Against Anti-Human Philosophies of Despair: 5 False Visions of the Human Person

We are in a struggle over what it means to be a person.  This debate is at the core of our deepest social, political, moral, and scientific debates.

We are inundated with false philosophies of the person: transhumanism, plastic anthropology, the person as cog for the state or the market, the person as a scourge on the earth, and the person as a commodity to be traded. 

These visions of the person are manifestations of utopianism and nihilism. They create anxiety, loneliness, cultural and social disorder, and contribute to the decline of Christian belief. We need to recover a vision of the person that affirms the goodness of being and the goodness of the body. 

This lecture will provide an overview of five false visions of the person that dominate our social discourse and provide a response rooted in the Christian vision of the human person as embodied, embedded, with reason and a social nature.