PERSONS, COMMUNITY AND HUMAN DIVERSITY

This article explores the topic of persons, community and human diversity. Tracing the roots of the western conception of persons to the Greek and Christian traditions, the author develops a conception of persons as agents and as free and flourishing in mutuality with other persons. Arguing that persons are both individual and social, the author considers persons in intimate communities, societies and religious communities. He argues that seeking to live in relation to others in ways that enable self and other to flourish provides an ontological ground for human behavior that is presupposed in our particular ethical traditions and provides a moral basis for human behavior that may be shared by diverse religious and nonreligious persons.