SERMON
ORDENADO

POR
DIEGO DE SANT
PEDRO

PORQUE DIXERON
VNAS SEÑORAS QUE
LE DESSEAUAN OYR
PREDICAR

Para que toda materia sea bien

entendida y notada, conuiene que
el razonamiento del que dize sea
conforme a la condicion del que lo
oye; de cuya verdad nos queda
que si ouieremos de hablar al
cauallero, sea en los actos de la
caualleria. E si al deuoto en los
meritos de la pasion. E si al
letrado, en la dulçura de la
sciencia. E assi por el
consiguiente en todos los otros
estados. Pues siguiendo esta
ordenança para conformar mis
palabras con vuestros
pensamientos; porque sea mejor
escuchado, paresceme que deuo
tratar delas enamoradas
passiones; pero porque sin gracia
ninguna obra se puede començar,
ni mediar, ni acabar, roguemos al
amor (en cuya obediencia
biuimos) que ponga en mi lengua
mi dolor; porque manifieste en el
sentir lo que fallesciere en el
razonar. E porque esta gracia nos
sea otorgada, pongamos por
medianera entre amor e nosotros
la Fe que tenemos en los
coraçones. E para mas la obligar,
offrecerle hemos sendos sospiros
porque nos alcance gracia; a mi
para dezir, e a vosotras señoras,
para escuchar; e a todos
finalmente para bien amar.
Dice el lhema: In patiencia vestra
sustinete dolores vestros.
Lastimados señores, y
desagradecidas señoras: Las
palabras que tomé por
fundamento de mi intencion, son
escriptas en el libro de la muerte,
a los siete capitulos de mi desseo.
Da testimonio dellas el
Evangelista Aficion. E traydas del
latin a nuestra lengua, quieren
dezir. En vuestra paciencia
sostened vuestros dolores. E para
conclusion del tema, será el
sermon partido en tres partes.
La primera será vna ordenança
para mostrar como las amigas se
deuen seguir. La segunda será vn
consuelo en que se esfuercen los
coraçones tristes. La tercera, vn
consejo para que las señoras que
son seruidas remedien a los que
la siruen. E para aclaracion de la
primera parte, digo que todo
edificio para que dure, conuiene
ser fundado sobre cimiento firme,
si quiere el edificador tener su
obra segura. Pues luego conuiene
que lo que edificare el desseo en
el coraçon catiuo, sea sobre
cimiento del secreto, si quisiera
su labor sostener e acabar sin
peligro de verguença. Donde por
essa conparacion paresce que
todo amador deue antes perder la
vida, que escurecer la fama de la
que siruiere, auiendo por mejor
recebir la muerte callando su
pena, que merecerla, trayendo su
cuydado a publicacion. Pues para
remedio deste peligro en que los
amadores tantas vezes
tronpieçan, deue traer en las
palabras mesura, y en el meneo
honestidad, y en los actos
cordura, y en los ojos auiso, y en
las muestras soffrimiento, y en los
desseos tenplança, y en las
platicas dissimulacion, y en los
mouimientos mansedunbre. E lo
que más deue proueer, es que no
lieue la persona tras el desseo,
porque no yerre con priessa, lo
que puede acertar con espacio;
que le hará passar muchas vezes
por donde no cunple, e buscar
mensajeros que no le conuienen,
y embiar cartas que le dañen, e
bordar inuenciones que lo
publiquen. E porque competencia
suele sacar el seso de sus
recogimientos honestos, poniendo
en coraçon sospechas, y en el
mal desesperacion, y en las
consideraciones discordia, y en el
sentimiento rauia; deue el que
ama templarse e suffrirle, porque
en tales casos quien buscare su
remedio, hallará su perdicion. E
quando al que compete le
paresciere que su competedor
lleuó mas fauor de su amiga que
no él, entonces deue mas
recogerse. E aquel mudar dela
color, e aquel encarniçar de los
ojos, e aquel temblar dela boz, e
aquel atenaçar delos dientes, e
aquella sequedad de la boca que
traen disfauores, deuelo cerrar en
el juyzio, cerrando la puerta con el
aldaba del soffrimiento, hasta que
gaste la razon los accidentes de
la ira; que las armas con que se
podria rengar, cortarian la fama
de la amiga, cosa que más que la
muerte se deue temer. Bien sé yo,
señoras, que lo que trato en mi
sermon con palabras, aueys
sentido vosotras en obras. De
manera que son mis razones
molde de vuestros sentimientos.
Empero porque muchas vezes la
passion ciega los ojos del
entendimiento, es bien recordar
os la haz y el enues destas
ocasiones. Sean los passos del
que ama espaciosos, e las
passadas por do está su amiga,
tardias; e tenga en publico tristeça
tenplada; porque esta es vn rastro
por donde van las sospechas a
dar en la celada de los
pensamientos; cosa de que todo
enamorado se deue apercibir,
porque diuersas vezes las
aparencias del rostro son testigos
de los secretos del coraçon; e no
dudo que no peneys mucho en
hazer esto, porque más
atormentan los plazeres forçosos
que las tristeças voluntarias; mas
todo se deue suffrir en amor y
reuerencia de la fama de la
amiga, e guardaos, señores, de
vna erronía que en la ley
enamorada tienen los galanes,
comentando en la primera letra de
los nombres de la que siruen sus
inuenciones o cimeras o
bordaduras, porque semejante
gentileça es vn pregon con que se
haze justicia de la infamia dellas.
Ved qué cosa tan errada es
manifestar en la bordadura avn lo
que en el pensamiento se deue
guardar. Y no menos, señores, os
escusad de vestidos de sus
colores, porque aquello no es otra
cosa sino vn espejo do se
muestra que la seruis. E porque
los ojos suelen descobrir lo que
guarda la voluntad, sea vuestro
mirar general, por quitar de tino
los sospechosos. Conuiene a
todo enamorado ser virtuoso, en
tal manera, que la bondad rija el
esfuerço, aconpañe la franqueça;
e la franqueça adorne la
tenplança, e la tenplança afeyte la
conuersacion, e la conuersacion
ate la buena criança, por via que
las vnas virtudes de las otras se
alumbren, que de semejantes
passos se suele hazer el escalera
por do suben los tristes a aquella
bienaventurada esperança que
todos deseamos. Nunca vuestro
juyzio responda á las bozes de la
pena; e quando ella se aquexa
con dolor rija el seso la tenplança,
atando el cuerpo con consejo,
porque no se vaya tras el
pensamiento haziendo asomadas
y meneos. No segun la ley del
discreto lo establesce, mas segun
la priessa de la pena lo pide. E
porque suelen recrescerse a los
penados acaescimientos de tanta
angustia que dessean hablar la,
porque la passion comunicada
duele menos, no so yo de consejo
que a nadie se descubra porque
quien a otro su secreto descubre,
hagale señor de si.
Pues porque no rebiente el que
se viere en tal estrechura,
apartase a tal lugar solo, y
sentado en medio de sus
pensamientos, trate y participe
con ellos sus males; porque
aquellos solo son compañia fiel. E
si vn pensamiento le traxere
desesperaciones, otro le traerá
esperança. E si vno hallase torpe,
otro hallará tan agudo que le
procure su remedio. E si vno le
dixere que desespere segun su
desdicha, otro le dirá que espere
segun su fe, e si vno le
aconsejare que acorte con la
muerte la vida e los males, otro le
dirá que no lo haga, porque con
largo biuir todo se alcança; otro le
dirá que tiene su amiga graue
condicion como desamorada, otro
le dirá que tiene piedad natural
segun muger; otro le consejará
que calle, que muera e suffra; e
otro que sirua e hable e siga. De
manera que él de si mismo se
podra consolar y desconsolar.
Direys vosotros, señores, que
todavia querria desconsolacion e
consejo de amigo, porque los
honbres ocupados de codicia, o
amor, o desseo no pueden
determinar bien en sus cosas
propias, lo qual yo no reprueuo.
Pero assi como en los otros casos
lo conozco, assi para esto lo
niego; porque en las otras
negociaciones se turba la razon, y
en los dolores de este mal se
aguza el seso. E si sobre todo
esto la ventura vos fuese
contraria, en vuestra paciencia
sostened vuestros dolores.

LA SEGUNDA PARTE
La segunda parte de mi sermon
dixe que seria vn consuelo de los
coraçones tristes. Para
fundamento de lo qual conuiene
notar que todos los que catiuaren
sus libertades, deuen primero
mirar al merescer de la que
causare la captiuidad, porque el
afficion justa aliuia la pena. De
donde se aprende; el mal que se
sufre con razon, se sana con ella
misma. De cuya causa las
passiones se consuelan e suffren.
E avn que las lagrimas vos
cerquen, e angustias vos
congoxen, e sospechas vos
lastimen, nunca, señores, vos
aparteys de seguir e seruir e
querer, que no ay conpañia mas
amigable que el mal que vos
viene de quien tanto quereys,
pues ella lo quiere. E si no
hallardes piedad en quien la
buscays, ni esperança de quien la
quereys, esperad en vuestra Fe, y
confiad en vuestra firmeza; que
muchas vezes la piedad responde
quando firmeza llama a sus
puertas. E pues soys obedientes
a vuestros desseos, soffrid el mal
de la pena por el bien de la
causa. ¡Que, señores, si bien lo
miramos quantos bienes
recebimos de quien siempre nos
quexamos! La soledad causa
desesperacion algunas vezes,
donde nuestras amigas siempre
nos socorren, dando nos quien
nos acompañe e ayude en
nuestra tribulacion. Embian nos a
la memoria el desseo que su
hermosura nos causa, e la
passion que su gracia nos pone; y
el tormento que su discrecion nos
procura; y el trabajo que su
desamor nos da. E porque estas
cosas mejor conpañia nos hagan
crezcan nuestros coraçones con
ellas; en manera que por venir de
do vienen avn que el pensamiento
se adolezca, la voluntad se
satisfaze; porque no nos dexen
desesperar. Y es esto como las
feridas que los caualleros receben
con honrra, avn que las sienten
en las personas con dolor, las
tienen en la fama por gloria. O
amador! si tu amiga quisiere que
penes, pena; e si quisiera que
mueras, muere; e si quisiera
condenarte, vete al infierno en
cuerpo y en ánima. ¿Qué más
beneficio quieres que querer lo
que ella quiere? Haz ygual el
coraçon a todo lo que te pueda
venir. E si fuere bien, amalo. E si
fuere mal, suffrelo. Que todo lo
que de su parte te viniere, es
galardon para ti. Direys a esto
que vos dé fuerça para suffrir, y
que vosotros me dareys voluntad
para penar. Mirad bien, señores,
quan engañados en esto biuis;
que si podeys sostener tan graue
pena, cobrareys estimacion. E si
el suffrimiento cansare y os
traxere a estado de muerte, no
puede veniros cosa más
bienauenturada; que quien bien
muere, nunca muere; pues qué fin
más honrrado espera ninguno
que acabar debaxo de la seña de
su señor: por fe y firmeça e
lealtad e razon? Por donde
estaua bien vn mote mio, que
decia, que en la muerte está la
vida. Dize vn varon sabio, que no
vido honbre tan desuenturado,
como aquel que nunca le vino
desuentura; porque este ni sabe
de si para quanto es, ni los otros
conoscen lo que podria si de
fortuna fuesse prouado. Pues qué
mas quereys de vuestras amigas
sino que con sus penas
esperimenteys vuestra fortaleça?
Que no hallo yo por menos
coraçon recebir la muerte con
voluntad, que sostener la vida con
tormento; porque en lo vno se
muestra resistencia fuerte, y en lo
otro obediencia justa; de forma,
que con el mal que amor os
ordena, os procura alabança.
Esforçad vos en la vida, e sed
obedientes en la muerte. Pues
luego bien dize el tema: que
sostengays en vuestra paciencia
vuestros dolores.

LA TERCERA PARTE
Dixe que la tercera parte de mi
sermon seria vn consejo para que
las señoras que son seruidas
remedien a quien las sirue. Pero
primero que venga a las razones
desto, digo que quisiera, señoras,
conosceros con seruicio, antes
que ayudaros con consejo:
porque lo vno hiziera con sobra
de voluntad, y haré lo otro con
mengua de discrecion; mas como
desseo librar vuestras obras de
culpa, e vuestras almas de pena,
dezir vos he mi parecer lo menos
mal que pudiere. Pues para
començar el proposito, solo por
salud de vuestras animas,
deveriades remediar los que
penays; que incurris por el
tormento que les days en quatro
pecados mortales; en el de
soberuia que es el primero,
pecays por esta razon: Quando
veys que vuestra hermosura y
valer puede guarescer los
muertos e matar los biuos, e
adolescer los sanos, e sanar los
dolientes, creeys que podeys
hazer lo mismo que Dios, al qual
por esta manera offendeys por
este peccado. E no menos en el
de auaricia; que como recogeys la
libertad e la voluntad e la
memoria y el coraçon de quien os
dessea, guardays todo esto con
tanto recaudo en vuestro
desconocimiento que no les
volvereys vna sola cosa destas,
fasta que muera por lleuarle la
vida con ellas. Pecays assi
mesmo en el pecado de la yra;
que como los que aman, siempre
siguen, es forçado que alguna vez
enojen, e importunadas de sus
palabras e porfias, tomays yra
con desseo de vengança. En el
pecado de la pereça no podeys
negar que tambien no caeys, que
los catiuos del aficion, avn que
mas os escriuan y os hablen, e os
embien a dezir, teneys tan
perezosa la lengua, que por cosa
del mundo no abris la boca para
dar vna buena repuesta. E si esta
razon no bastare para la
redenpcion de los catiuos, sea por
no cobrar mala estimacion. ¿Qué
os paresce que dirá quien sopiere
que quitando las vidas
galardonays los seruicios? Para el
leon e la sierpe es bueno el
matar. Pues dexar, señoras, por
Dios, vsar a cada vno su officio;
que para vosotras es el amor, e la
buena condicion y el redimir; el
consolar. E si por aqui no aprueuo
bien el consejo que os do, sea por
no ser desconocidas; culpa de tan
gran grauedad. ¿Cómo, señoras;
no es bien que conozcays la
obediente voluntad con que
vuestros siervos no quieren ser
nada suyos por serlo del todo
vuestros, que trasportados en
vuestro merescimiento, ni tienen
seso para fablar, ni razon para
responder, ni sienten donde van,
ni saben por do vienen, ni fablan
a proposito, ni se mudan con
concierto: estando en la yglesia y
cabo el altar, preguntan si es hora
de comer? ¡O quantas vezes les
acaesce tener el manjar en la
mano, entre la boca y el plato por
gran espacio, no sabiendo de
desacordados quién lo ha de
comer, ellos o el platel! Quando
se van a acostar, preguntan si
amanesce, e quando se levantan
preguntan si es ya de noche.
Pues si tales cosas desconoceys,
a la mi fe, señoras, ni podeys
quitar las condiciones de culpa, ni
las ánimas de pena, quando por