A genealogy of the person concept

Here, the strength of the conceptual connection that Wiggins divines between human being and person is tested. It is suggested that a genealogical analysis of our notion of ‘a person’ undermines his ‘semantic argument’ (described in Chapter 4). A genealogical sketch of that concept is offered (based on Marcel Mauss’s essay ‘A Category of the Human Mind’) and it is shown how our everyday use of the term relies on distinct and sometimes conflicting significations and cannot thus give us insight into an unchangeable pre-theoretical structure. This chapter shows that David Wiggins's analysis of the use of the term 'person' does precisely this. He holds that his semantic analysis will grant us insight into the pre-theoretical concept that supposedly sustains it. The claim set out below is that the use of the term is guided by diverse and sometimes conflicting rationales and that it does not, therefore, provide a stable basis for his descriptivist claims. The fragmentary nature of the notion of a 'person' becomes clear when it is subjected to a genealogical analysis. 'Genealogy', as a philosophical method, came to prominence in the 1970s in the work of Michel Foucault. The strength of the conceptual connection that Wiggins divines between human being and person is tested. A genealogical sketch of that concept is offered and it is shown how the everyday use of the term relies on distinct and sometimes conflicting significations and cannot thus give us insight into an unchangeable pre-theoretical structure. This chapter shows that David Wiggins's analysis of the use of the term 'person' does precisely this. He holds that his semantic analysis will grant us insight into the pre-theoretical concept that supposedly sustains it. The claim set out below is that the use of the term is guided by diverse and sometimes conflicting rationales and that it does not, therefore, provide a stable basis for his descriptivist claims. The fragmentary nature of the notion of a 'person' becomes clear when it is subjected to a genealogical analysis. 'Genealogy', as a philosophical method, came to prominence in the 1970s in the work of Michel Foucault. The strength of the conceptual connection that Wiggins divines between human being and person is tested. A genealogical sketch of that concept is offered and it is shown how the everyday use of the term relies on distinct and sometimes conflicting significations and cannot thus give us insight into an unchangeable pre-theoretical structu