Journal: Conspectus
Volume: CONSPECTUS 40:1 (Oct 2025)
Article: Personhood Is Both "Sui Generis" And Interpersonally Co-Constituted: A Schelerian Conundrum, And Ecumenical Teaching On Christ’s Condescension
Author: Marno Kirstein

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Personhood Is Both Sui Generis And Interpersonally Co-Constituted: A Schelerian Conundrum, And Ecumenical Teaching On Christ’s Condescension

Marno Kirstein

University of Pretoria

About The Author

Marno has a Ph.D. in Information Design from the University of Pretoria. He is the Marketing Manager and Media Manager at the South African Theological Seminary. Marno lives in Pretoria, South Africa, where he serves as a member of the Central Baptist Church. His research interests include human-centred design, hermeneutic phenomenology, existenzanalyse, and continental philosophy.

Email: [email protected]

This article: https://www.sats.ac.za/conspectus/personhood-both-sui-genesis https://doi.org/10.54725/conspectus.2025.2.4

Abstract

Twentieth-century phenomenologist Max Scheler makes two observations about human personhood that appear to contradict each other. Namely, that personhood is both sui generis and interpersonally co-constituted. In this article, I reconcile his claims in two steps. The first step regresses the problem to one of genesis, and then the second resolves it through the lens of ecumenical Christian teaching. The first step requires demonstrating that Scheler’s claims do not violate the law of non-contradiction. Reconciling the claims reveals a more vexing cosmological issue, however: Where do these features of personhood come from? The second step is an exploration of ecumenical understandings of the Trinity, Christology, and the Incarnation, which reveals that traditional Christian teaching anticipates these features of human personhood. Many throughout church history have claimed that divine and human personhood are analogous, not the same, but I argue that the assignation of personhood can be applied to both divine and human persons in the same sense. The article explores interpersonal constitution within the Trinity and to what extent, if any, divine personhood can be phenomenologically co-constituted by human persons. Thereafter, by placing hermeneutic phenomenology and ecumenical Christian doctrine

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in a conciliatory dialectic, the article highlights implications of Christ’s incarnation that enrich the understanding of both fields.

Keywords

hermeneutic phenomenology, personhood, incarnation, Trinity, interdisciplinary research

1. Introduction

Max Scheler (1973, 371, 390) makes two observations about personhood based on his phenomenological analysis of givens upon the “natural standpoint.”1 When juxtaposed, ...