Norton Smith's Concept Of Personhood Summary

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Key Concept: human, other than human, personhood, participation, moral, common place, animate, expansive, self-reflective, identity , mind

Chapter five: Am Expansive Conception of Persons, focus around constructing and defining the definition of personhood. Within this chapter Thomas M. Norton-Smith uses several different philosophers, both with adjacent and opposing views to construct his argument of personhood. Thomas N. Norton-Smith begins by first defining the parameters of human in terms of the Native American perspective. He looks into the perspective of human and other than humans beings which both can be recognized as categories of persons. The term persons is expansive, meaning that is can be applied to many different agencies. AN example of this would be animals, the Sun, rain, the ocean, mountains, and so forth. Persons and personhood is not is replacement of human or other than human. Instead persons is the understanding that one can be human without being categorized as person. One can be human without being a person. This is because with the notion of persons and personhood it requires specific categories of which a human of other than human must fall into. If the human does not fall …show more content…

In order to be a person, one must be self-reflective. In other words one has to be able to evaluate ones actions and be reflective of those actions that take place around them to create an identity. A person is a participant is a society. A person can only be considered a person if they in habitat the space of a community. Hence if they are part of a community in which they can reflect within the ideas they have for themselves as well as the ideas the surround them. A person has a sense of morality as well. Though the definition of morality may be different as long as it aligns with other persons within a society then they are still considered

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