What Is a Person? : Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good From the Person Up

What is a person? This fundamental question is a perennial concern of philosophers and theologians. But, Christian Smith here argues, it also lies at the center of the social scientist's quest to interpret and explain social life. In this ambitious book, Smith presents a new model for social theory that does justice to the best of our humanistic visions of people, life, and society. Finding much current thinking on personhood to be confusing or misleading, Smith finds inspiration in critical realism and personalism. Drawing on these ideas, he constructs a theory of personhood that forges a middle path between the extremes of positivist science and relativism. Smith then builds on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Anthony Giddens, and William Sewell to demonstrate the importance of personhood to our understanding of social structures. From there he broadens his scope to consider how we can know what is good in personal and social life and what sociology can tell us about human rights and dignity. Innovative, critical, and constructive, What Is a Person? offers an inspiring vision of a social science committed to pursuing causal explanations, interpretive understanding, and general knowledge in the service of truth and the moral good. - Publisher. The Task Of Understanding Human Beings, What We Ourselves Are, Our Constitution And Condition, Is A Perennial Problem In Philosophy And Related Disciplines. Smith Argues Here That Our Understanding Of Human Persons Is Threatened By Technological Development And Capricious Academic Theories Alike, Seeking To Deny Or Relativize The Personhood Of Humanity. Smith's Book Puts A Stake In The Ground, In Defense Of A View Of The Human That Is Genuinely Humanistic In The Traditional Sense And Capable Of Sustaining With Intellectual Coherence Things Like Modern Human Rights And Universal Benevolence. Initial Arguments -- The Emergence Of Personhood -- Key Theoretical Resources -- Critical Engagements -- The Reality Of Social Construction -- Excursus: Getting To Truth -- Network Structuralism's Missing Persons -- Persons And Mechanisms (not) In Variables Sociology -- Constructive Development -- The Personal Sources Of Social Structures -- The Good -- Human Dignity -- Postscript. Christian Smith. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Introduction Part I : Initial arguments. The emergence of personhood Key theoretical resources Part II : Critical engagements. The reality of social construction Excursus : getting to truth Network structuralism's missing persons Persons and mechanisms (not) in variables sociology Part III : Constructive development. The personal sources of social structures The good Human dignity Postscript