Personalism,Social Constructionism and the Foundation of the Ethical

Abstract

This paper characterizes and contrasts personalism and social constructionism as ontologies—theories that makes claims about what fundamentally is—and as phenomenologies—theories that offer descriptions of lived experience. It is argued that as ontologies both perspectives face difficult problems. Personalism must assume a priori processes as a foundation for individual identity, but has difficulty accounting for genuine sociality. Social constructionism claims to account for the origin of intelligent actions, but must either beg the question or revert to a behaviorism. Both as ontologies and as phenomenologies personalism and social constructionism fail to provide adequately for the ethical nature of life and relation to the other. An alternative, drawn from the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, is offered in which individuality, sociality and the ethical arise from the same metaphysical ground.

Keywords

behaviorism constructionism personality postModernism self

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