ABSTRACT
Contemporary moral philosophy has attributed a premise-role to “respect for persons” in its arguments, and out of his own respect for persons Abraham Edel has focused the concept for some friendly analysis. Edel’s philosophy is distinctive in being so thoroughly civilized, in being so apt to civilize, and in its encouraging the analytic mode of thinking on behalf of civilizing. The definitional priority that person enjoys over personality is paralleled in some societies, including ours, by a moral priority that persons enjoy over personalities. Certain rights and privileges accrue to someone simply by virtue of being a person and quite apart from the consideration of anything that is normally subsumed under personality. In an innocuous way the converse of the proposition “all personalities are persons” is also true, since, if personality is what distinguishes each individual person from the other, then being an individual person in itself guarantees being a personality.
