Phenomenology of the Human Person

In this book, Robert Sokolowski argues that being a person means to be involved with truth.

Robert Sokolowski (Author)

9780521717663, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 12 May 2008

358 pages
22.6 x 15.5 x 2.2 cm, 0.49 kg

"In Phenomenology of the Human Person, Sokolowski, a philosophy professor at the Catholic University of America, tackles an astonishing range of questions and resolves a number of intellectual confusions without sinking beneath the weight of conceptual complexity.
Claremont Review of Books, Robert Royal

In this book, Robert Sokolowski argues that being a person means to be involved with truth. He shows that human reason is established by syntactic composition in language, pictures, and actions and that we understand things when they are presented to us through syntax. Sokolowski highlights the role of the spoken word in human reason and examines the bodily and neurological basis for human experience. Drawing on Husserl and Aristotle, as well as Aquinas and Henry James, Sokolowski here employs phenomenology in a highly original way in order to clarify what we are as human agents.

Part I. The Form of Thinking: 1. Two ways of saying 'I'
2. Further kinds of declaratives
3. Linguistic syntax and human reason
4. The person as the agent of syntax: predication
5. Reason as public: quotation
6. Grammatical signals and veracity
Part II. The Content of Thinking: 7. The content of what is said: essentials and accidentals
8. Properties and accidents reveal what things are
9. Knowing things in their absence: pictures, imagination, and words
10. Mental representations
11. What is a concept and how do we focus on it?
Part III. The Body and Human Action: 12. The body and the brain
13. Active perception and declaratives
14. Mental images and lenses
15. Forms of wishing
16. Declaring our wishes and choices
Part IV. Ancients and Moderns: 17. Aristotle
18. Thomas Aquinas
19. Conclusion, with Henry James.

Subject Areas: Computer science [UY], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy of language [CFA]