[3] Writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Thomas D. Williams[4] and Jan Olof Bengtsson[5][6] cite a plurality of "schools" holding to a "personalist" ethic and "Weltanschauung", arguing: Personalism exists in many different versions, and this makes it somewhat difficult to define as a philosophical and theological movement.
The title "personalism" can therefore legitimately be applied to any school of thought that focuses on the centrality of persons and their unique status among beings in general, and personalists normally acknowledge the indirect contributions of a wide range of thinkers throughout the history of philosophy who did not regard themselves as personalists.
Many are concerned to investigate the experience, the status, and the dignity of the human being as person, and regard this as the starting-point for all subsequent philosophical analysis.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (1874–1948) was a Russian religious and political philosopher who emphasized human freedom, subjectivity and creativity.
[8] In France, philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905–1950) was the leading proponent of personalism, around which he founded the review Esprit, which exists to this day.
Mounier's personalism had an important influence in France, including in political movements, such as Marc Sangnier's Ligue de la jeune République (Young Republic League) founded in 1912.
In Gaudium et spes, the Second Vatican Council formulated what has come to be considered the key expression of this personalism: "man is the only creature on earth that God willed for its own sake and he cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself".
[13] This formula for self-fulfillment offers a key for overcoming the dichotomy frequently felt between personal "realization" and the needs or demands of social life.
Personalism also implies inter-personalism, as Benedict XVI stresses in Caritas in Veritate: As a spiritual being, the human creature is defined through interpersonal relations.
He also stood against certain forms of positivism which sought to render ethical and theological discourse meaningless and dismiss talk of God a priori.
[15][16][17][18] Francis John McConnell was a major second-generation advocate of Boston personalism who sought to apply the philosophy to social problems of his time.
Howison maintained that both impersonal, monistic idealism and materialism run contrary to the moral freedom experienced by persons.
To deny the freedom to pursue the ideals of truth, beauty, and "benignant love" is to undermine every profound human venture, including science, morality, and philosophy.
Philosopher Immanuel Kant, though not formally considered a personalist, made an important contribution to the personalist cause by declaring that a person is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends of other people, but that he possesses dignity (an absolute inner worth) and is to be valued as an end in himself.
[29] Pope John Paul II was also influenced by the personalism advocated by Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
[31] His writings as Roman pontiff, of course, influenced a generation of Catholic theologians who have since taken up personalist perspectives on the theology of the family and social order.