by Raphael E. Bexten
What makes the human human? Is she a person only when she thinks, feels, and acts — or is she one from the very beginning? This book pursues one of the most fundamental questions of philosophy: what does it mean to have personhood, and why does an inalienable dignity belong to every human being?
The answer unfolded here step by step, in a single sentence: the human being is, from the very beginning and for as long as she lives, a person with inalienable dignity.
Five ways in
You need not begin at the beginning. Choose the path that matches your question.
① I have five minutes. The thesis in its shortest form — and why it is more than an opinion. The five core insights → · Someone, not something →
② I want to test the argument, not believe the thesis. Every position is laid open as a syllogism and linked to its counter-arguments — including those that speak against me. Argumentative-dialectical balance → · The objections → · Argument →
③ A bioethical question brings me here. Embryo, brain death, dementia, organ donation: here the concept of the person decides over life and death. When does the human being begin? → · Brain death → · Dementia → · Organ donation →
④ Artificial intelligence brings me here. Can an AI be a person? Can it understand, judge, take responsibility — and can it ground its own knowledge? The four faculty-limits → · Conversation or simulation? → · The Münchhausen trilemma →
⑤ I want to know how this site is built. The concept pages are not written but generated from a formal ontology — and machine-checked for consistency. About the project → · All 368 concepts → · The method →
Prefer to be guided? Where to begin · Table of contents
What this site is
A philosophical book — and at the same time its verifiable foundation.
Behind these pages stands a formal ontology of human personhood: a network of classes, relations, and axioms that renders the argument of the underlying doctoral dissertation in a logically rigorous structure. From it the 368 concept pages (German and English) are derived; their freedom from contradiction is not asserted but machine-proven — with the same tools used to verify industrial knowledge graphs.
This has an unusual consequence, rarely seen: the opposing positions are included. Locke, Hume, Parfit, Singer, Coeckelbergh — every reductive concept of the person is modelled as a position in its own right, with its strongest arguments, linked to what speaks against it. Whoever wants to test the thesis will find the tool for doing so here, not merely the result.
Read the book
- Chapter 1: What this book is about — Why the question of personhood concerns everyone
- Chapter 2: How does one think about such questions? — What philosophical cognition is
- Chapter 3: What is a person? — Three fundamental views, and what is at stake in law and medicine
- Chapter 4: What is human personhood? — The heart of the book: the three dimensions
- Chapter 5: What happens when we forget who the human being is?
- Chapter 6: Summary and outlook — The five core insights
Thinkers in conversation
- Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas
- Robert Spaemann and Karol Wojtyła
- Josef Seifert and Edith Stein
- Critically: Peter Singer, Derek Parfit, John Locke
All thinkers → · All 368 concepts → · Bibliography →
This book is based on the doctoral dissertation “Was ist menschliches Personsein? Der Mensch im Spannungsfeld von Personvergessenheit und unverlierbarer ontologischer Würde” (Bexten 2017).