The Primacy of Person

Extract

M. Jacques Maritain, more than anyone else, is responsible for the wide recognition to-day of the all-important distinction between individual and person. He has insisted on the principle that while the individual is for the State, the State is for the person. Those unused to distinguishing two aspects of the same thing have shown some hesitation in accepting the plain fact that in one sense you are working for the good of the State and in another the State is working for your good. They do not readily see that man simply as a unit, separate from all other units and yet with them making up a single complex whole (Society or the State) plays a subordinate role, that of a part to its whole, and that at the same time man has a human soul, an intellect and will, which can be subordinated to nothing less than God. He lives in society for the benefit of his own mind and will, and yet he contributes to the perfection of the mind and will of the other members of that society, working with them for the perfection of each person in God.

The main difficulty in grasping this truth lies in the terminology used. There seems to be no particular reason why one aspect should be called ‘individual’ and the other ‘person.’ This, however, becomes clearer when it is realised that ‘individual’ means what is undivided in itself and divided) off from other similar things. It does not say anything about the thing itself, but simply states its position as a unit amid a host of similar units. ‘Person,’ on the other hand, originally referred to the character in a play, and we still read at the beginning of the written play the list of characters called the Dramatis Personae.