ABSTRACT
I begin by clarifying some ways one thinks and talks about what it means to be a person. In particular, I draw attention to one of these views, a view which is rarely clearly articulated yet one which grasps an irreducible and central component of what being a person involves, something I term interpersonal personhood. I continue with the contention that to be a person in this interpersonal sense is to be on the receiving end of particular kinds of ‘recognitive attitudes’ from the part of relevant, concrete others. These recognitive attitudes, as discussed in the third part of this chapter, are responses to psychological features that characterise persons, and they are simultaneously way of attributing ‘person-making significances’ to their objects. It is these significances that make someone a person in the interpersonal sense, within concrete contexts of social life. In other words, cognitive attitudes form ‘I-you relationships’, or a ‘moral we’ between recognisers and recognisees.
