This contributed volume considers the notions of person and logos from different approaches. Although many treat them separately, this text focuses on their intricated interplay. Drawing upon diverse cultural traditions, including Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Arab sources, this book engages philologists, philosophers, and theologians through captivating analysis that spans from ancient philosophical perspectives to contemporary scholarship. The genesis of this scholarly endeavor owes to a conference held at the Polis Institute in Jerusalem in October 2021, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, Notre Dame University, and the University of Hamburg. Out of fifty-seven presentations, fourteen were selected to compose this thought-provoking volume, ensuring a well-structured exposition on the subject.
The opening historical overview provides the framework of the volume, and culminates with Beuchot's intriguing proposition of man as an analogical animal. Subsequent sections explore the concept of logos, tracing its usage in Plato and the Gospel of Saint John, as well as its evolution through scholasticism, modernism, and contemporary thought. Contained are highlights on the notion of person, its development in various languages, and delves into the intricate connections between rationality, speech, and personhood. Metaphysical and personalist approaches are also presented; this book appeals to researchers and scholars in the field.
Part I Historical Overview of the Notions of Person and Logos.
Chapter
1 On the Notion of Person and its Development in Light of the Concept of
Logos.- Part II The Notion of Logos.
Chapter 2 Logos in Ancient Greek: A
Philological Inquiry.- Part III The Notion of Logos - The Philosophical and
Biblical Context of the Notion of Logos.
Chapter 3 Sophist or Philosopher?
Manipulation of Logos in Gorgias On Non-Existence and Encomium of Helen.-
Chapter 4 Job, and the adam: the Hermeneutics of Jobs Interpretations of
the Primeval History.
Chapter 5 Logos in the Prologue of John: A
Philological Inquiry.
Chapter 6 In the Beginning Was Discourse: Erasmus
Translation, Academic Controversy, and Popular Reaction.- Part IV The Notion
of Logos - Breaking off the Logos of Reality.
Chapter 7 The Cosmological
Argument: Leibnizs Unlimited, and Kants Limited, Rationality.
Chapter 8
The Loss of Reason: The Radical Philosophes Attack against Rational Religion
and Kierkegaards Religious Anti-Rationalism.- Part V The Notion of Logos -
An Attempt to Restore Unity Based on the Theory of Language.
Chapter 9
Charles Taylor on Constitutive Theory of Language and Self-Interpreting
Animals.- Part VI Understanding the Person - The Notion of Person at the Root
of Three Traditions.
Chapter 10 The Prosopological Reading of the Term
persona in the Works of Origen and Tertullian.
Chapter 11 Sma
and Gufa: Rabbinic Perception of a Person.
Chapter 12 The Apparition of the
Concept of Person in the Beginning of Arabic Theology.- Part VII
Understanding the Person - Metaphysical Approaches.
Chapter 13 Individual,
Self-Mastery, and the Common Good: Person as a Rational Subsistent in
Aquinas.
Chapter 14 Sui Dominium, the Metaphysical Act Constitutive of the
Person. An Aristotelian-Thomist Metaphysics Update.- Part VIII Understanding
the Person - The Personalist Perspective.
Chapter 15 Person and
Rationality.
Chapter 16 The Person in Personalism.
Linguist Christophe Rico has a doctorate in ancient Greek and holds the French official accreditation to direct PhD research. Member of the Faculty of the University of Strasbourg, he is Professor of Greek Philology at the Ecole Biblique of Jerusalem. Since 2011, he is the Dean of the Polis Institute at Jerusalem and initiator of the Polis method to teach ancient languages (Greek, Latin, biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, classical Arabic) as living. He has authored monographs on Greek and Hebrew semantics, language method books, and published some sixty articles on linguistics, Greek language, and language pedagogy as well as coedited four academic conference proceedings.
Joaquín Paniello is a scholar with a multidisciplinary background, holding a PhD in physics, another in theology, and a Master's degree in philosophy. He currently serves as a Lecturer at the Polis-Jerusalem Institute, where he has contributed to a range of publications from a multidisciplinary perspective. Recently, he has been teaching comparative studies on the three monotheistic religions. He was also one of the organizers of the Conference 'From Logos to Person' held at the Polis Institute, which serves as the foundation for the present book.
