Person: Encounters, Paradigms, Commitment and Applications edited by Diana Prokofyeva, Colin Patterson

This volume presents the state of the art for an important emerging way of thinking about philosophy, religion, and the social sciences. After 400 years of quasi-dualistic separation of spiritual versus mechanistic, empirical versus metaphysical, consciousness versus physicality, these essays now point to a revitalizing of “person” as self-organizing, not reactive; self-moving, not merely pushed; purposeful, not aimless; embodied, not ghostly; and relational, not micro-reductive. Important contributions here discuss the philosophical work of John Macmurray, Martin Luther King, Hindu Personalism, the personalist approach to environmental ecology, the phenomenological personalism of Edith Stein and Pope John Paul II, and working-class perspectives on the meaning and dignity of personhood.

Ralph D. Ellis

Author of 'The Moral Psychology of Internal Conflict'

The reading of this book will be essential for three audiences: a) those who believe that Personalism has little or no metaphysical power; b) those who appreciate the Western metaphysical tradition, and yet are dissatisfied with the incapacity of what such a metaphysics has to say about what is proper to personhood: incorporated existence, subjectivity, donation, relationality, etc.; c) those who are sympathetic to Personalism and desire its metaphysical basis to be further developed.

Juan Manuel Burgos is laying some foundations that were not established for Personalism. He is not only a Wojtyla scholar and a Maritain expert, nor is he only a great reader of Buber, von Hildebrand, Nedoncelle, Guardini, or Julián Marías; he is beyond this. He has earned the position of the most prominent personalist philosopher in the Spanish-speaking world. His books are currently translated into other languages. His contributions will be crucial for the direction that much of the Personalist reflection will take in what remains of the 21st century.

Dr. Jorge Medina

Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, México