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A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal obligation.De Craemer, Willy. " A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Personhood". The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society, vol. 61, no. 1, 1983, pp. 19–34..Christian Smith. 2003. Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture. Oxford University PressCarrithers, Michael, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes, eds. 1985. The category of the person: Anthropology, philosophy, history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts.Richard A. Shweder/Edmund J. Bourne. 1982. Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally?, in: Anthony J. Marsella/Geoffrey M. White (eds), Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy, Dordrecht, S. 97-137.
In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes.
The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of person. The plural form "persons" is often used in philosophy and law writing.
Various debates have focused on questions about the personhood of different classes of entities. Historically, the personhood of women, and slaves has been a catalyst of social upheaval. In most societies today, postnatal humans are defined as persons. Likewise, certain legal entities such as corporations, sovereign states and other Polity, or estates in probate are legally defined as persons.For corporations, see "Justices, 5–4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit", The New York Times, January 21, 2010. However, some people believe that other groups should be included; depending on the theory, the category of "person" may be taken to include or not pre-natal humans or such Non human entities as animals, artificial intelligences, or extraterrestrial life.
Identity is an issue for both continental philosophy and analytic philosophy. A key question in continental philosophy is in what sense we can maintain the modern conception of identity, while realizing many of our prior assumptions about the world are incorrect.
Proposed solutions to the problem of personal identity include continuity of the physical body, continuity of an immaterial mind or soul, continuity of consciousness or memory,Stefaroi, P. (2015). Humanistic Personology: A Humanistic-Ontological Theory of the Person & Personality. Applications in Therapy, Social Work, Education, Management and Art (Theatre). Charleston SC, US: CreateSpace. the bundle theory of self,Nelson Pike (1967). Hume's Bundle Theory of the Self: A Limited Defense, American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (2), pp. 159-165. continuity of personality after the death of the physical body,For a discussion of post-mortal personhood, see Roth, S. (2013) "Dying is only human. The case death makes for the immortality of the person". Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 35–39. [4] and proposals that there are actually no persons or selves who persist over time at all.
The concept of person was further developed during the Trinitarianism and Christology debates of the 4th and 5th centuries in contrast to the word nature.Thisleton NIGNTC commentary on 1 Corinthians "Thinkers in ancient times had a difficulty in expressing the notion of personality"; Barfield in History of English Words "Take, for instance, the word person...Its present meaning of an individual human being is largely due to the theologians who hit upon it when they were looking for some term that would enable them to assert the trinity of Godhead without admitting more than one 'substance'"; John Zizioulas in Being as Communion, 1985 New York: St Vladimirs Press p. 27 writes: "although the person and "personal identity" are widely discussed nowadays as a supreme ideal, nobody seems to recognize that historically as well as existentially the concept of the person is indissolubly bound up with theology." During the theological debates, some philosophical tools (concepts) were needed so that the debates could be held on common basis to all theological schools. The purpose of the debate was to establish the relation, similarities and differences between the logos (/ Verbum) and God. The philosophical concept of person arose, taking the word "prosopon" () from the Greek theatre. Therefore, the logos (the / Verbum), which was identified with the Christ, was defined as a "person" of God. This concept was applied later to the Holy Ghost, the angels and to all human beings. Trinitarianism holds that God has three persons.
Since then, a number of important changes to the word's meaning and use have taken place, and attempts have been made to redefine the word with varying degrees of adoption and influence. According to Jörg Noller, at least six approaches can be distinguished:
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Other theories attribute personhood to those states that are viewed to possess intrinsic or universal value. Value theory attempts to capture those states that are universally considered valuable by their nature, allowing one to assign the concept of personhood upon those states. For example, Chris Kelly argues that the value that is intuitively bestowed upon humans, their possessions, animals, and aspects of the natural environment is due to a value monism known as "richness." Richness, Kelly argues, is a product of the "variety" and the "unity" within an entity or agent. According to Kelly, human beings and animals are morally valued and entitled to the status of persons because they are complex organisms whose multitude of psychological and biological components are generally unified towards a singular purpose in any moment, existing and operating with relative harmony.
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